AMONG THE PALMS OF THE PICENO,
EGYPT, THE LAND OF THE NILE
(by Adele Amadio)
The summer season of San Benedetto del Tronto will be enlivened this year by the exhibition called “Among the palms of the Piceno, Egypt, the land of the Nile”. The organizers of this event are Alessandro Roccati, an Egyptology professor at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, the Egyptologist Giuseppina Capriotti Vittozzi, member of the Giunta Storica Nazionale and the Consorzio Turistico Riviera delle Palme. This exhibition will be patronized by the Municipality of San Benedetto del Tronto, the Province of Ascoli Piceno, the Marche Regional Administration, the Fondazione della Cassa di Risparmio of Ascoli Piceno and the Chamber of Commerce.
The enchantment exerted by Egypt will be presented through its landscapes, which in the past fascinated all those who invaded this land, from Julius Caesar to Augustus, who made it a Roman province.
Following the Napoleonic campaign of 1798 the Egyptian style became truly fashionable and it influenced European architecture, furniture and jewellery thanks to the archeological findings discovered inside the Pharaohs’ tombs. This phenomenon was called Egypt-mania.
Three thousand years of Egypt’s history, with its Pharaohs and the life led in the Valley of the Nile are retraced, thanks to over 100 exhibits, such as statues, reliefs and mummies coming from the Italian museums of Florence, Naples, Cortona, Benevento and the Vatican Museums, which will provide the most relevant and interesting piece, that is a relief depicting a Nilotic scene. Other archeological findings will be provided by the Museums of Vienna and Strasburgh. The latter is sending a relief which perfectly matches with another preserved in Florence. This will be an occasion to reunite the two parts.
A section of the exhibition will be dedicated to the influence exercised by the Egyptian religion upon the Piceni people and the Romans, who inhabited the area of the Marche region. Not many people know that the museums in the Marche contain within their collections numerous Egyptian objects, which will be displayed. These objects are charms found inside Piceno tombs, several bronze statues and fictiles from the Archeological Museums of Ascoli Piceno and Ripatransone, as well as the head of a statue of the god Ptah, preserved in the National Museum of the Marche in Ancona, and the regal statues of Treia, which testify the existence of sanctuaries dedicated to Iside and Serapide in the whole Roman territory, the most famous of all being the Campo Marzio (parade grounds) in Rome.
Another protagonist of this exhibition is the papyrus, an element of the Nilotic vegetation, important for its use in writing. There will be a series of documents written on papyrus scrolls lent by the Papyrus Museum of Siracusa.
There will be a series of photographs representing Egyptian tombs. A section will be dedicated to the influence exerted by Egypt upon the whole world in the 19th and 20th centuries, when villas were often decorated with palm trees, such as Villa Boccabianca at Cupra Marittima and Villa Clarice at Porto S. Giorgio. There will be displayed pictures portraying exotic subjects, provided by the Picture Gallery of Ascoli Piceno.
The last section of the exhibition will be dedicated to those travellers and scholars, who explored Egypt between 1800 and 1900. Among them we can mention the famous archeologist from Offagna Evaristo Breccia (1876-1967), who directed the Graeco-Roman Museum of Alexandria, as well as the architect Ernesto Verrucci from Force (1874-1945), who travelled throughout Egypt as he was in charge of the Royal Palaces of King Fu’ad. He has left us an interesting collection of photographs, some of which were taken during a journey to the Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Karnak in Thebes, nowadays called Luxor. Other shots were taken while he was visiting the excavations carried out by Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamon. There are also documents concerning his projects for the Royal Palaces of Cairo and Alexandria, where he built a tomb for Fu’ad’s father, Pasha Ismail, using travertine from the area of Ascoli, provided by the firm Matricardi & Angelini.
This exhibition is the result of an international collaboration and its profits will be used to restore the tomb of an important dignitary of the XI Dinasty (2061-2010 BC), called Meru, who was buried in Thebes near the Temple of Deir el-Bahari. This was restored by the Italian Archeological Mission of the University of Rome, which boasts the presence of the eminent Adriano Luzi, from the Marche region, who is well-known for having restored the painting on the tomb of Nefertari, the most beautiful and beloved spouse of Ramesse
II.
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