On Thursday September 28th I have attended the opening night of the “Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt” exhibition in the Brooklyn Museum as part of an extra credit assignment for my History 1001 class. The night included art history lectures by the exhibition’s curators Ed Bleiberg and Yekatrina Barbash and a lecture by Salima Ikram who is a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. The topic of the lectures and the exhibition itself was Egyptian animal mummies, animals played a big part in the religious and cultural life in ancient Egypt and for that reason many animals were mummified. Modern technology allows researchers and archeologists to examine and analyze the millions of animal mummies like never before, using CT scans and X ray we now have a better understanding of what kind of animals were mummified and why. The exhibition shows dozens of mummies from more than 30 different sites in Egypt and a variety of animals such as dogs, birds, cats and many others. As mentioned I have attended the event in order to get extra credit in my History class where we have just discussed ancient Egypt culture and leaders. I am very interested in world history and I grew up not far from the Egyptian border, also I have traveled to Egypt with my family as a kid and I felt that regardless of the fact that this was an academic assignment I will enjoy the evening and enrich my knowledge in a subject that I did not know much about and that was exactly the case. I have a broader approach to Egyptian studies thanks to Prof. Boozer and the extra credit assignment and my interest in global history is growing during my first semester in Baruch.
Bar Tamir
