Vessel in the shape of a bound oryx, from the Napatan period, early 7th century B.C.E.
Three thousand years ago, people buried glorious artifacts like jewelry, pottery, metalwork and sculpture with their esteemed dead. “Grave goods,” these artifacts are called now. Those people from East Africa are long gone.
Their story has been extrapolated from the funerary objects—badly. About a century ago, archeologists began digging up these “grave goods,” and re-writing the narrative of the ancient Nubians of the upper Nile. As leaders in the excavations, the Museum of Fine Arts played a major part in those miscast narratives. One fundamental fault: the racist assumption that very black Nubians lived subserviently to the less-black Egyptians.
Let’s think again.
The Museum of Fine Arts’ current exhibition “Ancient Nubia Now,” on view through January, shows fabulous artifacts from Nubian outposts like Kerma, Nuri, and Meroe, artifacts from a period long before the Christian era began. This is not an art exhibition, full of lost masterpieces. This is a living history lesson, or better, a riddle. Here are the clues, now tell the story. Again.
Shawabty of King Taharqa, from the Nuri camp exhumed by Museum of Fine Arts in the early 20th century.
Nubia existed along the Nile, what is now Sudan and some of southern Egypt. Known as Kush in very ancient times, the area served as a conduit between east Africa and Egypt, with commerce and conflicts taking place all along the great river.
The MFA was part of the original misinterpretations, and attempts now to correct it. A wall label, detailing the excavations and subsequent misreadings by the museum’s George Andrew Reisner in the early 1900s, says it succinctly: “Correcting the Story.”
“Ancient Nubia Now” is a carefully curated exhibition, scholarly in presentation, assiduously organized. “Grave goods” from Kerma, Nuri, Napata, Meroe—what was left after the robbers and time were finished—are re-interpreted here to create a balance between the Nubians and their neighbors. What was once characterized as a dominate relationship is now seen as a push-and-pull. At times (covering three millennia) one country ruled the other, ruled parts of the other, and just as frequently assimilated with the other.
Half a dozen quite dark galleries examine four key eras of the Nubian past. An additional gallery documents the original MFA excavations from 1913–16. They hold exquisite creations in exotic materials like porphyry, travertine, anhydrite and faience, fabricated into small statuary, ornate earrings, breastplates and figurines—some in staggering numbers.
These are glorious artifacts, from a long past period. But the Nubians did not just provide inspiration for a greater Egyptian culture: they did that, but more accurately they created their own distinct culture that we can barely understand over time.
Nuri Camp, showing shawabties laid out on the ground.
The market value of the objects in “Ancient Nubia Now” is likely priceless. Their present value, especially to those who treasure their distant Nubian connections, is still palpable. Some who walk in these galleries might feel that parts of their story are finally being balanced—at least inside the walls of the MFA.
Director Edmund Barry Gaither of Roxbury’s National Center of Afro-American Artists, an MFA partner, spoke eloquently before the opening about the fair presentation of black heritage, and restoring Africa to its place in cultural history.
That’s more of the present value: in seeing how fundamental misinterpretations of the past contribute to ongoing cultural biases, and addressing those persistent mistakes. One ancient story at a time.