The Children’s Museum, which just bid farewell to the Tutankhamun:  The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs travelling exhibit last week, has a special relationship with Egypt so it should come as no surprise that they would continue to deliver Egypt to the region, an easy drive from the Louisville and Kentuckiana area.

The tomb of Seti I (KV17) is the largest tomb discovered in the Valley of the Kings to date.  The tomb was discovered in 1817 by Giovanni Battista Belzoni and was originally believed to be about 328 feet long.  More recent excavations have shown the tomb to be at least 446 feet long, and there is reason to believe that more remains to be discovered.  The tomb of Seti I is one of the most exciting digs currently underway in Egypt.

The tomb of Seti I (KV17) is the largest discovered in the Valley of the Kings to date (Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbera)

Painted hieroglyphs in bas-relief from the wall of KV17 (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

In addition to being the largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings, KV17 is also one of the most richly decorated.  Every wall of every passageway and room is adorned with intricate raised reliefs and vividly colored hieroglyphs and paintings.  The second pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and father of Ramesses the Great, Seti I ruled Egypt during one of its most culturally and artistically productive periods, and his tomb reflects this sophistication.

The work to stabilize and preserve the tomb of Seti I is a continual process (Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbera)

As part of an exhibit called National Geographic Treasures of the Earth, the Seti I section will be a partial replica that will teach kids about hieroglyphics, archaeology, and site conservation.

Heroic efforts have been made to stabilize and preserve KV17, and young future archaeologists will gain an appreciation for the kind and amount of work that goes into protecting these heritage sites for generations to come.  Due to open in late 2011, Dr. Patchen will be making a more detailed announcement about the exhibit in the next few months.

Anubis guarding the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis skywalk (Photo by Meredith Hayden)

Young people (and the young at heart alike) will have an opportunity to enjoy the next best thing to standing within the tomb of Seti I.  The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis has a reputation for transporting its visitors to distant locations on a grand scale.  In a current exhibit called Take Me There: Egypt, kids can board a two minute simulated Egypt Air flight that lets out in a 13,000 square feet reproduction of Egyptian urban and rural settings where they can interact with “locals” and participate in cultural events.

To learn more about Take Me There: Egypt, and to learn what other archaeological sites wil be featured in the National Geographic Treasures of the Earth exhibit, be sure to read the full interview with Dr. Jeffrey Patchen, which will premiere on Monday, November 9, 2009, on Em Hotep!  We will be talking about how the Tutankhamun travelling exhibit came to Indianapolis, Dr. Patchen’s involvement with the Suzanne Mubarak Children’s Museum in Cairo, and a number of other issues of interest to local and international readers.

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2009.  All rights reserved.

Photo “La tombe de Sethi 1er (KV.17) (Vallée des Rois, Thèbes ouest) – 2.jpg” by Jean-Pierre Dalbera, “Image-La tombe de Sethi 1er (KV.17) (Vallée des Rois, Thèbes ouest) -3.jpg” by Jean-Pierre Dalbera, “Hieroglyphs from the tomb of Seti I.jpg” by Jon Bodsworth, are provided courtesy of Wikimedia Commons  and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of those files under the conditions that you appropriately attribute them, and that you distribute them only under a license identical to this one. Official license 

Nineteenth Dynasty

Might Makes Right—The Ramesside Period Pt. 1

1295 to 1186 BC

Toward the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty the Hittites managed to gain a foothold in Syria and Palestine, and conflict with the Hittites would become one of the defining features of the Nineteenth Dynasty.  Founded by Ramesses I, Horemheb’s vizier and appointed heir, the Nineteenth Dynasty saw both glory and prosperity—Ramesses II would practically invent the concept of branding by stamping his name on anything that wasn’t moving—but extended warfare would take a toll on the treasury with long-reaching consequences.  In the end, the dynasty would succumb to intrigues resulting from infighting between Merneptah’s sons, Amenmesse and Seti II.