Ancient Egyptian Mythology 101 at the Met

A major exhibition featuring artifacts from one of, if not the, most aesthetically iconic civilizations in world history is bound to be a blockbuster event for any museum; naturally, the Met’s Divine Egypt exhibit has been one of the most anticipated shows of the year. The display takes from both the Met’s own robust inventory of ancient Egyptian artwork and from those of major institutions in Boston, Copenhagen, and Paris. Divine Egypt will be on at the Met until January 19, 2026, and features nearly 250 works of art assembled with the intention of making the vast, complicated network of ancient Egyptian deities both comprehensible and exciting. 

Aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, religion, and politics hold both a prevalent role in our modern understanding of world history and pop culture. Be it gauze mummies on Halloween or illustrated pyramids on a dollar bill, Egyptian symbolism has left a lasting impression on modern society. It would be impossible to have gotten a standardized education without coming across lessons about pharaohs, sphinxes, and the Nile River. Though most people have some knowledge or impression of ancient Egyptian civilization, their religion actually holds complexities unexplored by the most general education. Hundreds upon hundreds of distinct yet interconnected gods; a blurry line between the worship of deities and real rulers; and a timeline of 3,000 years in which spirituality shifted constantly are all factors that have made understanding the creed of this ancient society in simple terms near impossible. 

Considering this, the Met provides thorough background information about each god, goddess, and ruler featured throughout the exhibit. With 250 pieces in total, the artifacts are organized by deity. Each figure is featured with their own written background information. Their showcases are wordy with what feels like supplementary reading on the wall every 10 feet, though not to their detriment. Each one is concise in the information it includes, and the pompous language often used in high-profile Met exhibitions is nowhere to be found. This makes the exhibit accessible to all viewers, no matter their prior knowledge; it’s a space for excitement, not pretentious intellectualism. 

 The exhibit takes place in the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Gallery on the second floor, one of the more flexible spaces in the museum—this is a gallery that has housed a huge range of genres’ exhibits, fitting the needs of each showcase seamlessly. The space opens with a wide room holding only a single artifact: a large, seated figure of dark stone titled Statue of Amun-Re protecting King Tutankhamun (ca. 1336-1327 BCE) that was originally acquired by Napoleon Bonaparte. This piece would have been constructed, as the name suggests, with the intention of guarding the famous tomb of King Tut and is a fitting start to the exhibit. The introductory reading on the wall lays out the exhibition’s intentions of conveying the principal gods of ancient Egypt and also how worshippers chose to portray them through art. The writing clarifies that, beyond promoting understanding of ancient Egyptian religion through artistic iconography, the show aims to highlight the people and culture surrounding the religion. 

The artifacts are exquisitely detailed, historically significant, and incredibly preserved. The collection includes the meticulously detailed inner coffin of a royal princess and huge expanses of gilded-papyrus tomb paintings that showcase the iconic elements of ancient Egyptian art. Yet most of the pieces on display are tiny, able to fit in one’s hand or be carried against one’s body—an incredible subversion of expectations, as ancient Egyptian art is renowned in popular culture for being colossal, awesome, and extreme. The scale of these pieces grounds them, allowing the viewer to easily envision the ancient hands that once grasped them. 

For an exhibit about a civilization thousands of years old, I didn’t expect the pieces to be “humanized,” even when I didn’t totally understand the specifics of the deity depicted or the significance of its purpose. A slab of stone no more than two feet tall and engraved with hieroglyphics titled Magical Stela with Horus the Child (ca. 360–343 BCE) depicts the god of the sky, Horus. The carved image depicts the myth of him being cured of a poisonous sting, and the artifact itself would have been doused in various liquids that would have then been drunk by worshippers also seeking to be healed. A glazed ceramic scarab of brilliant teal-blue titled Commemorative Scarab of Amenhotep III Recording a Lion Hunt (ca. 1390–1352 BCE) would have been bestowed upon nobles by their pharaoh, Amenhotep III, as political gifts. The steatite beetle could fit in one’s palm, but looks heavy and cool to the touch—even with whole areas of the glaze aged away, it is still beautifully ornate. 

Even with the humanization of these magnificent artifacts, the overall exhibit still falls short of feeling totally intimate. The physical space of the gallery is poorly utilized and fails to serve pieces to their fullest potential. The gallery has high ceilings and is incredibly spacious, something that could have been used to amplify the grandeur of each piece; instead, it ends up dwarfing them in an off-putting balance of physical size. The two afterlife-centric rooms had dark walls with spotlights on each object. These dark rooms create an appropriate atmosphere that allows each object to shine and bask in its own importance under a physical stream of light. However, the large majority of the featured pieces in other rooms are arranged in front of large white walls, sparsely decorated with teal and orange geometric shapes. Between the cold lighting and scattered formations of display cases, what was meant to be muted and draw attention away from the physical space actually makes the rooms feel sterile and scattered. The color schemes and architectural designs of some of the cases create an aesthetic unrelated to the lavishness and complexities of ancient Egyptian art.

That being said, the impressiveness of the Divine Egypt pieces far outweighs the bad feng shui of the gallery. This exhibit felt important, and as a lover of history, it felt like a duty to see and appreciate it. Ancient Egyptian mythology may be complicated, but it’s also captivating and enticing. Seeing this exhibit allows one to talk away with a better intellectual understanding of ancient Egyptian religion as a genre of study as well as with a new familiarity with the artwork.