Foreword 

The body of a woman bent with her arms on the ground, her head marking the western border of the sky, while her arms limit the eastern one. This is how ancient Egyptians represented the sky, with the arched goddess Nut, who cyclically gives birth to the sun every morning. This is the starting moment of the journey in Egypt.

House of Eternity, the exhibition that takes the Nile Valley to China through the Museo Egizio, which bears like a monolithic pylon the symbolic load of the time and space connection between the ancient land of the Pharaos to the thousands-years-old Chinese population.

The exhibition offers a journey through space and time, starting from the moment when light defeats darkness; when the day of the ancient Egyptians starts, and the first rays of light rise from the akhet (the horizon) and light up the Kemet, the Black Land (Egypt). Under the burning sun of Egypt, bent on the fields, the peasants work the land ruled by the high functionaries, whose richly attired wives enjoy the cool and shady home gardens.

The light of the afternoon and the green of regeneration, introduces the section dedicated to religion, where a parallel journey starts, going from South to North through several religious cults.

When the day comes to an end and the sun sets in the West, it is relentlessly swallowed by the god Nut, whose womb is filled with danger and obstacles that can be overcome only thanks to the ritual, the funerary equipment and the power of magic formulas.

For Egypt. House of Eternity a selection of prestigious objects from the collection in Turin has been chosen: some of them unpublished, some coming from the storage of the Museum and shown for the first time, others borrowed from the path of the Museum to take the visitors on a dream-like journey through the sands of the desert, the shade of the palm trees and the papyri of the Nile.

First Part     Ordinary life

In common thought, Ancient Egypt has always had the characteristics of a mystical and legendary land. Still today, after seeing great Egyptian collections, people have the impression that Egyptian people were completely devoted to death. This perception is due to the kind of objects that were preserved, beautiful funeral artifacts that tell stories of peculiar habits and beliefs, very interesting and exciting but exclusively related to the funeral sphere.

Egyptian people did not actually think only about death. On the contrary, they loved life, so much that they looked for it also after their passing. Life, especially ordinary, daily life, is the main character of the first section of this exhibition Egypt. House of Eternity.

For millennia, the teeming Egyptian civilization depended on the Nile and its systematic floods. The day was long and the Sun strong, especially on the poor peasants who spent their days on the fields. On the other hand, the noblemen who owned these lands enjoyed their time in the cool shady areas under the palm trees, dedicating themselves to hunting and fishing for pleasure, the cultural relics left in this area recall these scenes.

    In this first section, visitors can see not only the Palette for make-up, small delicate combs, and also the usekh collars of various precious minerals, which shows that the pursuit of beauty is a significant part of Egyptians' daily life.