It’s a normal office break room—fluorescent lighting, coat rack, microwave. But it’s in a museum, so of course there’s something a little quirky about it. In this case, it’s the 4,300-year-old Egyptian chapel sealed up behind the wall.
Chicago’s Field Museum is home to 30 million objects, most of which are behind the scenes. But while the vast majority of those collections are stored in collection drawers where they can be pulled out and used in scientific research, the chapel stands out. It’s a holdover from an old exhibit about ancient Egypt, purchased over a century ago during the “Indiana Jones” years of archaeology, and now it’s just chilling by the water cooler. [...]
The most striking thing about the chapel (other than the fact that it’s sitting in an office break room) is the traces of colorful paint that aren’t not quite faded from the walls, still gleaming deep ochre, goldenrod, jade, and cerulean after four millennia. “We think of classical art as being plain, since we’re used to seeing it with all the paint worn off, but the ancient Egyptians were crazy about color,” explains James Phillips, the Field Museum’s curator of Egyptology. [...]
But these days, even evil spirits can’t get into the chapel—only a few Field Museum staff members have a key. And while the museum has long-term plans to reincorporate the chapel into a public display, doing so will take time. “The space is too narrow for a person in a wheelchair to comfortably turn around. It needs a lot of work and funding before it’s ready to be back on display,” says Phillips.
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