Last summer we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and on my Middle Eastern trip I got to see some great museums in Istanbul, Ankara, Boğazkale, Konya, Ephesus, Bergama, Cairo, and Luxor. Compared to all of these, Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum isn’t particularly impressive, but I’ve always appreciated it. It has a great representative sample of objects from the Ancient Near East, the Americas, and Africa, all in a neat building on the Emory Quad. The bookstore is pretty good too. A visit this Sunday netted me a bunch of photographs.
The main hall as you walk in.
“Head of a goddess, perhaps Demeter.” Hellenistic, second century BC.
Contemporary Roman portrait of Emperor Tiberius.
“Relief with a woman,” Roman, first century BC.
Mercury. Roman, first-second centuries AD.
Minoan double axe, fourteenth century BC.
Mycenaean Psi Figurine, thirteenth century BC.
Greek ceramics, geometric period (900-700 BC).
Greek ceramics, Orientalizing Period (700-500 BC).
Black figure vase of Odysseus escaping from Polyphemus.
Red figure vase of Orpheus among the Thracians.
“Volute-krater depicting the story of Melanippe,” 330-320 BC.
Athenian owls in ceramic and silver.
An athlete grooms himself with a stirgil.
An actual stirgil.
Egyptian coffin.
An Old Kingdom mummy, before the standard position had developed.
Egyptian shabti figurines.
A set of Egyptian amulets placed within the bandages of a mummy.
Canopic jars.
Shakyamuni Buddha, Tibet, fourteenth century AD.
Cosmic form of eighteen-armed Vishnu, India, eleventh century AD.
St. George on an Ethiopian processional cross.
The Virgin Mary and St. George in an Ethiopian manuscript.
Native American ceramics.
Vessel with double-headed snake-caiman, Panama, ninth-eleventh century AD.
In the basement on the way out: a reproduction of the Hammurabi stele.
A reproduction of the dying lioness relief from the Assyrian royal palace of Nineveh, now in the British Museum.
A reproduction of the Obelisk of Shalmaneser III.
The rear entrance.