A museum curator I know on the West Coast once referred to exhibitions of ancient Egyptian material as “Sara Lee” exhibitions, seeing as how nobody doesn't like them.

        It's a pleasing but puzzling affair, this Euro-American love affair with ancient Egypt. I frequently meet people who are generally historically illiterate, but who nonetheless can recall as many as three reasonably accurate facts about the Egyptians.

IF YOU GO

What: Egypt in the Age of Pyramids: Highlights from the Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Expedition     Where: Cincinnati Art Museum, Eden Park     When: Through Sept. 1     Cost: $12, $10 seniors/college students; free under age 18

        I once got an impromptu lecture from my auto mechanic on the symbolism of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and it made more sense than the one I had heard years earlier from an undergraduate professor.

        Displays of Egyptian art in American and European museums have become ubiquitous during the past century, and the public appetite for all things pharaonic is apparently insatiable. But exhibitions designed exclusively around artifacts from the Old Kingdom era — arguably one of the most important places and times in the history of world civilization — are all but unknown in this country.

        Until now.

        Cincinnati has the rare opportunity to see first-hand a virtual treasure-trove of art from this early and extraordinary period in Egypt's history. Egypt in the Age of the Pyramids: Highlights from the Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Expedition, at Cincinnati Art Museum through June 2, features artifacts from the Egyptian collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

        The 125 objects on display were excavated at Giza — the burial ground of Egypt's pharaohs — during the first half of the 20th century and include sculpture, jewelry, metal tools and implements, pottery and stone relief carvings. Together they constitute one of the most comprehensive Old Kingdom collections exhibited outside of Egypt.

        Most exhibitions of Egyptian art seen in American museums have their artifacts displayed in simple, chronological order, with little thought given to any particular object's contextual importance.

        Happily, the CAM resisted taking this easy-but-boring path. It has arranged the artifacts according to specific themes, including “The Pharaoh and the Egyptian Bureaucratic Pyramid”; “The Officialdom of the Old Kingdom Bureaucracy”; and “The Base of the Pyramid — the Lower Classes.”

        Each of these themes emphasizes the critical role of social organization and bureaucracy in creating one of the world's earliest civilizations.
       

"Pyramid Age'

        The Old Kingdom (2675-2130 B.C.) is best known to the general public as the “Pyramid Age” — that very early, formative period in Egyptian history when pharaohs such as Khufu and Menkaure ruled as gods and built monumental tombs for themselves — pyramids — to ensure their smooth passage into the afterlife.

        As a feat of sheer physical engineering, the pyramids (especially the ones at Giza) are impressive indeed, even by the standards of today's technology. But their deeper historical significance lies in the sophisticated organization of human labor, capital and resources that made them possible.

        Building structures of this size took more than a couple of million limestone blocks and technological innovation; it required a sophisticated division of labor, powerful and centralized political authority, a reasonably efficient bureaucracy and a complex but rigid social hierarchy that determined how every person lived, worked and died.
       

An organized society

        The monumental architecture of the Old Kingdom period is, above all else, a feat of social engineering that required the organization of an entire society into, well, a pyramid of sorts. It is this story, of critical importance but seldom well-told in public exhibitions, that forms the conceptual framework for the CAM's Egypt in the Age of the Pyramids.

        The artifacts are exquisite and well-displayed. The lighting is the best I've encountered at an exhibition of archaeological material. The explanatory text panels, charts and maps are interesting to read, and give even the uninitiated viewer a clear sense of the historical importance of this material.

        Over the past decade, the Cincinnati Art Museum has demonstrated time and again its ability to attract and mount exhibitions that are truly world-class, and Egypt in the Age of the Pyramids is no exception.
       

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