CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/11/2018

An eerie time machine: Unearthing Ancient Nubia

Featured photograph, made by Egyptian photographer Mohammedani Ibrahim Ibrahim on April 19, 1918, is reproduced from Unearthing Ancient Nubia, new from MFA Publications. This fascinating volume collects forty years worth of early twentieth-century photographs documenting a Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts archeological expedition in northern Sudan. The caption notes, "The royal mummies at Nuri were encased in nested sets of wooden coffins. These three pairs of inlay eyes (with eyelids of bronze, eyeballs of Egyptian alabaster and pupils of obsidian) are all that remain of the three coffins of Queen Malakaye (r. 664-653 BC). The eyes on the bottom row have been placed upside down."