It's the spring event. Dedicated to Pharaoh Ramses II and his relatives - his royal wives, Nefertari and Iset-Nofret, and some of his 110 children, starting with the high priest Khâemouaset and the monarch Merenptah -, the Egyptological exhibition currently the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris covers a very broad period. It thus embraces more than a dozen dynasties!
If the specialists of antiquity will be able to regret the anachronism that there is to present almost side by side objects having belonged to contemporaries of Sesostris II (born in 1897 and died in 1878 before the Christian era) and to the pharaoh Chéchong II (having lived a thousand years later, from -934 to -887), less erudite visitors will not notice the leaps in time that are made when passing from one window to another. The artifacts on display are, it is true, awe-inspiring. The beauty of the archaeological pieces on display is matched only by the impressive durability of Egyptian civilization.
*"Ramses and the gold of the pharaohs", at the Grande Halle de la Villette until September 6.
