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Ancient Egypt Magazine

Issue Five - January / February 2001

Future Moves: The Egyptian Museum, Berlin

In the ten years since the re-unification of Berlin, the Egyptian Museum, divided in two by WWII, has been coping with the difficulties of administrative and general reunion, and now removal to another site. This has created the potential for an unique approach to ancient history. Kay Bellinger interviewed Prof. Dr Dietrich Wildung-Schoske, Director of the Egyptian Museum, exclusively for Ancient Egypt magazine (with thanks to Dr Rosalie David). Dr Wildung describes his future vision in his own words.

There have been a number of improvisatory changes in the Egyptian Museum during the 10 years since the reunification of Berlin. Before the reunification of Germany we had two Egyptian Museums, one in the former East and one in the former West. As the result of integrating all the Museum objects, not only the Egyptian, but the other artefacts in general, have to be reviewed and redisplayed.

At the beginning of WWII, all the objects in the museum were taken away from Berlin for safety. In 1945 a number of these objects were taken by the Red Army and ended up in Moscow and England. The other part was taken by British and American troops to Celle in the north of Germany, and also to Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. When these pieces returned to Berlin in the fifties, the city was already divided into the Soviet sector and the three west sectors of Berlin. Therefore, everything coming back from the Soviet Union found its place in the East part, and all the other pieces returning from Celle and Wiesbaden were placed in the West part of Berlin, where practically no museum buildings existed. All the museums were concentrated before the war in Berlin Mitte (central).

After WWII, different places in West Berlin were transformed into museums. This building here, for instance, was built in 1860 as barracks for the Royal Lifeguard of the Prussian kings, when they stayed over there in Charlottenburg Castle. This place was inaugurated as the West Berlin part of the former Egyptian Museum in 1967. At the same time, there was an East Berlin Egyptian Museum foundation already in the late fifties in the Bode Museum on Museum Island. Officially we had no contact between these two halves of one and the same institution, but on a private basis, for many years, until Berlin was reunited we had very good contacts with our colleagues in the other part of Berlin. Therefore, we were able to check which pieces were in the West and which were in the East, and which were lost during the war. Starting in 1991, the museums in the East and West parts of Berlin were amalgamated under one organisation, the Foundation of Prussian Culture.

Nevertheless, administrative unifi­cation did not mean that we could really reunite the two parts in one building. This is still in the planning process and we start the reconstruction of the former Egyptian Museum (the Bode Museum) next year. The project and the plans, by the way, are by the British Architect David Chipperfield of London who is doing this big project for us, and we will start the reconstruction of the Museum ruin in 2001. We hope to close our location here in Charlottenburg after five or six years, and then we will return to the historic building with a new concept, for we don’t want to reconstruct the past, and do everything as it was 60 years ago. We are planning an integrated museum of ancient civilisations, including prehistory, the ancient near east, Egypt, classical antiquity, early Christian and Islamic art in one museum complex, on the so-called Museum Island.

The independence of the different institutions, Egypt, ancient near East and so on will be kept. However, our plan for the future museum is to create quite a number of areas, where for instance portraiture will be illustrated by all the participating institutions, going through from ancient Egypt and the ancient near east to early Christian times, and even with a few pieces through medieval times down to the 19th century and contemporary art. It is intended to try to avoid the separation of this particular museum complex into particular sectors. If you take, for instance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre or the British Museum you have clearly divided sections – Egypt ends here and this is where the Middle East begins. Why don’t we mix them?  Why don’t we illustrate the influences between all these civilisations? This is one of the great chances for a new start here in Berlin to create something new and to respond to the expectations of our visitors.

Most of our visitors nowadays have no idea what we mean by ancient Egypt. Where is it? What is the time line? I remember quite well a few years ago in Toronto I gave a lecture about ancient Sudan.  We had an exhibition project there, and after the lecture one lady came to me and said “oh, it was wonderful, but where is this Sudan?” I said “South of Egypt”. “Ah, interesting, but where is Egypt?” And this was a fresh insight for me. I realised people are not so much interested in the historic development of the first dynasty downwards; they are more interested in normal questions, in normal experiences, and they would like to compare their own experiences, their own lives, with what happened 3000 or 4000 or 5000 years ago.

We will also create a museum for the wider public that is not especially interested in Egypt or Mesopotamia. This division between a main tour for large groups of visitors on the one hand and special collections for the individual visitor who is interested in something very specific, is, I think a very important thing for such a big museum. In Charlottenburg we normally have 1000 to 3000 visitors a day. It is small compared to the Pergamon Museum, which has 4000 to 6000 visitors a day: some them can only stay 15 or 20 minutes.

Our people here, our visitors, come mainly to see just one object which is the bust of Nefertiti, but walking through the galleries they should see some of the other important objects, and make the connection that Egypt is more than the painted bust of Nefertiti. When they leave I am deeply convinced they have no idea if the pieces they have seen are 200 or 2000 or 4000 years old, but what they keep in mind is it was wonderful and they should come again.  It is a very important point.  We are not a highly specialised small museum, we are a major international museum, partic­ularly for tourists who want to see the three highlights of Berlin: the Brand­enberg gate, the Castle of Sansoucci and Nefertiti. Of course, these are paramount and I think that is a good thing.

This gateway belonged to a temple which originally stood 40 km south of Aswan which was discovered only 40 years ago during the so-called Nubian campaign when the Temple of Kala­bsha was dismantled and rebuilt by a German expedition to save it from the waters of the new lake. After this the German archaeologists found by chance, in the foundations of the temple, these blocks, which had been re-used. Eventually they realised that they all belonged to one monumental gate built at the time of Emperor Augustus in the last years of the 1st Century BC. It was destroyed shortly after, even before the gate was finished, and re-used in the foundations of the succeeding building, built also under Augustus. The construction and dest­ruction of the gate happened within a few years. The 17 blocks were given to the Federal Republic of Germany as a gift by the Egyptian Government as a sign of gratitude for the German contribution to the Nubian Campaign.

At the same time the Netherlands had the Temple of Taffa, now exhibited in Leiden, New York got the Temple of Dendur now exhibited in Pittsburgh Museum of Art, Italy had the Temple now in Turin and Spain also received a temple now in Madrid.

The gateway will be moved to the Museum Island in 6 or 7 years to be part of the monumental architecture museum called Pergamon Museum. So we will have in the future, on the same island, monumental architecture from Egypt and elsewhere. This island will become a quite exceptional showplace of antiquity; I cannot mention all the fantastic architectural pieces available. Charlottenburg will be closed and used after we have left for a new venture -  a museum of photography, starting in 2006 or 2007.

We would even consider under certain circumstances the return of objects to their place of origin. If, for instance, we have fragments taken 100, 150 years ago from one of the Royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings which has left a  big hole in the wall it makes sense to return the fragment one day. Of course, the conditions have to be right – security, climate and so on.

Also moving to the Museum Island, is a part of the open courtyard of a pyramid temple originally in Abusir south of Giza, excavated by Ludwig Borchardt at the beginning of the 20th century. Half of the columns were obtained for the museum from France, and since then these columns, monolithic columns, 8 tons of red granite each, have waited for reconstruction here in Berlin for almost a century. Now we have the final plan to integrate this column hall together with the Kalabsha Gate in the new wing of the Pergamon Museum. The planning process is almost finished, and we will move these columns in about 6 or 7 years to the Museum Island. For the moment we use this room as an exhibition hall for sarcophagi and for coffins, for mummy portraits, for everything in fact about the afterlife and eternity. It is a tiny part of what is available in the stores. We have an enormous publishing project ahead of us.

The sections presenting Egyptian religion and civilisation will cover 20% to 30% of the future Egyptian Museum. This is just a rough outline of the future. On Museum Island after the renovation of the building we will gain about 5000 metres. It is not as big as, for instance, New York or the British Museum, but I think that the integrated concept, combining all the different archae­ological museums, as I explained at the beginning is something quite imp­ortant.

To contact the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, write to:

Prof. Dr. Dietrich Wildung-Schoske,

Agypten Museums und der Papyrullg Staathich Museen zu Berlin

SchlossStrasse 70

D-14059

Berlin

Germany

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