SERAMON. THE ENIGMA OF THE MUMMY

Ancient Egypt has always aroused great interest, the splendour of this civilisation has always fascinated us and its mysteries have made generations of travellers, writers, artists and museum visitors dream.

The exhibition focuses on the enigmas of Egyptian civilisation, and its subject matter, spectacular staging and interactivity will appeal to the general public. In a general context of Egyptomania and the attraction for stories about forensic scientific investigations [CSI, etc.], the exhibition is conceived as a detective story: through archaeological pieces that constitute a corpus of research and using the latest technologies, the story of its protagonists is reconstructed.

The exhibition is made up of some 260, mostly sculptures and bas-reliefs of powerful impact, from Ancient Egypt from the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Besançon, to which will be added pieces from the Louvre Museum, the National Library of France, the Granet Museum in Aix-en Provence and the Picerdie Museum in Amiens. The exhibition will occupy the three halls of the temporary exhibition area of the MARQ, as well as their respective corridors.

The exhibition presents magnificent pieces, all original and of enormous archaeological value.
The star pieces around which the contents of the exhibition revolve are two complete mummies of the priests Seramon and Ankhpakhered together with their magnificent sarcophagi.

The exhibition, curated by Agathe Legros, curator of Heritage and head of the Archaeological Collections at the MBAAB, also has a scientific committee of great coherence and scientific solvency, made up of the following members: Françoise Dunand, professor emeritus of History of Religions at Marc Bloth University in Strasbourg, Annie Gasse, researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research [CNRS] and specialist in Egypt, and Samuel Mérigeaud, medical radiologist and great enthusiast of ancient Egypt.

Through an analysis of the exhibits, it answers the big questions we ask ourselves today about ancient Egypt: why did they mummify their dead, what rituals were performed during the burials, how did they think they would reach the afterlife, what would they find in the next world, what was the meaning of the amulets that accompanied them, and what was the meaning of the amulets that accompanied them?