Frist exhibit unmasks Ancient Egypt

With its massive pyramids, miraculously preserved mummies and mysterious hieroglyphs, ancient Egypt holds a special place in the popular imagination, a distant land where crocodiles prowled the banks of the Nile, people routinely practiced the art of embalming the dead, and pharaohs were immortalized with monumental structures that rival anything from our own era.

This abiding appeal dates back even to the ancient Greeks, says Susan Edwards, executive director of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, and today it still captures the public's attention.

Frist exhibit unmasks Ancient Egypt > Ancient Egyptian history is astonishing in its depth, with more than 30 successive royal dynasties. To help organize the sequence of events, scholars have divided the country's history into a dozen different periods, beginning with the Predynastic Period circa 5300 B.C.. The Frist exhibit picks up in the year 1550 B.C., with the beginning of the New Kingdom, and runs through the Late Period, just prior to the rule of Alexander the Great.