CT Culture Corner: Yale debuts ancient Egyptian papyrus

Imagine the thrill of a Brown University doctoral student in ancient Egyptian language making a new discovery in the bowels of the Brooklyn Museum. 

That's what happened to  Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, now an assistant professor of Egyptology at Yale University, when she encountered the oldest set of papyri — documents written on papyrus — housed in North America. 

“The curator opened a drawer and showed me a box full of tiny papyri from the third millennium BCE. I got so excited — then he showed me another 14 boxes. They had never been written about or been on display,†she said, via a news release. “They were in storage and forgotten.â€Â 

A first-time display of those papyri, found in Elephantine, Egypt, debuted at the Yale Peabody Museum in May, featuring rarely seen objects on loan from the Brooklyn Museum, outlines the transition from images to writing, highlights the research of Yale Egyptology faculty in Egypt, and offers insights into the lives of scribes, according to the release.

“ ‘Unfolding History’ not only gives the public and scholars a chance to see these rare documents that illuminate ancient Egyptian life, but it highlights the ways research actually works: building on existing knowledge and looking carefully at source materials, often in a new way,†said Kailen Rogers, associate director, exhibitions, in a news release.

Made from a freshwater sedge found in the Egyptian Nile valley, papyrus was used as a writing surface as early as 3000 B.C., according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Of course, the Egyptians did not invent writing. That would be the ancient Sumerians, who developed cuneiform about 5,000 years ago, the Met reports. Cuneiform was script in which the world's oldest surviving literary work, “The Epic of Gilgamesh,â€Â was written, according to Yale. The work asks the nagging question: Why do we have to die?

Precisely what those odd cuneiform tablets said was a mystery for centuries until the code was cracked by a working-class Briton named George Smith. By studying the tablets at the British Museum, Smith, whose formal education stopped at 14, was able to crack the code, according to Smithsonian.

You can see many of those cuneiform tablets and seals at the Yale Babylonian Collection at the Sterling Memorial Library.

The Peabody Museum was established in 1876 by the international financier George Peabody at the urging of his nephew. What was his name? 

You may not know the Swiss-born designer Herbert Matter (1907–1984), but you've certainly seen his designs, which include the New Haven Railroad logo. OctoberWorks has just published a limited edition of “Herbert Matter: Artist Magicianâ€Â by Bethany author John T. Hill.

The book examines the talents of Matter, “whose multidisciplinary practice moved fluidly across graphic design, photography, filmmaking, and fine art,†according to a press release. “More than a conventional monograph, it serves as both a deeply personal and historically significant record,†according to the release. 

Hill, a long-time professor of photography at Yale, spent 19 years as executor of the Walker Evans Estate. He produced many of Evans's books and exhibitions. Among the 20 books he has authored are those on Connecticut resident Alexander Calder, photographer Edward Weston and artist and designer Norman Ives. He co-founded Yale's Department of Photography and was then its first director of Graduate Studies, according to the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Matter trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and with Fernand Léger at the Académie Moderne in Paris, where worked with Cassandre, Le Corbusier and Deberny & Peignot, according to Print magazine. In addition to his work at Yale, where he was professor of photography, he served as a  design consultant to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Guggenheim in New York, according to Print. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 1980.

Othniel Charles (O.C.) Marsh encouraged his wealthy uncle to establish the Peabody. The famous “bone collector†or paleontologist, discovered, described and classified many fossils, including well-known dinosaurs Stegosaurus and Triceratops, according to Harvard University. March was America's first professor of paleontology, according to Connecticut History.