"Egyptian Mummies: Legend of Eternal Life" International Special Exhibition

The National Museum of History and Media Sphere Communications jointly present the annual major exhibition "Egyptian Mummies: Legend of Eternal Life." This exhibition gathers genuine mummies and exquisite funerary artifacts, from painted coffins and amulets to stelae engraved with prayer inscriptions, fully decoding for visitors the ancient Egyptians' beliefs and wisdom in pursuing eternal life.

In ancient Egyptian thought, death was not an end but a transitional period for the transformation of life. Preserving the body was to allow the soul to return; funerary rituals were not a celebration of death but a preservation of life for the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians prepared everything the deceased needed for the next world, perfectly interweaving the technical knowledge and mythological imagination of their time.

The exhibition follows the ancient Egyptian concept of the "afterlife," from embalming practices to the "weighing of the heart" judgment before the god of the underworld, recreating ancient Egypt's complex and meticulous funerary customs. The artifacts in this exhibition come from a major European center for Egyptian artifacts—the National Archaeological Museum of Florence (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze) in Italy, including precious collections gathered by the "Franco-Tuscan Egyptian Expedition" led in the 19th century by the French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs. In addition to genuine mummies, the site displays over a hundred artifacts filled with protective magic: canopic jars for preserving internal organs, funerary deities representing the Four Sons of Horus, funerary nets covering the body, and heart scarabs guiding the deceased through judgment. These artifacts showcase the exquisite craftsmanship of the ancient Egyptians and embody their real traces in resisting time and pursuing eternity, unveiling the eternal-life legend of ancient Egyptian civilization.