Loca Antiqua

Procession of Objects from the Tomb to the House, evening of March 19, 1920
Harry Burton (English, 1879–1940)

“Among the most famous pieces in the Metropolitan’s collection of Egyptian art are the wooden models found in a small hidden room in the tomb of a Middle Kingdom official named Meketre (died ca. 1985 B.C.). Because the ceiling threatened to collapse, the chamber containing the models was cleared in three days, with Burton taking and developing several dozen photographs of the process. At the end of each day, the models were carried from the tomb to the excavation house along essentially the same route that had been taken by Meketre’s funeral procession nearly forty centuries earlier.”