2col Painted Dyad Thumb

Late Dynasty 18, painted Dyad, limestone, pigment, 1352–1292 BCE, courtesy of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London.

SOUTH HADLEY, MASS. — It’s an exhibition with all the trappings of a historical novel. The dogged archaeologist. The lady adventurer. A dazzling collection of clues to a lost age.

On view through July 22 at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, “Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology” traces the development of Egyptian archaeology from its beginnings in the 1880s to the present day through artwork and rare archival materials amassed by the Petrie Museum and its namesake.

While touring Egypt in the late Nineteenth Century, the popular writer Amelia Edwards (1831–1891) was horrified by the neglect and damage she observed at ancient Egyptian monuments and archaeological sites. Upon returning to her native England, Edwards founded the Egypt Exploration Fund to promote more carefully managed excavations.

Enter Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), renowned for his scientific techniques, extensive experience, and scholarly work in the field of Egyptian archaeology. Petrie was among the first to map his sites in systematic fashion, documenting the exact location of toys, papri, utensils, furniture, and the masses of pottery that Petrie recognized as being able to speak in places where the written record went silent.

On view in the exhibition are more than 220 of Petrie’s most important objects from sites in the Nile River valley, including one of the world’s earliest surviving dresses, circa 2400 BCE, royal art from the palace-city of the “heretic pharaoh” Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, a gold mummy mask, jewelry, stone sculpture, and objects of daily life ranging from copper tweezers to a ceramic rat trap.

Mount Holyoke will be the only New England venue for “Excavating Egypt,” which was organized by the Carlos Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog.

Thanks to preexisting ties to Amelia Edwards and her Egypt Exploration Fund, the college’s museum has in its permanent collection a number of Petrie-derived antiquities. Like other college museums with a subscription to the fund in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, Mount Holyoke received numerous objects (with the approval of Egyptian authorities) from excavations by Petrie and his associates.

Through the fund and through gifts from another subscription, Mount Holyoke acquired approximately 150 small objects, including jewelry, pottery, funerary figurines, and other items. A selection of these has now been organized into a special companion show to “Excavating Egypt.”

The museum is on Lower Lake Road. For information, www.mtholyoke.edu/go/artmuseum or 413-538-2245.