By Laura Rosser
In just a couple weeks, crossing the Nile into Ancient Egypt won’t be very difficult at all for North Olympic Peninsula residents. In fact, you can take a ferry.
The Royal BC Museum in Victoria will host “Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from The British Museum” from July 10 to Oct. 31.
This collection is the most costly exhibit the museum has ever hosted, according to Pauline Rafferty, chief executive officer of the museum. It spans 3,000 years of Egyptian culture.
The walls of the gallery where the exhibit will be housed had to be specially re-inforced to hold the weight of the sculptures — some of which weigh as much as 4,000 pounds. The statue of the head of Amenhotep III (the grandfather of King Tutankhamun) weighs more than 2,000 pounds.
Rafferty said this exhibit, a portion of the exhibit from the British Museum in London, England, is considered the best exhibit of Egyptian culture outside of Cairo.
The collection includes 144 artifacts ranging from mummies, gold masks and stone carvings.