The Brooklyn Museum has a large audience of school-age visitors and their accompanying adults. Scavenger hunts have turned out to be an easy and dynamic way to engage them.

Last June, our colleagues in the Education Division invited ASK to participate in the annual “Bring the Cool” Family Festival, a day-long event organized in collaboration with local non-profit Cool Culture. The festival includes art-making activities and creative play for young children and their families, and it’s always a lot of fun, so we were happy to join in.

Since this year’s festival theme was “Color My World,” we put together a scavenger hunt with eight stops around our American Art galleries. We wrote a set of eight simple color-themed clues for eight varied works in the collection, from a Coclé gold disk embossed with a face to a nineteenth-century Brooklyn landscape painting. When users downloaded the app at the hunt’s starting point, we could guide them exclusively through our ASK exchange in either English or Spanish. We invited them to send photos of the works and to share personal answers to related questions.

The kids who tried the scavenger hunt seemed to enjoy it so much that we thought it was something we should try again. Meanwhile, as we moved into the summer and schools let out for vacation, our ASK Ambassadors reported an increasing number of museum visitors asking for “something to do with children” during their visit.  Responding quickly to this seasonal shift in attendance, the ASK team invited younger children to try the American hunt but also started compiling clues for favorite objects around the rest of the Museum.

Attendance was high in “Georgia O’Keeffe: Modern Living” during the summer and the ASK team came up with rhyming clues to interest young visitors in the show.

These family- and child-oriented chats turned out to be really popular. We chatted frequently with young museumgoers in the special exhibitions “Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” and “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Woman 1965-85” as well as the permanent galleries for Ancient Egyptian Art, Decorative Arts, and more.

As the opening date for the fall exhibition “Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt” approached, we were hearing more and more conversation around the Museum about ways to engage families and children with this show. We offered to create a hunt itinerary specifically for “Soulful Creatures,” focusing even more on providing interesting educational facts as follow-ups to the clues.

Several children of staff members took time from a summer afternoon to test an early version of our “Soulful Creatures” hunt in the Egyptian galleries.

Since “Soulful Creatures” wasn’t installed yet, we decided to “beta-test” our script in the permanent Egyptian galleries, with the valuable assistance of several staff members’ children. These young volunteers did a run-through of the hunt and chatted with us afterwards. They gave extremely helpful feedback about the instructions they’d received, the difficulty level of the questions, and the choice and spacing of the objects. They also had some great questions about ASK in general, and we took notes for any future project involving younger visitors.

Each object has a clue as well as facts to share once the user locates it.

When “Soulful Creatures” opened on September 29, we were ready to go. The ASK team had selected ten objects in the show and written a script with two sets of clues, one for beginner readers (about ages 4-7) and one for more advanced learners (ages 8-11), as well as entertaining facts to share about each object once the user had located it. Our ASK Ambassadors were prepared to pitch the hunt to visitors entering the show and to provide assistance with downloads and getting started.

So far, we’ve guided young “mummy-hunters” ranging in age from four through twelve years old, and almost half the hunts have included two or more children together. Some users completed all ten clues, while others (depending on available time or attention span) were satisfied after finding four or five works. Our Visitor Services department is also offering a family packet for this exhibition, so various options are available for kids—we’ve just asked our ASK Ambassadors to pitch the ASK hunt only to families who haven’t already taken advantage of the packet.

We’re often happily surprised when our young users include themselves in their  “I found it!” photos.

Like all our work, this process of shaping and expanding ASK scavenger hunts has been a team project, and it’s turned out to be a team favorite as well as a popular option with visitors. We’ll be thinking about new hunt ideas for the new year as we continue to connect with some of our youngest museum visitors.

We’re able to track this metric through our dashboard, and although visitors can (and do) ask about anything and everything in the Museum’s permanent collections and special exhibitions, certain trends do emerge. One is that “size matters”—simply put, many people are drawn to the largest objects in our galleries. Here are a few works that consistently make our “top ten”!

This cartonnage, which is the inner-most case for a mummified body, was for the priest Nespanetjerenpere.

Cartonnage of Nespanetjerenpere: This beautifully preserved and highly detailed cartonnage has popular appeal because it’s a mummy container, and who doesn’t want to know more about ancient Egyptian mummies? It also benefits from its placement along the main axis of the Egyptian galleries aligned with the entrance.

The Stuart portrait of Washington has greater prominence in the redesign American art galleries than the previous installation.

Gilbert Stuart’s full-length portrait of George Washington, in our American art galleries, offers a familiar face in addition to its imposing size. Visitors are often curious to know whether this is the “real” or “original” portrait of Washington. (in fact, it’s one of about a hundred portraits by Stuart depicting the first President and several in this particular format!). The painting’s many symbolic and historical details make it an ideal subject for ASK chats.

A Little Taste of Outside Love by Mickalene Thomas attracts visitor attention by size and sparkle.

Mickalene Thomas might not be a household name like George Washington, but A Little Taste Outside of Love stops many visitors in their tracks due to its majestic size, bold patterning, and self-possessed model—not to mention the thousands of rhinestones that give sparkle to its surface. And, like Nespanetjerepere and Stuart’s portrait of Washington, it has a prominent placement that pulls visitors closer.

The Bierstadt landscape is a visitor favorite and a collection highlight. Photo by Britteny Najar.

Not every large and asked-about work is a figurative subject. Albert Bierstadt’s A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie is a landscape painting on a grand scale (84 feet square!), and its dramatic lighting effects and finely painted detail make it feel hyper-real. It still seems to have the same awe-inspiring effect on today’s visitors that it did on its original audience in 1866.

We could name a few other examples, especially large works or installations that have their own gallery spaces (from the Assyrian wall reliefs of the Northwest Palace at Nimrud to Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party), but you get the idea!

Of course, having said all this, there are also other reasons that a particular work of art in the galleries may catch the eyes of ASK users. We’ll continue to explore this question in future posts.

Just as a reminder, this photo and the next show the area west of the main roadway just as work was starting. This photograph was taken from atop the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon and looks northwest.

The same area looking southwest from the enclosure wall east of the Precinct entrance. In both photos you can see that we had just completed the first of several mastabas.

This photo and the one that follows were taken at the very end of the season and show the kind of progress that can be made in just a few weeks when expeditions are able to co-operate to achieve common goals. Again, you are looking north from Mut’s 1st Pylon.

The whole area is now much more organized and easy to get around than it was at the beginning of the season. Here is what was accomplished in the last week of work.

The Taharqa ram going onto its new base (left) and in its final position. Now this important sculpture has an appropriate setting and can be seen clearly by visitors.

This long mastaba runs along the south side of the main group of mastabas and has been built to hold blocks from temple walls that cannot be put back in place but demonstrate the scale of work undertaken by the ancient Egyptians with minimal technology. Temperatures at the site neared 100° F for most of the last week, making the work even more difficult. Keeping hydrated is important as Mahmoud and his team know. The final blocks were put in place after we left Luxor.

Three Sakhmet statues found between the ram-sphinxes that stand before the west wing of Mut’s 1st Pylon now rest on new bases.

Building the final mastaba, at the west end of the 1st pylon, was still underway when we left the site. When complete and dry, it will hold several fragmentary Sakhmet statues and the beautiful and well-preserved head one of the ram-sphinxes that line this wing of the pylon. It was found by SCA excavators some years ago; unfortunately the sculpture from which it came is too badly deteriorated to allow the head to be put back in its original position.

We also finished the restoration of the west wing of the gate in the Mut Temple’s 2nd Pylon. This started as a small project to put two inscribed blocks back in their original position, but the rest of the blocks of this part of the gate were in such poor condition that we ended up consolidating and restoring the whole north end of the structure.

Excavation and restoration are only part of the Expedition’s work. We are also preparing to publish the Ptolemaic religious texts on the gateway in the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon. To do so, we need good photographs of the inscriptions and reliefs. Sometimes the Egyptian sun provides perfect lighting, as on the reliefs in the background. Other reliefs, though, need reflected light to bring them out. On one of the last days at the site, Jaap and Mary used a large mirror to try to get just the right light on the inscriptions on the north face of the pylon’s west wing.

The area just outside the site has become a dumping ground for all sorts of trash. One of our last tasks this season was to arrange to have this trash removed early one morning.

This grove of palm trees is just above the southeast corner of the sacred lake, and is where the pottery is sorted and photographed. It is the only shady area in the whole 22-acre site.

And finally, one last bird shot: a flock of stilts wheeling over Mut’s Sacred Lake. It is hard to leave a place that has such beauty.

By mid week, Ayman was turning up some of the clearest and most beautifully laid bricks we have ever encountered. Even when first uncovered, two distinct parallel walls that occupy the full width of the square are clearly visible, with two shorter stubs of brick running off the southern wall. The block of stone between the rows is a door socket, but it seems to be displaced.

Ayman’s square at the end of the work, seen from the southwest. The two shorter walls were later additions built on dirt that had accumulated against the southern wall; they were removed. In the center of the square is a shallow, irregularly shaped pit that was filled with ash and pottery, mostly Ptolemaic. Unfortunately, we found no trace of sphinx bases.

We extended Abdel Aziz’s square to the south to try to find the south face of the theoretical wall/pylon, and to the west to confirm that we do actually have the west face. The west face is real, but on the south the brick continued into the baulk, although it is broken by a later baked brick feature (a well?). The pottery associated with the well (?) is Ptolemaic.

Before we back-filled the squares, they had to be mapped, and that is what I spent much of this week doing. It is very finicky work, particularly when dealing with mud brick. Since a heat wave hit Luxor this week, it was also very hot work.

Once each square was mapped, we laid down plastic matting over the excavated surfaces then began back-filling the squares. Back-filling protects the features from erosion, and the plastic matting will let the next team to excavate here know when they have reached the limits of our work.

On Sunday the two blocks from the north face of Mut’s second pylon were put back into position, a delicate task as the blocks are different heights and neither has a flat lower surface. On the left, Jaap and the masons make sure the alignment is right as the eastern block is lowered into position. By the end of the week both blocks were in place and secure. All that remains now is to cover the new base with a coating tinted to blend in with the ancient stone.

We are building up the inner face of the enclosure wall west of the Propylon to keep brick debris from falling down onto the area below. The construction is of mud brick on top of baked brick, mimicking the ancient construction. On the left, the bricklayer studies the wall before he begins work as he will build it with the same batter as the face of the propylon. By mid-week he was almost finished (right).

To get the bricks from the spot where they were delivered to the building sites, a procession of pairs of men carry baskets containing 3 or 4 bricks. This season’s work consumed over 4,000 baked bricks, which is a lot to move!

The first of the Chapel D ceiling blocks went up on its mastaba early in the week. While not as large as the huge block moved last week (the siba can handle it), it is still a sizable piece of stone that must be handled with care.

The ceiling blocks in their new home, with Chapel D behind them. The blocks on the mastaba in front of them are also from Chapel D.

By the end of work on Thursday we were almost finished building the mastabas. The ones that will hold the Taharqa ram (center) and a group of decorated blocks just inside the precinct entrance (right) received their finishing coats today. We will spend the rest of our time here getting the various sculptures, reliefs and decorated blocks onto their new bases. Preservation is an important component of any archaeological work.

I realized when I typed the last caption that you may not know what the “Taharqa ram” is or its significance. In 1979, at the north end of the Mut Temple’s East Porch we found the head of a ram with a king below its chin (left), along with fragments of the king’s body. The ram’s body was found nearby but had deteriorated to a shapeless mass of granite. Richard dated the head stylistically to the reign of Taharqa. In 2001, at the north end of the West Porch, we found the body (but not the head) of a second ram with the names of Taharqa on its base, thus confirming the dating of the head found in 1979. These two sculptures are among the very few rams of Taharqa found in Egypt. The ram’s head was taken to Cairo for the Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

The new paving has acquired another graffito, probably by the same artist. This time he has chosen to show a queen or goddess, carved with the same skill as the first graffito.

When she takes a break from pottery, Julia photographs the birds that feed in the sacred lake. She took this superb picture of a kingfisher poised to dive on Thursday.

Jaap’s wife, Egyptologist Julia Harvey, arrived on February 15, completing this season’s small team. Julia has agreed to take on the pottery, with which she has considerable experience. She already has the first batches sorted and organized.

We finished work on the paving west of the Taharqa Gate early in the week and Mary got up on a ladder to photograph the results. As expected, some of the newly-exposed stone was badly decayed, but enough survives to show the course of the roadway.

Abdel Aziz’s square north of the Ramesses III temple is no longer boring. After about 1.2 m of clean earth, we began to encounter mud brick. By the end of the week, aside from a few shallow pits with stone, mud brick covered almost the whole square and we had found a line of baked brick along the west side. We are fairly certain that what we have now are the foundations either of the temple’s north enclosure wall or perhaps its pylon. Ramesses’ temple stood within its own mud-brick enclosure (remember, it was outside the precinct until the 4^th century BC), of which only the west and south walls survive. The eastern wall seems to have been completely eaten away by centuries of flooding.

With the Taharqa Gate finished, we opened a new square north of Abdel Aziz to continue our search for sphinx bases. Ayman has encountered the same thick layer of wind-blown earth over broken stone. By the end of the week he was about 90 cm below the modern surface. At least some of the stone in this square seems to be larger and in better condition than in Abdel Aziz’s square.

Several years ago we rebuilt the west wing of the Mut Temple’s mud brick 2^nd Pylon to a height of about 3 m to give visitors some idea of its appearance. Of the pylon’s sandstone gateway very little is left, as you can see. We have determined, however, that the two remaining inscribed blocks actually join, the lower one fitting to the left of the upper, although both are somewhat out of position now. We decided this season to put these two blocks back in place and started work on Tuesday.

Once the two blocks were removed we had to clean up the accumulated dirt, plant remains and deteriorated stone behind them (left). By the end of work Wednesday the debris had been removed, a new support for the blocks was well underway, the new construction conforming to the shape of the remaining ancient blocks. The 2 main pieces of the larger block are ready to be re-joined (right), with stainless steel rods ensuring that the join is secure.

Once the mastaba we built last week was dry, we began moving decorated blocks onto it. Some were relatively easy: large, but able to be moved by a few men using a wooden stretcher and stout straps. Hassan supervises the careful placement of such a block.

The beautifully carved block in the center of this picture was another matter entirely. Not only is it huge, but its lower surface has been both cut away and worn by time, making it difficult to balance. While it could be moved to the edge of the mastaba with a combination of siba (tripod and winch) and levers, it was too heavy for the siba to raise it to the top of the mastaba.

On Thursday morning Mahmoud Farouk, foreman of the work at Karnak (center) and an expert at moving large blocks, used a hydraulic jack, levers and baulks of wood to raise the block gradually to the level of the mastaba.

Once the block was on the mastaba, the siba came back into use to support the block so the wood could be removed and the block gradually tipped into position. This took all morning.

By noon the block was in its final position it’s shallowest end supported by a block of sandstone. Hassan, Mahmoud and the crew are justly proud of the work!

We have also built a second mastaba to hold the several inscribed and decorated ceiling blocks from Chapel D, like this one,  that cannot be put back in place as not enough is left of the chapel (visible in the background). This will not only protect them from water infiltration but will also improve the appearance of the approach to the chapel and the Taharqa Gate.

In the meantime, I have found time to start work in the Montuemhat Crypt, comparing Charles Edwin Wilbour’s corrections to Mariette’s copy of the texts  with what is still on the walls. A small mirror is essential to direct light on shadowed areas of the wall. From what I have seen so far, many of Wilbour’s corrections are accurate.

Adding graffiti to temples is an ancient tradition that seems to be continuing today. The new paving in the gateway of the Mut Temple’s 1^st pylon is only a few months old and already it has acquired its first graffito. The figure has a cobra on its forehead and what looks like a crudely carved beak (Horus?). It wears an elaborate crown with sun disk and a very fancy robe with checkered shoulder straps and diagonal lines on the sleeves. Pity the artist wasn’t more talented.

Jaap took this terrific photograph of two small lizards locked in combat.

And Julia contributed this photograph of a crow diving after a kite. Life is never dull at Mut!

According to the late French scholar, Agnes Cabrol, these 3 badly damaged sphinxes sitting east of Chapel D date stylistically to the reign of Ramesses III and probably had originally been part of a sphinx avenue leading north from that king’s temple at the southwest corner of the Isheru. We decided to test that theory this year.

On Monday we opened a square north of the Ramesses III temple, where we hope to find remains of sphinx bases. Abdel Aziz is supervising the work.

Jaap van Dijk, who arrived on Friday, discusses the new square with Farouk and Hassan. Welcome back, Jaap! As you can see, Abdel Aziz found sandstone almost immediately below the surface. The roll of white material you see on the right is the geo-textile laid down by the ARCE team to inhibit reed growth. When we have finished work here we will back-fill the excavation and put the material back in place.

To our regret, Monday’s stone proved to be nothing but a shallow layer of badly decayed broken blocks, possibly dumped here by French archaeologist Maurice Pillet, who excavated the Ramesses III temple in the 1920s. Aside from one remaining cluster of stone, the square has produced nothing but clean dirt. If we don’t find anything of interest in a day or so, we’ll close this square and open another to its north.

Ayman is almost finished excavating his area west of the Taharqa Gate. All the gaps in the mud brick are the result of pitting. He should be down to the Dynasty 25 paving of the approach to the gate by Saturday. Once he finishes here, we’ll start another square further to the west to see if we can trace the paving further.

As part of the preparations to open the site to visitors, we will be helping the ARCE team relocate several blocks of temple decoration. This week we started building a new mastaba (Arabic for “bench”) on which to store the blocks. The mastabas are of baked brick with an impermeable layer between courses to prevent water infiltration. The final step is a finishing layer of cement. The work goes quickly with many willing hands.

To build our second mastaba we had to move a large block several meters. Some stout beams, a few metal rollers and a lot of hard work and the task was accomplished.

We’re also clearing out an accumulation of broken stone just inside the precinct entrance. Since the stones are relatively small we use a sturdy cart that allows several to be moved at once. The work still requires a lot of effort, but more stones can be moved in fairly short order.

These brightly colored birds are a delight to watch as they snatch insects from the air. The underside of their wings is a coppery brown, so that when they fly you see flashes of green and copper.

Can you spot the bee-catcher? Despite its brilliant green plumage, this small bird (on the lower wire) can be very hard to make out against the foliage.

After a hard day’s work in the sun and dust, it is very restful to look out over the Nile at sunset.

In February 2012 the American Research Center in Egypt, with funding from USAID and in co-operation with the Ministry of State for Antiquities, began a project to prepare the Mut Precinct to open to visitors. They are not excavating but rather attempting to control the rampant growth of grasses and reeds at the site and making cosmetic improvements that will make the precinct more accessible to visitors. Under the direction of John Shearman, ARCE’s Associate Director in Luxor, there has been considerable progress.

As always, the view from the plane on the trip from Cairo to Luxor was spectacular. This year we flew down the west side of the Nile, over rugged and desolate mountains.

First, I’d like to introduce you to the Egyptian colleagues with whom we’ll be working this season. Our MSA inspector this year is Hassan El-Tawab. He and I took a tour of the site on Thursday. Once again, our foreman is Farouk Sharid Mohamed, a friend and colleague of more than 30 years.

Farouk’s two sons Ayman (left) and Abdel Aziz will be the Quftis working with us in 2013. They, too, have many years of experience excavating at Mut and other sites and are a delight to work with.

Expeditions at the Mut Precinct have always worked together whenever possible. When the ARCE team asked if we could excavate part of the mound of earth east of the gate in the Mut Temple’s first court (left) so that they could remove a number of large, undecorated blocks from the court, we were glad to oblige. We are hoping to find more of the paving that links the first court to the chapel on the rise of ground to the east.

One of the things we want to do this year (a small project) is clear the remaining earth in the square west of the Taharqa Gate where we uncovered paving in 2010. First, though, we need to remove the loose earth along the west baulk to prevent an unwary walker from falling.

Now to the changes the ARCE has made. To make it easier to get into the site and and into the Mut Temple they have been laying new paving along the precinct’s main axis. What remains of the ancient paving of the approach to the Mut Temple was badly deteriorated so it was carefully covered with protective material and the new paving laid on a bed of clean sand. Where the paving is in better condition, new blocks are laid around the ancient stones. The new signs for the temple are Egyptian alabaster etched with the images and temple name.

On the left is the road between the precinct entrance and the Mut Temple as it was in January 2011; on the right, the same area today. Quite a difference.

The first court (left) and second court have been leveled and laid with fine gravel so people can get to the Sakhmet statues. The new paving continues through the second court to the entrance to the rear part of the temple (foreground).

One of the project’s biggest challenges has been to control the growth of reeds around Mut’s Sacred Lake without the use of herbicides. In 2008-2009 the lake was drained so that the Johns Hopkins University expedition, directed by Dr. Betsy Bryan, could excavate along its shores. Once the lake was allowed to refill, the reeds grew back almost as thickly as ever; the photo on the left was taken in January 2011. The method ARCE has used seems to be working (right) without making the Isheru inhospitable to the many types of birds who feed there. In the background on the right is the pathway the ARCE team has built around the lake to allow visitors to enjoy its beauty.

To make it easier to get to the pathway on the east side of the Mut Temple (still under construction), the ARCE team has built shallow stairs leading south from the junction of Mut’s First Pylon (right) and Temple A (left). We appreciate the stairs, too, as we are doing some work in this area. All in all, navigating the site’s monuments is much less of a challenge than it was before.

Mummy Mask of a Man Consisting of the Face Only. Plaster, Lips: 1 1/8 x 4 1/4 x 4 3/4 in. (2.9 x 10.8 x 12 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 48.183a-d.

Such masks appear to have been created by coating the linen wrappings on the head of a mummy with plaster. So, while it’s not a “death mask” in the modern Western sense of the term, it was meant to portray the deceased. Only a few such plaster masks are known, and most of them date to the Old Kingdom (circa 2675–2170 B.C.E.). Very soon after, plaster masks went out of fashion, and were replaced by more elaborate and durable masks or head coverings made of wood, cartonnage and other materials.

This mask was excavated in tomb G 6104A in Giza, Egypt, by the Harvard-Boston expedition. In 1948 the fragile mask arrived to the Brooklyn Museum in four crumbling pieces. In this state, the fragments did not appear to amount to much of an image, and were carefully placed in our storerooms. But, with the wonderful work of our conservators, who put the pieces back together, the mask revealed a delicate face.

We discussed the best way to display this wonderful object. Although we have a pretty good idea of the original appearance of the mask, we simply could not know what the missing pieces were like. For this reason, we did not to fill in any of the losses. This meant that a hole in the middle of the mask would be very apparent and the color and kind of fabric for the backing had to be chosen. After some discussion, we finally decided on a fabric resembling the appearance of mummy wrappings—a neutral beige linen.

Kerith Koss was responsible for conserving the mask and creating its mount so that it could be properly displayed. The task of arranging and holding the fragments correctly required elaborate treatment. She told me about the work:

Pause Play Play Prev | Next

The result is fantastic! Come and see the beautiful face made over 4000 years ago—it’s on display now.

Figurine of Woman, ca. 3650 B.C.E. - 3300 B.C.E. Terracotta, painted, 8 3/4 x 1 9/16 x 2 in. (22.2 x 3.9 x 5.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 07.447.501.

Like our “Bird Lady,” the “Female Figure with Stump Arms” was also made five and a half thousand years ago, and comes from a nearby tomb in Ma’mariya. Although this female figure is missing her head, she is just as delicate and charming as the better known “Bird Lady.” You may notice that her arms are stubbed rather than upraised. She’s an example of another type of figurine from the site of Ma’mariya that have these particular abbreviated “stub-arms.”

You’ll find her in our Egypt Reborn galleries in May, and she will remain on view with her more complete partner, the “Bird Lady,” when she returns from her venture across the river in August.