Photo Bryan R. Smith
Mosaics, paintings, jewelry, ceramics, manuscripts from the 4th to the 15th century: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is exhibiting 200 ancient and medieval works that bear witness to a thousand years of influence of the Byzantine Empire on the Christian communities of Egypt, Tunisia and Ethiopia.
One of the richest museums in the world, the museum has brought together gems from collections from Africa, Asia and Europe for an exhibition entitled “Africa and Byzantium”, from Sunday to next March.
The Met this week presented a preview to a few journalists of its partners, the Egyptian and Tunisian governments and the oldest Coptic Orthodox monastery in the world, Saint Catherine of Sinai in Egypt.
Bringing together artistic, religious, literary and archaeological treasures, “Africa & Byzantium” shows the impact of the Byzantine Empire from its capital Constantinople — formerly Byzantium and today called Istanbul — on Christianity, which spread in the Horn of Africa. from the 4th to the 7th century.
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According to Met CEO Max Hollein, the exhibition “brings a new focus and scholarship to an understudied field, expanding our knowledge of Byzantine and early Christian art in an expanded worldview.”
Visitors will see painted manuscripts, textiles, marble mosaics, carved ivories from Nubia, gold jewelry from Egypt, wall paintings – many appearing for the first time in the United States.
The pieces explore the connections between cultural and multi-faith communities from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, blending Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Christian and Jewish traditions, the Met said.
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Tunisian Minister of Cultural Affairs Hayet Guettat Guermazi told AFP that these pieces show the world “the rich cultural heritage of her country, the result of a mixture of different civilizations that occupied the Mediterranean” as well as a “local African foundation”.
Archbishop Damianos of Saint Catherine of Sinai praised the exhibition, saying it “offers us the opportunity to recall the universality of Byzantium, which is a proposition of freedom, unity, of reconciliation, respect and peace, the peace that our world so badly needs today.”
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