In collaboration with the prestigious and noted National Archaeological Museum of Florence, Italy, and with partner Expona, the international tour of the exhibition Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, Journey into Immortality organized in China in 2018 featured some 100 exceptional original artifacts and exemplars.
These included: mummies, painted sarcophagi, funeral trousseau and votive objects that together with suggestive exhibition design and background graphics evoke the mythical, mysterious landscape of the tombs and pyramids of Ancient Egypt.
The subject was the ever-fascinating practice of mummification in Ancient Egypt that was destined by an abiding belief in immortality and an eternal afterlife There, death was not considered the end of life. It was just the time of passing from one form of life to another that continued in the eternal afterlife, but the soul had to be prepared for this journey into immortality through various funerary customs necessary for survival in the afterlife.
The exhibition offered a particular focus on certain peculiarities of the funeral practices, particularly the process of mummification, a topic has long fascinated both experts and the common public ever since the Greek historian, Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century BCE, returned with incredulous reports about these procedures. The exhibition also dispelled certain misconceptions by offering a clear explanation that all the funeral rituals, even the most macabre, did not serve to simply preserve the body of the deceased, but rather to insure the continuation of life beyond the grave.