Friday, August 07, 2015

Sacred Writings at the Penn Museum

COMING SOON: Sacred Writings: Extraordinary Texts of the Biblical World.
In honor of the first visit by Pope Francis and the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, the Penn Museum offers a special focus on the ancient Near East, Egypt, and the Bible Lands—with a limited-time-only display of rare artifacts from the collections of the University of Pennsylvania, on view August 15 through November 7, 2015.

A centerpiece exhibition, Sacred Writings: Extraordinary Texts of the Biblical World, highlights the many ways the Bible—and stories akin to those in the Bible—have been represented over time and across continents.

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The exhibition includes a third-century Greek fragment of the Gospel of Matthew and the so-called Eridu Genesis, the tablet containing the Sumerian Flood story (pictured).

The Museum also has a large collection of Aramaic Incantation Bowls. See here for a 1910 article about them in the Museum Journal by James Montgomery. I think it would be cool if they got some of these out too, but maybe that's just me.