Ancient Nubia opens at the NCMA

Raleigh has a new reason to head to the museum this fall. The North Carolina Museum of Art opened "Ancient Nubia: Excavating Treasures of the Nile" today, and it runs through January 10, 2027, so there is plenty of time to catch it. You will find it in the East Building on Level B, in the Meymandi Exhibition Gallery at 2110 Blue Ridge Road. The show is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and it is curated by Denise Doxey, the Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art. Locally, the NCMA's own Nubologist, Caroline Rocheleau, PhD, Director of Research and Curator of Ancient Collections, is providing the additional support and context that makes a traveling show feel at home.

The exhibition is built around the Kingdom of Kush, a civilization of the Middle Nile Valley, mostly in what is now Sudan, that spanned nearly 3,000 years across three periods: Kerma, roughly 2500 to 1550 BCE; Napatan, around 760 to 332 BCE; and Meroitic, from about 332 BCE to 364 CE. The artifacts were pulled from tombs and pyramids more than a century ago during the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition led by Egyptologist George Reisner. A good thread to follow through the galleries is the connection between Nubia and pharaonic Egypt, including the period when Nubia was ruled by Nubian kings for nearly a century.

Among the objects on display are the Shawabties of King Taharqa, a Hathor-headed crystal pendant from 743 to 712 BCE, a gold falcon amulet, a winged Isis pectoral, a faience wall inlay of a lion from Kerma, a lapis lazuli Eye of Horus amulet, and an electrum ear stud from the Meroitic period. The show does not stop at the cases, either. There is a replica of a royal tomb, a digital excavation where you can unearth parts of a statue of King Tanwetamani, field notes from an early 20th-century archaeologist, and activities put together by the NCMA's Teen Arts Council, like making a magnetic amulet. A special installation ties it all back to Raleigh, pairing recently donated Egyptian objects with Nubian pieces and leaning on the museum's own Nubologist for the comparison.

If you want to do more than walk through, the calendar around the exhibition is full. There is a free Ancient Nubia Community Day on Sunday, October 18, and docent-led public tours on several dates through November and early December. OLLI at Duke is running two lectures, "Egyptian Art in the People's Collection" on October 21 and "Nubia Exhibition Background" on October 28, with speaker Kris Door. Caroline Rocheleau also hosts Nubia Trivia at Trophy Maywood on November 6 and a talk called "An Archaeologist's Face to Feet with King Taharqa" on November 20. There is an audio description tour on November 14 and a Member Monday on November 30.

On price, members get in free, general admission is $20, students ages 7 to 22 are $12, seniors 65 and older are $17, and children 6 and under are free. The show is supported by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the NCMA Foundation, Paula D. Burleson and Barry P. Harris IV, Dawn F. Lipson, and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions, with research made possible by Ann and Jim Goodnight through The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel.