Exhibition Preview: Before the Pyramids: The Origins of Egyptian Civilization

Before the Pyramids: The Origins of Egyptian Civilization

Oriental Institute Museum displays some of Egypt's earliest artifacts

Visitors will have a chance to get a rare look at beautifully made statues, vessels, figurines, and other artifacts from the dawn of the Egyptian culture at a special exhibition at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago.

"Before the Pyramids: The Origins of Egyptian Civilization" will run from March 29 to December 31, 2011, at the museum, 1155 East 58th Street. The museum holds the Chicago area's largest collection of Egyptian art and artifacts as well as galleries devoted to the other cultures of the ancient Middle East.

The new exhibition shows that the most fundamental aspects of ancient Egyptian civilization — architecture, hieroglyphic writing, a belief in the afterlife, and allegiance to a semi-divine king — can be traced to Egypt's Predynastic and Early Dynastic eras more than 1,000 years before the pyramids were built...