Visiting the Louvre's Egyptian Galleries in Paris (France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
My husband and I took our daughter Florence on a trip to France when she was in the fifth grade. She had been studying ancient Egypt in school, and we asked one of the family cousins who was a retired school teacher to take us on a tour of the Louvre’s Egyptian collection.
Laurent’s teacher cousin had taught the history of ancient
Egypt to middle school students in Paris and had brought many classes to the
Louvre. She had a set tour and points to
cover, which we did at an American pace however. I knew she was accustomed to students who
walk in a line like those you can see pictured in Ludwig Bemelman’s Madeleine
picture books.
The entire American family stopped to ask questions about
works that interested us during our lecture.
We walked around exhibits and stooped down and stood up on our tiptoes
to get better views of the artwork.
Florence made commentaries, too, which children are not supposed to do
in France.
When she was shown canopic jars, she asked, “What goes in
those?” which translator mom asked teacher cousin.
“Viscera such as the hearts and lungs of the dead pharaohs,”
was teacher cousin’s reply.
“Gross. That’s
nasty,” was Florence’s loud reply.
We examined the writing on all the exhibits we saw to
determine which kind of Egyptian writing it was. Florence had learned to draw hieroglyphs at
school, but within hieroglyphic writing there are variations. We looked for the highly wrought artistic
hieroglyphs that appeared on religious art, stylized cursive hieroglyphs that
captured the essence of the form, and angular hieratic hieroglyphs used for everyday
communication.
Teacher cousin asked, “What kind of school does Florence go
to?”
I knew my answer would be unpopular when I said, “Waldorf.”
I could almost hear teacher cousin saying to herself, “German
schools set up by an Austrian.”
I loved France, but I knew that the culture of Austria’s
Habsburg Empire was perpetuated with German teaching methods through
Waldorf. The Habsburg Empire was
multilingual and multicultural; it had lessons for intercultural relations and
education in the United States I thought.
I loved Waldorf’s arts curriculum for which it is famous,
but the social studies and foreign language curriculum for children are what
made me want Florence attend this school.
I was very happy that Florence could distinguish among different types
of hieroglyphics, for example. I knew
she would be able to identify Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing with no
problem in the future, too.
Aside from the hieroglyphics, Florence’s favorite artworks
in the Louvre’s Egyptian galleries were the papyrus pages from the Egyptian
Book of the Dead. Florence’s class had
written and drawn pages from this book in class. The afterlife is when life really started for
the Egyptians, so it was not a morbid topic for the class to study.
We stood in front of one Book of the Dead text, and Florence
showed teacher cousin what she knew:
“Anubis, who has the jackal head, leads the dead to Osiris
for judgment by the Goddess Maat.”
“Where’s Maat?” I asked.
“She’s a feather here,” Florence responded.
After viewing this Book of the Dead page, Florence let
teacher cousin finish our Egyptian gallery tour uninterrupted.
Afterwards we ate at the international food court, which is
always crowded. You have to order, get
your food, and then wait for a table to be vacated before sitting down. Laurent and Florence ate Mexican food; I had
a Lebanese sampler plate; and teacher cousin ate French. I hope teacher cousin had fun with her
Americans in the Egyptian collection.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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