This is a dialogue between two ancient civilizations. Let us follow the Jiaoke BC students and join a carefully curated exhibition.
In northeastern Africa, the Nile River flows. For thousands of years, it has nourished and nurtured generations of Egyptians on both banks and witnessed the birth and demise of one of the world’s greatest ancient civilizations. The Ancient Chinese civilization has its long history, which left a profusion of material cultural heritages on this vast land. By far, China has experienced a hundred years of change. The delicacy of today’s Shanghai Bund is engraved by a hundred years of transition, intertwined with its legendary history and atmosphere.
Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the establishment of China-Egypt Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the Shanghai Museum held an Ancient Egypt Exhibition – “On Top of the Pyramid”, in which teachers and students of the BC course took part and listened to the wonderful introduction of the museum guide. After the exhibition, the students worked in groups together to write what they found interesting about the exhibition by following the guideline of “topic report – exhibit production – cultural introduction.” As a result, students were invited to organize the event of “On Top of the Pyramids – Ancient Egyptian Civilization Exhibition” on November 22nd. Together they came up with the idea of “Dialogue Through Time and Space – ‘From the Nile to the Bank of the Huangpu River’ Sino-Egyptian Thematic Cultural Exhibition.”
This land carries the profound cultural system and a long-lasting spiritual connotation of the Chinese nation for thousands of years, which included the spirit of self-respect and self-improvement, implicit and introverted, gentleness and unity of heaven and mankind is unceasingly born and passed down from generation to generation on this piece of land. The exhibition takes the three traditional cultural spirits of “heaven, earth and man” as its main topic, and sets six themes, “animal worship, myth, afterlife system, Nile and Yellow River civilization, writing, religion and kingship”. The exhibits were created by the students on the basis of a large amount of information, showing the intertwining of time and space, reflecting on the decline and continuation of civilization, and showing the dialogue between the ancient civilization of China and Egypt and the modern civilization.
Event Timeline
Activity Launch:
（1） Preliminary research on ancient Egyptian cultural materials.
（2）Lecture by Tu Yunkun, a scholar of ancient Egyptology.
（3）“Top of the Pyramid – Ancient Egyptian Civilization Exhibition” Museum Practice
（4）Finalizing the report on the selected topic, making exhibits, explaining the exhibits in English and Chinese, and preparing for the drama performance.
（5）11.22 Dialogue Across Time and Space – “From the Nile to the Huangpu River” Sino-Egyptian Thematic Cultural Exhibition
感言
嘉宾：涂云鲲（Egyptologist University of Toronto， Near and Middle-Eastern Civilization Study，Egyptology）
After visiting the exhibition of the achievements of the ancient Egyptian cultural research projects hosted by the students of your school, I was quite shocked. Firstly, the research topics of most groups were rather difficult. These topics were by no means ordinary reports that simply presented facts, but rather analytical and research-oriented outputs that relied on critical thinking. Some of the topics were even issues that are currently being hotly debated within the Egyptian archaeology field in our country, such as whether the formation and development of the ancient Egyptian civilization really benefited from their farming and irrigation techniques.
Meanwhile, to my pleasant surprise, I saw that several groups tried to conduct cross-cultural comparative studies between the material or spiritual heritages of ancient China and those of ancient Egypt. Such cross-cultural studies inevitably require scholars themselves to have a superb understanding of both cultures. Although the students may not be able to achieve this for the time being, precisely this brave attempt of theirs has, from a side angle, proved that your school has already begun to guide students to use novel research methods with great potential in future in daily teaching and guidance. Currently, our country is still in the initial stage in the field of ancient Egyptian cultural research, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the students from Jiaoke BC in the Chinese Egyptology community in the future.
Tiffany（最佳展示组成员之一）
After many discussions, we decided to choose this topic：Discussing the difference of ancient cultures and civilizations’ source, researching different concepts of various civilizations about the natural world and humanity, the imagination of the afterlife, the reflection of the social life, and funeral systems at that time. Our ancient Chinese exhibit is T shape painting on silk and the ancient Egyptian exhibit is Ammon God Priestly papyrus. The same is that they both described the cognition and imagination of afterlife by ancient people. And the difference of them is the discrepant funeral cultures because of conceptual difference, such as “rebirth” and “Treat death as if it were life”.
At the part of making exhibits, our teammates were very serious and responsible. They not only started planning our exhibits design, making and final effects early, but also chose the extremely suitable tools and materials. Although it was just imitation drawing, the colour and outline are so harmonious and clear. The line drawing clearly reflects the wide robes and big sleeves of ancient people in the Han Dynasty. And the yellowish undertones and bright paints are just as the mysterious papyrus and vintage mineral paint that was used by ancient Egyptians. We showed copies of the exhibits we made, which is like framed artworks. At the moment of setting up the booth, this place seemed to become the real exhibition area of ancient civilization. A constant stream of guests came and went. When the glass picture frames stood before the dark booth, the light reflected plenty of figures. It’s like the changing of light and shadow and the reversing of the time.
Lily （最佳展示组成员之一）
By comparing the Book of the Dead with the oracle bone inscriptions of the Xia Dynasty, we can get a clearer picture of the social development focus and cultural sophistication displayed by these two ancient civilizations during the same historical period. In this project, we used the literature research method and the case analysis method. In the production of the exhibits, we used the old treatment and the addition of glitter to make the exhibits more modern, and the ingenious combination of oracle bone inscriptions and Egyptian characters also directly reflects the collision and integration of civilizations. Throughout the entire project process, we did encounter many thorny difficulties, however, we were not defeated by these difficulties. We have decided to allocate tasks reasonably based on the strengths of my team members, and made full use of every minute, finally completing the production of the exhibits within the specified time. Ms. Yolanda, our homeroom teacher, tracked our project in real-time, Ms. Strawberry held a team leader meeting to inform us of the milestones of each report and had a separate meeting with the team leader to avoid duplication of project direction. In the end, our product was successfully exhibited on that day and received recognition and appreciation from everyone.
To make the product more artistic, we adopted the method of using Chinese painting pigments to make it old. At the same time, we burnt the sides of the papyrus with a lighter to give it a more aged look. In addition, we also added glitter and glue to make the whole painting look both shabby and innovative.