Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The African art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, offers a portal into the life and politics of a large and complex continent with a wealth of history and culture. The highlighted works in this volume have been selected to illuminate different societies and periods, and to offer an introduction to traditions within the wider field of African art. They are presented through the framework of their original contexts: refined bronze sculptures...

"Sometime in the fourth century BC, an unknown Egyptian master carved an exquisite portrait in dark-green stone. The statue that included this remarkably lifelike head of a priest, who was probably a citizen of ancient Memphis, may have been damaged when the Persians conquered Egypt in 343 B.C. before it was ritually buried in a temple complex dedicated to the worship of the sacred Apis bull .... After almost two millennia, the head was excavated...