Egypt & Rome at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York's Egyptian collection offers a chronological journey through the Nile Valley's history, from colossal pharaoh statues to intricate royal jewelry and the tools of daily life and afterlife preparation. The undisputed centerpiece is the Temple of Dendur, an ancient Roman-Egyptian temple housed in its own dedicated Sackler Wing — completed around 10 BCE, when the Roman emperor Augustus, who had succeeded Cleopatra VII, commissioned it to honor the goddess Isis. In 2026, the Met hosted "Divine Egypt," the first major Egyptian art exhibition at the Museum in over a decade, bringing together over 200 works to explore how images of gods were used in daily worship and the connection between the human and divine worlds. The Met's Roman art holdings, meanwhile, sit within its broader Greek and Roman galleries, tracing the empire's visual culture from marble portraiture and sarcophagi to wall paintings, glasswork, and bronze sculpture. The collections overlap in fascinating ways at the point where the two cultures met: Roman Egypt. The Fayum Mummy Portraits, incredibly realistic painted portraits from the Roman Period, blend Egyptian funerary practices with Roman artistry, offering an intimate look at how Roman rule reshaped Egyptian visual traditions after Rome's conquest. Together, the Egyptian and Roman wings let visitors trace a continuous thread — from pharaonic Egypt through Ptolemaic rule to full incorporation into the Roman Empire.