travel – The Peabody

March 30, 2026March 30, 2026

Egypt in Rome

Contributed by Ryan J. Wheeler

Phillips Academy’s March 2026 spring break allowed for a family trip to Rome. These family vacations are often something of a busman’s holiday, with numerous excursions to museums, galleries, and ancient ruins. This week in Rome was no exception, and included lots of ruins, a day trip to Ostia Antica, as well as a visit to the newly opened mini-museum at the Colosseum subway station, and, truthfully, many, many more sights.

I visited Rome once before, as somewhat of a treat after receiving my master’s degree in 1992—that trip included a whole swath of Italian cities and only allowed for some Roman highlights (like the Colosseum).

Sphinx, Greek Cross Room, Vatican Museums. pink granite, likely first century CE.

What I came to appreciate on this trip with a little surprising—just how much Egypt influenced ancient Rome. I feel like I should have known this, especially since my graduate coursework included some wonderful Roman, Greek, and Egyptian art history classes from the late Barbara Barletta.

Obelisk, Piazza Navona. This monument was commissioned by Emperor Domitian and was eventually incorporated into Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers.

Not far from where we stayed—and in the Piazza della Rotonda—right in front of the Pantheon—we encountered an Egyptian obelisk. Apparently, there are around twelve or thirteen obelisks throughout Rome, some Roman recreations of Egyptian architecture, others actually brought from Egypt. The one by the Pantheon is covered in hieroglyphics, including cartouches that link it to Ramses II.

A complete tour of Egyptian obelisks in Rome was not on our itinerary, but we did manage to see quite a few, including the Flaminio Obelisk, originally from Heliopolis, dating to the thirteenth century BCE and brought to Rome by Augustus in 10 BCE (now in the Piazza del Popolo); the Sallustian Obelisk (at the top of the Spanish Steps, opposite Santissima Trinita die Monti—its hieroglyphs seems to copy those of the Flaminio Obelisk); the 1667 Elephant and Obelisk in the Piazza della Minerva, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and incorporating a sixth century BCE obelisk; and the Obelisk of Montecitorio or Psamtik II, which had formed the gnomon of a Roman sundial. In fact, the lure of the obelisks was so great that I wandered off to get a closer look at the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

In case you were wondering about the obelisk used as the gnomon of a Roman sundial, here is an eighteenth century depiction of the horologium of Augustus, engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), from *Opere di Giovanni Battista Piranesi*, Francesco Piranesi e d’altri. Firmin Didot Freres, Paris, 1835-1839, Volume 10.

Sadly, time did not permit a tour of the Egyptian gallery at the Vatican Museums, but we did spot several interesting pieces of Egyptian statuary as we pushed through the crush of humanity along with the other 35,000 daily visitors. I was particularly taken with a pair of Egyptian style pillar-statutes in the Greek Cross Hall. You can tell these are Roman copies of Egyptian artwork by their pose—the first century Romans went for symmetry, alternating right and left feet forward, while the Egyptian convention dictated the left leg forward.

Anubis featured on a fresco in an early Roman home, later built over by the Baths of Caracalla. Cults of Egyptian gods were prevalent in Rome 2,000 years ago.

Many of the ancient obelisks had been parts of temples, removed and reset in later times. We also got a sense of just how pervasive Egyptian art, architecture, and deities were in ancient Rome with a glimpse at a fresco showing Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of death, in the ruins of a Roman house pre-dating the construction of the Baths of Caracalla by several hundred years.

Egyptian sphinxes and faux-hieroglyphics in the Egyptian Room, Galleria Borghese hint at the Egyptomania of late eighteenth century Rome.

Egyptian influences continued well into later periods, as evident in the late eighteenth century Egyptian Room in the Galleria Borghese, which includes non-sensical hieroglyphic decoration, lots of red granite, Egyptian style ornamental architecture, and Greco-Romanized Egyptian gods in the ceiling frescoes. So, not only was Egypt an inspiration to the ancient Romans, but borrowing designs, materials, and items continued for a long time!

A zippy cab ride back to the airport provided a quick glimpse of a pyramid in Rome as well (though I was too slow to snap a pic). The pyramid, built around 18 BCE, serves as the tomb of Caius Cestius, a Roman official, who may have been involved in Roman campaigns against Meroe, explaining his interest in the steep pyramids that contrast with those at Giza. Originally out in the countryside, the pyramid has been incorporated into more recent city walls and enveloped by the bustling metropolis.

More subway construction, Piazza Venezia, which will feature a new mini-museum!

We agreed that we needed to return to Rome at some point, and I’m positive we will find more Egyptian pieces! We learned about additional mini-museums being created at new and expanded subway stops, so we will have those at the top of our itinerary.

October 22, 2025

Do You ATALM?

Contributed by Ryan J. Wheeler

It was really fun to encounter Peter Toth’s monumental wood carving of Sequoyah outside the Museum of the Cherokee People. Toth created over 70 of these sculptures as part of his Trail of the Whispering Giants project. I met the artist in 1983 when he was carving a tribute to the Seminole on Fort Lauderdale beach.

Four members of the Peabody Institute team attended the 2025 Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) conference held in Cherokee, North Carolina this October, continuing our tradition of sending personnel that goes back about a decade. This year’s conference saw over 1,000 museum, archive, and library professionals convene at the meeting facilities of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, coinciding with the festivities of the 113^th Cherokee Indian Fair. The fair featured a parade, agricultural and cultural events, stick ball, an art show, and more.

The Cherokee Day parade featured contestants in the Miss Cherokee pageant, lots of agriculture themed floats, marching bands, a drum line. And candy. So. Much. Candy!

Back at the conference, attendees had lots of opportunities to network and learn at expert sessions and demonstrations. Highlights for the Peabody team were visits to the Museum of Cherokee People, Qualla Arts & Crafts Mutual Co-op, the Oconaluftee Indian Village, the informal NAGPRA networking session, the Repatriation Talking Circle, and One Square Inch of Ceremony (and additional workshops with Lily Hope, Tlingit artist, educator, and community facilitator). Marla Taylor, Peabody curator of collections, participated in the session Institutional Approaches to NAGPRA Duty of Care, along with colleagues from museums, universities, and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

Canoes are everywhere! Exciting to see this dugout canoe at the Museum of the Cherokee People. The museum, one of the earliest Tribal museums in the US, has a series of great interpretive panels questioning how best to tell the Cherokee story. For example, why do museums always begin with PaleoIndians? Back to the canoe–this great example of a dugout is about 200 years old and was found in the 1970s on the Chattahoochee River near Helen, Georgia.

Many great meals were shared as well, but the best part was reconnecting with old friends, meeting colleagues regularly seen on Zoom in person, and making new friends. If you haven’t attended an ATALM conference, we highly recommend it!

August 25, 2025

Naturhistorisches Museum Wien

Contributed by Lainie Schultz

Emperor Franz I and his natural science advisors

This summer I went to visit a friend in Vienna. I hadn’t seen her in [*cough*] years, so my inspiration was mainly just to hang out with her. It was only after I had my plane tickets and the trip was drawing near that I actually started looking into what there was to do in Vienna.

Turns out, the Venus of Willendorf is there. For a museum nerd I don’t tend to visit that many museums when I travel, but the Venus of Willendorf is famous enough (there’s even a cast of the original here at the Peabody) and I am nerd enough for that to justify seeking her out. This meant dragging my friend to the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien.

If you had asked me beforehand what I expected of the place, I’m not sure what I would have said. I’m familiar enough with the broad-strokes histories of museums and their ties to imperialism: As nations started to push further and further out into the world during the Age of Exploration, voyagers brought back evidence of their encounters with new environments in new places, creating displays that combined minerals, plants, animals, and man-made “curiosities.” These collections offered opportunities for viewers to learn about the world, as centered by their home locations, but equally they offered opportunities for displayers to demonstrate their status and wealth, the power of their influence and access – not just how they saw the world but how they wanted others to see them in it. If you look for it, this history is written into the architecture and design of museums, and I have been academically trained to look for it. So maybe if you had asked me beforehand what I expected of the Naturhistorisches Museum I would have said “nothing new.”

Reader, I was wrong.

This place was every piece of museum history I had ever learned, jacked up on steroids. It was everything I had been taught to expect dialed up to a ten, with a little extra more thrown in just for fun. It was contemporary best practice crammed into 19th century display cases surrounded by imperial displays of awe and wonder, and I was there for every moment of it. Just please don’t ask me much about the exhibits themselves! I was far too distracted to notice.

Neither my photos nor even the museum’s does this place justice. Try exploring a bit more with some select collections, online exhibits, or a virtual tour.