Death Dogs | About

About this Exhibition

The exhibition banner on the Kelsey Museum façade — The Death Dogs banner on the Kelsey Museum façade. Photo: Terry G. Wilfong

The initial idea for this exhibition came as I was working on my book on the Kelsey Museum’s coffin of Djehutymose. In choosing images for the book, I was struck by all the jackal gods I was finding on the coffin and in the Kelsey Museum collections. I wasn’t able to use all the material I found in the book, and the idea of doing an exhibition to pursue these jackal gods took root.

Another inspiration came during preparations for my exhibition Karanis Revealed. I hadn’t expected that this project would involve jackal gods, but they kept coming up — jackals on the stelae from Terenouthis, a faience jackal head, amulets and other images from Karanis — while dogs kept appearing in archival photographs of the Michigan excavation. Meanwhile, my assistant Andrew Ferrara had adopted a replica Anubis head as our office mascot, around which Anubis-themed toys and games began to accumulate, — another theme.

I also kept returning to old books for images and inspiration. Fanciful 17th- and 18th-century illustrations of Egyptian gods, along with more faithful 19th- and early 20th-century facsimiles of wall reliefs and funerary papyri all proved to be good sources of images of jackal gods and how modern perceptions of them have changed.

All of these inspirations led me to develop the exhibition Death Dogs so that I could explore these mysterious gods and their modern manifestations. Collaboration with exhibition designers Scott Maier and Emily Kirk shaped the visual look of the exhibition — both playful and mysterious — into something different from anything the Kelsey had done before. I always felt that the exhibition had too short a run (just over three months: 6 February–3 May 2015), so I am pleased to be able to share it with you in this virtual form, courtesy of our web designer, Julia Falkovitch-Khain. I hope you enjoy Death Dogs: The Jackal Gods of Ancient Egypt!

Terry G. Wilfong

Death Dogs Team Left to right: Emily Kirk, Terry G. Wilfong, Scott Meier, Justin Baranski Photo: Sebastián Encina

Acknowledgments

Any Kelsey Museum exhibition is a group effort, and Death Dogs features the help and contributions of so many people, all of whom I would like to thank:

Conservation: Caroline Roberts, Suzanne Davis, Madeline Neiman
Design and Fabrication: Scott Meier, Emily Kirk, Justin Baranski
Editorial: Peg Lourie
Outreach: Cathy Person
Registry: Sebastián Encina, Michelle Fontenot, Randall McCombs, Alicia Williams
Kelsey Museum Staff: Carl Abrego, Sandra Malveaux, Lorene Sterner (thanks also to Lorene for her drawings)
Kelsey Museum director Chris Ratté, associate director Dawn Johnson, and my fellow curators Elaine Gazda, Margaret Root, and Janet Richards (thanks also to Janet for unpublished material from her Abydos Middle Cemetery Project).

I would also like to thank:

The University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts for its generous support of the Kelsey Museum and its activities.
The University of Michigan Library for loans of papyri; Brendan Haug, Arthur Verhoogt, and Monica Tsuneishi for help with the papyri; Marieka Kaye and Leyla Lau Lamb for conservation of these materials; and Randal Stegmeyer for photography of the papyri and also photography of Kelsey Museum artifacts.
The many people who offered suggestions and help, especially with the “modern” materials: Dana Kerola, Carl Nyman, Nick Fingar, Paul Kemner, Tom Landvatter, Emily Teeter, and François Gaudard.
Salima Ikram and Richard Redding for their expertise on the “dog” mummy.
Students in my Winter 2014 courses for help in developing ideas for the exhibition, and, more specifically, the students in my Fall 2014 Exhibiting Ancient Egypt seminar — Caitlin Clerkin, Ivory Edwards, Allison Rittershaus, Chavon Taylor, Emily Thibeau, and Anna Volante — for their helpful input and discussion and for curating the case of modern jackal-god images.
Piotr Michalowski, Deanna Relyea, James Cornish, Abby Alwin, Ben Willis, and Jordan Schug for their “Jackal Songs” performance at the Kelsey Museum.
Margie Fisher and Janet Richards for the custom Anubis chocolates at the opening.
My former assistant Andrew Ferrara, who first inspired me to do an exhibition on Egyptian jackal gods.
Julia Falkovitch-Khain, designer of this website.
Steve Mankodi, Kelsey Museum benefactor, whose interest in the Egyptian jackal gods and whose support and encouragement of the museum and my research is very important to me.
And finally, Terence DuQuesne, who did more than anyone to elucidate the jackal gods of ancient Egypt: DuQuesne’s death in April 2014 deprived us of a remarkable scholar and extraordinary individual.