For the first time in more than a decade, the ancient gods of Egypt have taken over New York City. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has unveiled Divine Egypt, a new exhibition that brings together nearly 250 artifacts celebrating one of the world’s most fascinating pantheons.
On view through January 19, 2026, the exhibition provides a rare look into how ancient Egyptians imagined, worshipped, and lived alongside their deities.
“The divine landscape of ancient Egypt is full of gods, actually some 1,500 if you count all of them. This exhibition focuses on 25 of the main deities,” Diana Craig Patch, Ancient Egypt art curator at the museum, told the Associated Press.
Through sculptures, painted reliefs, amulets, and temple fragments, the exhibition explores the role of gods as living presences within daily life. The exhibition highlights that for ancient Egyptians, divine images were active intermediaries between the human and the sacred.
Visitors can trace how figures such as Horus, Sakhmet, and Osiris evolved over thousands of years, reflecting shifts in belief, politics, and power.
Among the most striking moments in the show is a gallery devoted to the sun god Ra, depicted as a scarab beetle pushing the solar disk through the underworld. Nearby, a painted relief of the goddess Maat from the Valley of the Kings embodies the Egyptian idea of cosmic balance and truth.
Curators at the Met describe Divine Egypt as both an artistic and philosophical journey, one that illuminates how the gods helped ancient Egyptians make sense of their existence.
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