200 signposts of ancient history, on our doorstep

Philadelphia and history go together like the Fourth of July and fireworks, like pretzels and mustard, like Hall and Oates.

Philadelphia and American history, that is.

World history? The connection isn't so obvious. But when DK Publishing and the Smithsonian Institution set out recently to tell the story of humankind through 1,000 objects, on the premise that humans define themselves by what they make, they turned to the Penn Museum for much of their material. More than 200 of the objects photographed for the book are from the Penn collection - and many of them are on display for you to see.

The red-brick building, in the shadow of Franklin Field between 32d and 33d Streets, houses a world-class assemblage of about a million artifacts, from Egyptian mummies to Chinese statues to pottery fashioned in Central America 2,000 years before the arrival of Europeans.

The 480-page Smithsonian History of the World in 1,000 Objects, lavishly illustrated (and lavishly priced at $50), was published in October. Only then did the Penn folks know how many of their objects were included, museum director Julian Siggers said. The volume includes objects from the British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but Siggers said he believes that Penn is better represented than any other institution.

What makes Penn's numerical dominance even more impressive is that 1,000 Objects goes right up to the present, while most of the Penn collection stops at the beginning of the Middle Ages, Siggers explained.

"You can really begin to appreciate the importance of the collections that we have here at Penn," said Siggers, 50, who came from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to lead the Penn Museum in mid-2012. "This is one of the most significant collections of archaeological material anywhere in the world, and it's right at Philadelphia's doorstep."

More than 100 of the 200 Penn objects included in the book are on view at the museum. On a recent afternoon, Siggers strolled through the galleries to show a visitor some of the prizes that had caught the eye of the book team.

The bull-head lyre that graces the volume's title page can be seen in the Penn Museum's ancient Iraq gallery. The bull's head, sheathed in gold above a cascading beard of lapis lazuli, was excavated from a cemetery in the ancient city of Ur, dating to 2550-2400 B.C., in what is now Iraq.

"There's nothing like it from this period as an artistic statement, 41/2 thousand years ago," Siggers said. "There's just nothing in the ancient world as beautiful as this."

Also exquisite is another piece from the Ur cemetery, a small statue in gold and lapis of a ram caught in a thicket. Its photo spreads in glorious detail across two pages of 1,000 Objects. The ram, too, can be seen in the ancient Iraq gallery. Siggers says it's one of the museum's most popular exhibits.

On page 28 is another of the museum's major artifacts, a sphinx that Siggers describes as "really one of our signature pieces, unbelievably important." Excavated on the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, it bears the names of pharaoh Ramses II and his son Merneptah. "When it was found, only the head was sticking above the ground," Siggers said. "You can see that, over time, the sands of the desert have eroded the face, but as soon as you get below the face, the preservation is remarkable. He's magnificent."

The Penn sphinx "was one of the last bits of monumental sculpture that ever left Egypt," Siggers said. "Now, no material leaves. It's incredibly significant; people come from all over the world to look at this piece."

People come from far away, too, to gaze on the limestone relief of two horses on display in the museum's soaring Chinese rotunda. The horses, one of which is included in the book, were favorites of the Tang dynasty emperor Taizong, who reigned from 626 to 649. "These two panels here are the first emperor's favorite horses and so they were his most treasured possessions and they come from his mausoleum," Siggers said. "To the Chinese people, these are unbelievably important. We have Chinese visitors here all the time who just come to see these two horses."

A few steps away is a Qing dynasty cloisonné lioness, which takes up all of page 239 in the book. It dates to the 17th century - not all that old by Penn Museum standards - and may come from the imperial palace area of the Forbidden City.

The happy question for the museum is what to do with the opportunity it's been handed. "The education department here is really thinking about how to use this book, and I'm looking forward to what they come up with in January," Siggers said. "We were thinking of doing a specific tour of the 200 objects, or maybe we'll pick the top 25. Or another way to do it is, we were thinking maybe we could theme it."

It's also possible that the museum could try to make use of the list as it goes forward with renovations, "as we consider what the new permanent gallery should look like," he said.

Until then, he said, 1,000 Objects is an invitation all by itself to sample the museum's richness. "I think this is a fantastic approach. It's books like this that made me want to become a scholar as a child. It's these books that are aimed at a general audience that you can comprehend, that trigger you into wanting to know more."

The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South St.

Hours: 10 p.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. first Wednesday of each month. Closed Mondays.

Admission: $15 adult, $13 65 and above, $10 ages 6 to 17 and full-time students with college I.D. Free for active U.S. military personnel and children 5 and under.

Information: 215-898-4000, www.penn.museumEndText