大都会小故事之 5

   这是大都会博物馆体积最大的“一件”藏品——埃及丹铎神庙。

    同时，也是曼哈顿上东城最重要的时尚聚会场所。

    1963年，由于埃及政府建造阿斯旺大坝，尼罗河水即将淹没3000多年前罗马皇帝奥古斯特建造的丹铎神庙。1965年，埃及政府为了感谢美国对拯救埃及文物的贡献，特地将丹铎神庙作为礼物，赠送给美国政府。

    美国人将整座神庙打包，装在640个集装箱，运到美国。

    按照美国人的最初想法，计划将神庙安放在华盛顿DC的蓬杜马克河边或者波士顿的查尔斯河畔。但是由于建造神庙的砂岩容易被风吹雨蚀，1967年4月，约翰逊政府经过一系列的听证会，决定将丹铎神庙永久陈列在纽约大都会博物馆。大都会博物馆的丹铎神庙，1978年对公众开放。

    古代埃及人建造了这座神庙，当代美国人的强大经济力量，将久远的古代历史在纽约重新展现。

    由于有了博物馆，躺在书本中的历史，一下子又变得和蔼可亲。

     补充：此时的大都会博物馆馆长是Thomas Hoving，（普林斯顿大学美术史博士，1967-1977年在任十年，2009年辞世。）药学博士Arthur Sackler赛克勒先生为大都会博物馆安置丹铎神庙捐出350万美元，所以这个大堂被命名为Sackler Wing。

    ©版权所有 陈儒斌

附：大都会博物馆网站的介绍。

The largest gift to the Egyptian collection in terms of tonnage and size is the Temple of Dendur. It was built as a shrine to the goddess Isis in about 15 B.C. by order of the Roman emperor Augustus not long after the Romans gained control of Egypt. The temple was also built to commemorate two deceased brothers, sons of a Nubian chieftain, who were revered by the local population as saints.

The temple had to be dismantled and removed from its place in 1963 because the waters of the Nile rising behind the new Aswan High Dam would otherwise have submerged it. Two years later, in 1965, the government of Egypt offered the temple to the United States in its dismantled state in recognition for the aid America had provided toward saving a number of Nubian temples doomed to be permanently flooded by the construction of the High Dam. The temple blocks, which weighed more than eight hundred tons, were packed into some 640 crates and shipped by freighter to the United States. President Lyndon Johnson appointed a commission to consider the best location;  after a series of hearings, it was decided that the temple would be placed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

   丹铎神庙在埃及。（来自大都会博物馆网站）

下面这些图片，记录了纽约丹铎神庙的一些历史时刻，图片来自网络。