After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the Louvre plans to dismantle, conserve and reassemble a 4,000-year-old ancient Egyptian funerary chapel in its galleries this autumn. The mastaba of Akhethotep, an Old Kingdom dignitary, was bought from the Egyptian government and brought to the Paris museum in 1903. The original location of the limestone tomb—part of a large necropolis in the Sahara desert—was rediscovered by the Louvre’s archaeologists only in the 1990s. Their research will inform new displays due to open to the public next spring. Funded with €620,000 from 3,700 donors, the presentation will give visitors a better idea of the mastaba’s original scale and context, says Vincent Rondot, the head of Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre.
