{"id":209444,"date":"2019-02-17T07:00:09","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T09:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=209444"},"modified":"2019-03-06T19:48:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T21:48:27","slug":"a-collector-of-stories-brazilian-creates-itinerant-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/a-collector-of-stories-brazilian-creates-itinerant-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"A collector of stories, Brazilian creates itinerant museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Son of Palestian, Maisur Musa (picture above<\/em>) still recalls the first contact he had with what would become his passion. \u201cMy grandfather gave me Palestinian coins from 1924. I was five and that looked ancient to me!\u201d the collector said in a phone interview to ANBA. Maisur is the creator of the Museu Itinerante Mist\u00e9rios do Antigo Egito e Terra Santa<\/a> (Itinerant Museum Mysteries of Ancient Egypt and the Holy Land), which travels Brazil bringing knowledge and awe for the Ancient worlds.<\/p>\n

From that first coin on, he has never gotten too far from old artifacts. When he was 5 and 10 years old, he traveled to Palestine to his father\u2019s hometown Ramallah, where his family moved to when he was 13. Shortly after, he stumbled on archeology. \u201cI was playing with my friends and we found a cave. In fact, it was a gallery. I was so interested! I remember that day perfectly, I get the chills. It was very moving to be standing inside that cave where people lived thousands of years ago. They had a life there,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

After this day, Maisur started looking for information from his teachers and got involved in the theme. \u201cI discovered the gallery had already been found years before, and remains of vases were found there. I begun to meet archeologists, I have great friends until today.\u201d<\/p>\n

A collector since an early age<\/strong><\/p>\n

He encountered the gallery in 1985. And since then he started to view himself as a collector. \u201cI think it was when I realized I stopped spending money with chocolate and other stuff, and started buying pieces,\u201d he told that, when he was 10, he was already going to antique shops and was impressed by the old pieces and the architecture.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Out of 160 original pieces Maisur exhibits, 69 are from the Ancient Egypt and the Holy Land<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was at his first visit to Egypt, when he was 17 years old, that Maisur\u2019s interest became even sharper. On and off, he spent a total of 12 years living in Palestine. And even during the years he lived in Europe, he never stopped digging. \u201cThe Palestinian government does not allow any original piece to leave the country. So, most of them are from antique shops in Jerusalem, which is controlled by Israel that allows pieces not so culturally important to leave the territory. Other pieces were bought during travels to London, Paris and New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, in 1995, the collector was invited by a producer to participate in an exhibition in Brazil. \u201cSince I was a kid, it was so interesting! I\u2019ve always enjoyed going to museums. I was thinking in something like that. Then, I realized the whole country lacks events like this.\u201d After his first exhibition in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Maisur began his project of an itinerant museum. \u201cI received many invites and started with pieces from Ancient Egypt. Then I added the Holy Land. And recently, some two years ago, I included Pompei,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Since he began exhibiting his collections, Musa has never stopped growing it. \u201cI still have every piece I bought since the beginning. Except from the ones that were stolen. Unfortunately, there was the robbery of an original Osiris. Despite the cameras, this happened, and they were not recovered,\u201d he explained. The pieces are encased in glass and at least one employee watches the exhibition.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Bastet was represented as a cat,\u2019 told the collector<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Out of the 160 original pieces in the museum\u2019s collection, 69 are from Ancient Egypt and the Holy Land. Maisur highlights his oldest piece is five thousand years old. \u201cIt is a Venus, 60% original, 40% a reconstitution,\u201d he said. Now, the show is being exhibited in Macei\u00f3, Alagoas. \u201cWe often extend the event so that people from the region, neighbor and distant cities, can attend. There are people who visit the museum and discover themselves. Marcia Jamille is an example \u2013 she is now an Egyptologer. That is what encourages us to keep this project, although it is exhausting with all the assembling, loading, special care,\u201d he revealed. The transport, assembly and disassembly of the pieces can last up to 40 days, not counting the days of the exhibition.<\/p>\n

Through the artifacts, Musa tells more about the details that fascinate him. \u201cWhenever I have the chance, I pretend to be an archeologist of antique shops and dig there. Each piece has its own meaning. For example, we have a statue of Bastet, who is considered a war goddess. She had also dominium over medicine and could bring death to her enemies through medicine. Each god stood out in something and (the Egyptians) looked long and hard to nature. They learned a lot from it. Bastet was represented as a cat, an animal brought from abroad to kill serpents, scorpions. Anubis, god of the dead, was represented as a jackal, which used to lurk around tombs,\u201d detail the museum\u2019s creator.<\/p>\n

Among so many artifacts dug in these 32 years, does he have a favorite piece? Maybe the most precious one? \u201cTo be honest, my favorite ones are the smallest daily pieces, because we can actually understand people through them. Lamps, rings, they tell everyday stories. Among the little pieces from Pompei, there are rings that were door keys, for example. What I find most interest is that things tell everyday stories from common people. They don\u2019t talk about noblemen but about how people really lived. Through these tiny everyday things, we learn the truth,\u201d confided the collector.<\/p>\n

Translated by Guilherme Miranda<\/strong><\/p>\n

Personal Archive\/Reproduction<\/div>\n
Press Release<\/div>\n
Press Release<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Son of Palestinian, Maisur Musa has been collecting pieces for 32 years. He brought together 160 original ones in his Itinerant Museum Mysteries of Ancient Egypt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2324,"featured_media":209435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[421,3232,7426,232,7427,2759,7432,7428,155,537,7430,7431,43771,7429],"class_list":{"0":"post-209444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-egypt","9":"tag-ancient-egypt","10":"tag-antique-shops","11":"tag-brazil","12":"tag-collector","13":"tag-exhibit","14":"tag-holy-land","15":"tag-itinerant","16":"tag-museum","17":"tag-palestine","18":"tag-palestinian","19":"tag-pieces","20":"tag-terra-santa-en-2","21":"tag-wonders"},"wps_subtitle":"Son of Palestinian, Maisur Musa has been collecting pieces for 32 years. He brought together 160 original ones in his Itinerant Museum Mysteries of Ancient Egypt.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2324"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}