The coffin lid of the mummy of Neter Heneb had floated
about private collections since the 1950s, never quite finding the kind
of stability every coffin lid needs. But this past October the lid received
a new lease on life after CSUSB’s Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum
purchased it with the aid of lovers of ancient art. The soft buzz created
by the purchase is due primarily to the lid’s age — a 2,500-year-old
artifact that’s now on exhibit in the RVF.
In the case of Neter Heneb, age comes not before, but
with beauty. Shaped like a human body, the coffin lid is about 6 feet
tall and made of several thick Lebanese cedar planks which are covered
with fine linen and decorated over a striking yellow background. The face
of the deceased, painted in rich red-ochre tones, indicates that the coffin
was made for a male. Female faces were typically done in a pale yellow.
A double row of vertical hieroglyphic text below the rich floral broad
collar covering the upper part of the body gives the name of the coffin’s
occupant, “Neter Heneb.” According to the inscriptions on
the lid, a coffin was made for Neter Heneb because he’d done his
fair share of offering geese and oxen to the temple. The coffin is dated
c. 650-300 B.C. “A mummy coffin like this one,” says Eva Kirsch,
director for the Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum, “has been long
desired for the museum collection, and since 2003 the museum had actively
tried to locate and acquire one.”
Many museum board members helped purchase the relic. They include Mr.
A. Bertrand Cassan, Dr. and Mrs. Benson Harer, Mr. and Mrs. Allen Gresham,
Mr. and Mrs. Howard Grossman, President and Mrs. Albert Karnig, Mr. and
Mrs. Timothy Martin, Ms. Joanne McDaniel, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Shimoff in
honor of Mr. E. Eugene Yeager, and CSUSB department of art professors
Sant Khalsa and Don Woodford. The university Foundation also helped fund
the acquisition, which was made through a Beverly Hills public auction.
Bringing the ancient coffin lid to the RVF strengthens
an already world-class Egyptian collection, partly on extended loan and
partly owned by the museum. Considered the finest collection of Egyptian
antiquities on the West Coast, many of its objects have been published
in scholarly exhibition catalogs and popular books about ancient Egypt.
Several objects from the collection also have been lent to major exhibitions
organized by major museums. The museum owns close to 100 objects, most
of them donated by the Harer Family Trust.
Rolling Out a Spanish Master’s
Designed primarily for future and current teachers at the
high school and community college levels, the master’s degree program
in Spanish made its debut in January after needs assessments showed strong
public support — especially among educators — for the program.
“As a Hispanic Serving Institution, CSUSB now can
greatly expand its ability to serve the needs of the Spanish-speaking
community in our service area,” said Dan Whitaker, CSUSB Spanish
professor and coordinator of the new master’s program, which also
is open to students from Cal State San Bernardino’s Palm Desert
Campus.
Offered through the university’s world languages
and literature department, the program gives students two options, one
in Spanish language teaching and the other in Hispanic literature, linguistics
and civilization. Full-time students should be able to complete the program
in two years, which is the average time for similar master’s programs
throughout California. About 25 students enrolled in the first Spanish
M.A. class during the winter quarter.
Spanish master’s degree candidates are eligible
to participate in the department’s international programs in México,
Perú and Cuba. CSUSB was designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution
by the U.S. Education Department in 1999. The title denotes colleges and
universities whose enrollments consist of at least 25 percent Latino students.
Cal State San Bernardino’s enrollment is almost 35 percent Hispanic.
Quick Takes
When 11-year-old Nate’s leg is crushed in an accident
on his family’s small Nebraska farm, he is bitterly resentful of
the orphan John Worth, whom his father takes in to pick up the work Nate
can’t do. John had lost his family in a New York City tenement fire.
“Worth,” a novel by CSUSB English professor Alexandria LaFaye,
is the winner of the 2005 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction.
A short, sparse novel, the book tells the Orphan Train story from Nate’s
viewpoint. Thousands of children were sent from crowded orphanages and
homes in the Northeast to live with families on farms throughout the Midwest
from the 1850s to the early 20th century.
Teresa Cotner, assistant professor of art at Cal State
San Bernardino, has received the Outstanding Higher Education Visual Art
Educator Award for 2004 by the California Art Education Association. Cotner
won the award, in part based on her supervisory work with student teachers
and interns, and also for her efforts in developing and teaching the first
on-line art class at CSUSB. Another award recipient in recent months was
Kathryn Ervin, chair of CSUSB’s theatre department. She received
a Pioneer Award from the San Bernardino branch of the NAACP in December.
A theatre arts professor at CSUSB since 1989, Ervin was recognized for
“bringing the [theatre] department to another level in regard to
community awareness,” said Walter Jarman, president of the NAACP
San Bernardino branch.
