A Seal from the Other World

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow has one of the world’s greatest collections of art, with more than 700,000 artifacts – yet the Jewish treasures of the museum have never been exposed. Join award-winning author Matti Friedman as he takes us on a rare tour and a glimpse of Jewish history and culture as they appear in the treasures of the Pushkin Museum.

Beit Avi Chai’s Ideas Without Borders presents the fourth episode of the Let Objects Speak: Jewish Artifacts in Russian Museums series that focuses on a unique Egyptian seal with its owner’s name inscribed in both Egyptian and Aramaic script, embodying the strange, and largely forgotten, marriage of the Egyptian and Jewish civilizations on a beautiful island in the Nile.

Script: Julia Idlis
English script: Matti Friedman
Director: Daria Shtyrkova
Videographer: Andrey Kovalenko
Academic Consultant: Alexey Lyavdansky
Voice-over: Matti Friedman
Music: Masha Logofet
Sound Mix: Alex Nadzharov
Animation: Vadim Tugeev, Galina Palchik
Edit: Evgeniy Todich

Beit Avi Chai is grateful to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow for permission to film the artifacts.

Beit Avi Chai: Dr. David Rozenson, CEO; Dr. Simon Parizhsky, educational director of the Ideas Without Borders project; Svetlana Busygina, administrative director IWB.