Crossroads Roundup: Egyptian Tombs, Dutch Art at Auction, and Barbara Shermund

The latest news in art, archaeology, culture, and more.

May 30, 2025

Happy summer, Crossroads community! Crossroads HQ is on vacation this week, so this edition of the Roundup will be a bit shorter than usual. But there are still plenty of exciting stories to explore…

An Egyptian burial complex with three tombs has been discovered in Luxor.

Hieroglyphs found inside the burial complex in Luxor. Via the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The complex dates back to the New Kingdom era (1539 to 1077 BC), and contains the tombs of three prominent statesmen. Egyptian archaeologists made the discovery in the Dra’Abu El Naga, a necropolis that served as the resting place for high-status (though non-royal) individuals.

The research team determined the tombs’ owners thanks to inscriptions found on their walls. The statesmen included an individual named Amun-em-Ipet, who worked for the temple or the estate of Amun, a granary supervisor named Baki, and a mayor, scribe, and supervisor for the temple of Amun named Es.

This find comes on the heels of two major discoveries in Egyptology this year: in February, a team of British and Egyptian archaeologists found the tomb of Thutmose II. A few weeks later, a team of Egyptian and American archeologists announced their discovery of an unknown pharaoh’s tomb in the Mount Anubis necropolis in Abydos. If you missed March’s Roundup, you can read more here.

Art news: Piet Mondrian, Frans Post, and… Flannery O’Connor?

*Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue*, Piet Mondrian ca. 1922. Via Christie’s.

This month, the Dutch Modern artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) made headlines for the auction of his 1922 abstract work, Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black, and Blue. The sale nearly broke Mondrian’s record, with a final price of $47.6 million. (Mondrian’s highest-selling piece to date is his 1930 Composition No. II, which sold at Sotheby’s for $51 million in 2022.)

*View of Olinda, Brazil, with Ruins of the Jesuit Church*, Frans Post ca. 1666. Via Sotheby’s.

Another Dutch artist was in the news: the Old Master Frans Post, who worked during the Dutch Golden Age and became the earliest trained European artist to paint landscapes of the Americas. His 1666 work, View of Olinda, Brazil, with Ruins of the Jesuit Church, was found in an attic in 1998 in terrible condition. The piece was carefully restored, and this month, it sold at auction for over $7 million.

“O’Connor’s depiction of her mother, dressed in green, at Andalusia Farm.” © Anna Gay Leavitt / Georgia College & State University

But what really caught my attention was this article in the Smithsonian Magazine about Flannery O’Connor. As it turns out, the acclaimed Southern novelist and short story writer was also a painter. A collection of her little-known art is now on view at Georgia College & State University, which features works painted at Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, where O’Connor spent the last fourteen years of her life before passing in 1964.

A few more archaeological discoveries…

Relief found under the throne room in the North Palace of Nineveh. © Aaron Schmitt

In the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nineveh (located in present-day Mosul, Iraq), researchers found a rare relief depicting the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal and two prominent deities: Ashur, Assyria’s national god, and Ishtar, goddess of love and war. The relief was found buried in the throne room of Nineveh’s north palace, though the reasons for its burial are unclear. It’s the first relief found in an Assyrian palace to depict major gods.

Researchers have also discovered a wealth of ancient Buddhist relics buried underneath Thailand’s oldest reclining Buddha statue in Wat Dhammachak Semaram, a 1,300-year-old temple in northeastern Thailand.

And at Vindolanda, the Roman fort south of Hadrian’s Wall in Northern England, two volunteers participating in excavations found a relief of a winged goddess. Researchers have identified her as Victoria, the Roman goddess and personification of victory (the equivalent of the Greek Nike)—quite fitting for a military fort.

And finally, a trailblazing female cartoonist who captured the culture of the Roaring Twenties and beyond:

I absolutely loved this profile on Barbara Shermund, one of the first female cartoonists for the New Yorker whose career spanned the 1920s through the 1960s. Despite her prolific output, she died in relative obscurity in 1978—until a distant relative and a cartoon historian worked together to bring Shermund’s work to the public again.