They weren't as good as the 1998 effort, which was very expensive, but at something like 10% of the cost they suitably marked the occasion.
Before your columnist recurs to a more distant past, and an interesting new development, first a correction.
In my last column I wrote about Joanna Paul's Stations of the Cross, recently revealed again at the St Mary, Star of the Sea church in Port Chalmers.
I mentioned Ms Paul and her then husband having a daughter called Ingrid.
That was so but her middle name was Magdalena, the name by which she was usually known. After her sister Imogen's death there were two more boys, not a girl and a boy, Felix and Pascal. Ms Paul's sister, Charlotte, has favoured me with this information.
A new tomb of a Pharaonic queen has been discovered in Egypt. Her name isn't really known but she reigned in the Ramesside period, that is, between 1314 and 1085 BC.
The tomb had been robbed but fragments on funerary statues may narrow the search. There is an inscription, transliterated as ''Karomama'' which should assist her identification.
Most accounts of what we consider to be modern European art go back to the ancient Greeks. The images painted on the sides of fired Attic pots are astonishingly realistic and dynamic. (I recommend a visit to the Otago Museum.)
It's also been realised that this tradition, or style, came from Crete where it had flourished about 700 years before Homer. (Not he of the Simpsons but an earlier mortal of the same name.) It's mostly visual fireworks, but certainly effective.
What has taken longer to filter through is that human portraiture of the thoughtful sort was also an Egyptian invention. Whatever queen may be identified in the recent discovery there has long been Nefertiti.
She is estimated to have lived between 1370 and 1330 BC. She was the principal wife and probably the sister of Akhenaten, a Pharoah who attempted a religious revolution. Instead of worshipping many gods they attempted monotheism in the form of worshipping the sun alone. Eventually, a son, Tutankhamen, took over and the revolution was reversed.
This is known to us from inscriptions rather painfully deciphered from the late 18th century, starting from the French discovery of the Rosetta Stone. But that's probably not the reason for Nefertiti's fame which is a bust statue now in Berlin.
It is an astonishing depiction of a very grave woman with an anatomically improbable neck, high cheekbones, prominent, arched eyebrows and an absurd Pharaonic hat.
It portrays someone of strength, feeling and wisdom, also an individual one would like to know. Thousands of years have passed since her death.
But this is the first such depiction of any human being we know of. By comparison Cretan art is just squiggles and Attic pots only elegant silhouettes.
It took the Romans, of all people, those masters of drains, warfare and administration, to re-engage and succeed with the novelty and challenge of portraiture. After they went it disappeared. While the Chinese invented porcelain and abstract art they never produced anything like Nefertiti.
I've often asked myself what makes really impressive works of art so compelling. After decades of rumination I've come up with the very helpful answer: `they are authoritative', which is only to repeat, they are compelling.
Art is extraordinarily varied, its subjects numerous and its methods manifold. Most attempts don't usually pay off. But when they do the reward, if not for the producer, is in the collision with beauty and reality for the ''consumer''. Nefertiti has this in spades.
She doesn't smile. She isn't young. We have only part of her shoulders, her neck, face, and ridiculous hat. But she is astonishingly some individual.
She is certainly hieratic in a considered and effective manner - we're meant to be impressed by her rank and distinction - but she, or this sculpture, is also breathtakingly beautiful and particular. It may well be a fiction but this inanimate object has the power to persuade us there was once such a woman.
She had many titles, probably many undeserved: Hereditary Princess, Great of Praises, Lady of Grace, Sweet of Love, Lady of all Women, Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt. Her full name was apparently Neferneferuaten Nefertiti but somebody unknown made the bust.
There are other statues and incised stones depicting her.
The full length nude figure also in the Aegyptisches Berlin Museum does seem to show the same individual. The hieratic face with its brows, cheeks, mouth and chin are all there, if not so very impressively.
I recommend the bust of which there is a copy in the Otago Museum.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
