The staff meeting of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Egyptian Art was supposed to start at ten, which meant associate curator Charlotte Cross arrived at nine to prepare her colleagues for battle.

The department had never been so busy. Two months ago, Charlotte had overseen the opening of the Temple of Dendur, which had been plucked from the banks of the Nile (with the blessing of the Egyptian government) and reconstructed at the Met in a special exhibit hall featuring a slanted wall of glass overlooking Central Park. Next month, the King Tutankhamun ­exhibition—which had been touring America to great acclaim for the past couple of ­years—was scheduled to have its final stop at the Met. The prospect of millions of visitors descending upon the museum had put pressure on everyone, including Charlotte’s boss, Frederick, who much preferred wooing donors to dealing with departmental logistics.

The Met was closed on Mondays, but only to visitors. For the employees, much of the behind-the-scenes work was accomplished on the first day of the workweek: handlers moved paintings from one gallery to another, the curatorial team might oversee the installation of a new exhibition, technicians performed condition checks of antiquities, while lampers wandered from gallery to gallery, necks craned, searching for blown-out lightbulbs. Monday was Charlotte’s favorite day, when the museum felt like a private playground, the staff free to roam about without being accosted for directions to the nearest bathroom.