Photo: Lipár 

ALL ART HAS BEEN CONTEMPORARY proclaims the red neon sign on the facade of the Altes Museum, as though the curators felt the need to tempt punters away from Berlin's modern art galleries. But what would you rather see? A bare white room with a tarmac floor – one of the exhibits on display at the 2008 Biennale – or a three-thousand year old corpse swaddled in decorated bandages? And maybe a piece of papyrus with Cleopatra's handwriting on it? No contest for me. The Altes Museum's collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman plunder is far more intriguing and full of life.

I went for another visit this weekend, to see Giacometti sculptures and sketches displayed alongside their Ancient Egyptian ancestors, his standing figures striking the same pose as a kouros from 1200BC. It's fitting – the mainstay of the museum's collection actually comes from the workshop of a sculptor called Thutmos, so there are maquettes and samples, including the most famous piece, a bust of Queen Nefertiti with one blank eye and a neck like a super model.

I like the smaller, weirder artifacts: a case full of little humanoids – votive figurines from Olympia – with their arms outstretched like zombies. Or an alabaster princess from Egypt, whose headdress has been smoothed into her forehead, making her look something they found at Roswell. These ladies, the Baubo, look like surrealist toys – Baubo was a nurse who decided to cheer up the Greek goddess Demeter, who had just lost her daughter Persephone, by lifting up her skirts and showing her her privates. Apparently it did the trick, and now Baubo is immortalised as a face on legs; the statuettes may have been gifts to make the goddess laugh.

Photo: Maria Flávia CN

Afterwards I tracked back up the Kupfergraben near the Pergamon Museum where there's a Saturday antique market you can browse for your own twentieth century artifacts to take home. Among the coins, stamps and comic books were bundles of vintage dirty postcards featuring ladies as shameless as Baubo. I think I should have bought a few to give future archaeologists some food for thought.

ALTES MUSEUM; Museumsinsel; Berlin