Ancient Egyptian Collections in Scottish Museums

Abstract

• Several reviews of collections have been conducted historically, though they have not been focused in the same manner as that under discussion presently. For example, in 1887 the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland conducted a report on local museums in Scotland, funded by a financial gift. The report, published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1888 included around thirty museums across the country, summarising their entire holdings over close to a hundred pages. Across this report, Egypt was mentioned fifteen times, most commonly referring to mummified human and animal remains. Between 2005 and 2006, a review of ancient Egyptian and Sudanese collections in the UK was conducted by Margaret Serpico on behalf of The Association for Curators of Collections from Egypt and Sudan (ACCES) subject-specialist network, funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). The aim of the project was to make information about the content and scope of Ancient Egyptian and Sudanese collections in the UK publicly available through www.cornucopia.org.uk. This work was based upon previous work conducted by the British Museum, which had been compiling information about collections across the UK for several decades. The report (published as Past, Present and Future: An Overview of Ancient Egyptian and Sudanese Collections in the UK) identified sixteen institutions with ancient Egyptian and Sudanese collections, holding approximately 18,275 objects. Further work conducted by British Museum staff following the ACCES review was not published. An assessment of collections in Scotland was carried out by the Scottish Egyptology Collections Network. Following changes in museum services and local authorities over the past decades, the present review re-establishes a map of collections in Scotland, includes previously unknown object, donor and collection details, and corrects previous errors. Twenty-five Scottish collections are now known to have Egyptian objects, spread across nearly fifty sites; an increase of 56% on the sixteen that were identified previously. The collections vary greatly in size from the smallest, Linlithgow Heritage Trust with two objects, to the largest, National Museums Scotland with over 6,000 objects. In total, the current review was able to locate around 14,000 objects. The provision of digital records and images by partner museums, as well as their facilitation of collection visits, has enabled highly detailed information to be gathered. This includes amassing the largest ever number of named donors of Egyptian objects to Scottish museums, as well as providing the most detailed breakdown of sites represented and their relationships to excavations conducted. Alongside this quantitative data, qualitative information has also been greatly improved. Hundreds of objects have been identified and researched for the first time, including objects produced for the 19th and 20th century tourist markets - objects which were not discussed in previous reviews. Broadly, this project has increased both institutional knowledge and the confidence of partner museums to display and interpret their collections, leading to new displays, education programmes and other outputs. A summary of this impact, as well as suggestions for future work, can be found at the end of this report.