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Museums
Museums with Egyptology collections are featured here. If you wish to see which are best for studying Predynastic collections, please go to the Predynastic page.
These are organized first by country, starting with the UK, and then alphabetically.
UK
The Ashmolean Museum
http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk
A small but truly excellent collection of Egyptian artefacts dating from predynastic to late dynastic times. There are only four galleries (small ones) devoted to Egypt, but the quality of the material and its variety is excellent and worth a trip.
Bolton Museum, Manchester
http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/HTML/archaeology_egyptology_ancient.asp
The Bolton Museum has a little-known but very good Egyptology collection. This link offers a description of the collection, but also use the menu bar to the left, click on Museum Collections and then Egyptology to see photographs from different periods in Ancient Egypt that are held in the collection.
British Museum, London
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/
The British Museum has a great collection - the public spend most of their time in the two mummy galleries (which contain very beautiful mummy coffins dating to Middle and New Kingdom, Late Period, Ptolemaic and Roman periods). The Egyptian Sculpture gallery on the ground floor is superb and contains some remarkable monumental pieces aswell as the Rosetta Stone and the Abydos King List. There are also a Predynastic gallery and a Nubian gallery which are both very well worth the visit.
Petrie Museum, London
http://www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk/
As well as Dynastic artefacts, the Petrie has one of the best Predynastic collections on show in the world. It also has some small but fine Amarna pieces and a stunning collection of pottery.
Swansea - Museum of Ancient Egyptian Antiquities
http://www.swan.ac.uk/egypt/infosheet/Collection.htm
3500 objects from a turn of the century private collection, now housed in a museum in south Wales.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/livmus/humanities/egypt.asp
A very short description of the museum's 15,000 strong Egyptology collection. The collection includes the items from John Garstang's excavations in Beni Hassan.
Egypt
Egyptian Museum, Cairo
http://www.touregypt.net/egyptmuseum/egyptian_museum.htm
The Tour Egypt's web page for the Cairo Museum.
Nubia Museum
http://www.sis.gov.eg/nubia/flash/nubia.html
An extremely irritiating website built in Flash 6 which, however, provides introductory text to, and photos of, the Nubian Museum.
France
The Louvre, Paris
http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm
The Louvre has a vast and very well organised Egyptology collection on two floors. It organises material in two ways: the first collection is organised in terms of activities (agriculture, crafts etc) and the second is organised by chronology (from the predynastic onwards). The artefacts are excellent, including many every day items. The mummies are very varied, and well arranged. It is far too much to take in in one go, but absolutely fascinating.
Germany
The Egyptian Museum in Berlin
http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/amp/e/s.html
Short English language section of the Museum's website
Netherlands
National Museum of Antiquities, The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden
http://www.rmo.nl/new/home.html
In the left hand menu bar go to Presentation and then Egyptians for a preview of the Egyptian collections.
US
Boston Museum of Fine Art
www.mfa.org (Home Page)
http://www.mfa.org/egypt/explore_ancient_egypt/index.html (Interactive Egyptology)
The MFA re-launched its website in August 2005, with enhanced functionality to encourage visitors to interact more deeply with the encyclopedic collection, exhibitions, and calendar of programs. The Egyptian collection pages (the second link) include an interactive guide to the Egyptology collections, complete with video lectures, a virtual dig, articles (don’t forget to click on the little orange arrow at the bottom of each piece of text to navigate to the next page of each article) and learning resources. This is a great resource - take a look.
A notable new feature of the re-launch is an improved and expanded Giza Pyramid Archive which contains thousands of important photos, diary pages, maps, and panoramic views of sites from the MFA/Harvard University excavations from 1902 to 1947: http://www.mfa.org/collections/index.asp?key=19.
Brooklyn Museum, New York
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/
The Egyptian collections at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/department.asp?dep=10
The Egyptology section of the Met features a number of articles, relevant publications, and fifty photographs of top their Egyptology pieces.
Institutions
New: Egyptian Antiquities Information System
http://www.eais.org.eg/
Thanks to Emily Cocke, Archaeological Coordinator at EAIS, for letting me know that the Egyptian Antiquities Information System (EAIS) website has been updated (17th August 2005). I have been looking at this site on a regular basis, and this really is a serious upgrade in terms of both look-and-feel and new content. EAIS is the official Geographic Information System department of the SCA (Supreme Council of Antiquities) and is creating a GIS of all archaeological and historical sites in Egypt - the first official registry of sites listing archaeological data, threat data and site borders on a number of maps. Needless to say, this is vital in creating real site management in Egypt. Samples of their work are shown on the site to provide an insight into the project's goals and achievements. See the site for more details.
The Supreme Council of Antiquities
http://www.sca.gov.eg/
http://www.eternalegypt.org/EternalEgyptWebsiteWeb/HomeServlet?ee_website_action_key=action.display.about&language_id=1&link_key=7
The top link is for the SCA’s own website, but it appears to be down at the time of writing (August 2005), so I have also added a link to a very good summary about the purpose and role of the SCA, provided on the Eternal Egypt website.
The Centre for Documentation of Cultural and National Heritage - CultNat
http://www.cultnat.org/
In their own words, “CultNat is a center specialized in the documentation of the cultural and natural heritage of Egypt. CultNat has a number of projects currently underway:
- An archaeological map of Egypt (using GIS)
- Documentation of Downtown Cairo
- Natural Heritage of Egypt
- Photographic Heritage of Egypt
- Folkloric Heritage
The Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organization (ECHO)
http://www.e-c-h-o.org/index2.htm
An important organization set up by Fekri Hassan and Geoffrey Tassie to detail and address problems with the rapidly decaying archaeological record in Egypt. In their own words: “The Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation (ECHO) is a charitable organisation committed to assisting young Egyptians in preserving and managing the world heritage of Egypt as the most effective, long-term, sustainable and least expensive means of safeguarding the threatened archaeological record.” ECHO offers membership to enable visitors to support their work, organizes tours, events, publications, online news and articles and, most importantly, funds important projects .
Friends of Nekhen
http://www.hierakonpolis.org/friends/friends.html
The Hierakonpolis (Nekhen) website is one of the best resources for Predynastic Egypt on the web. Hierakonpolis dates to a time when early Egypt was still a number of polities - large and important, but not yet a unified whole. The excavations at Hierakonpolis are of exceptional importance for understanding how Egypt formed, and the results are fascinating, and quite remarkable in their own right. This remarkable excavation needs help - rising costs, encroaching farm land, and rising ground water to name but some of its challenges. In their own words: “The Friends of Nekhen is a group of concerned organizations and individuals, scholars and lay persons alike, which is helping the Hierakonpolis Expedition to continue its work. Now more than ever, direct public involvement and support are essential to continuing research. Over the last few years, costs have risen steadily, accompanied by a severe reduction in federal support. Continued research is in serious jeopardy. You could make the difference. . . .to support important research that might otherwise not be possible.” Check the link above for more information
The Egyptian Cultural Bureau
The Bureau does not have a website of its own, so I have added their details to a page on this site. The Bureau hosts a number of lectures and courses each season in London, UK, and have some excellent speakers on their annual programme which runs from September to June.
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