Academic literature on the topic 'Family – Egypt – Antiquities'

The National Museum in Warsaw, founded in 1916, took over the function of the older Museum of Fine Arts in Warsaw, founded in 1862. Between 1918 and 1922, the National Museum was systematically enriched through donations by private persons and institutions. One of the most important collections, placed there in 1919, was that originating from an old private museum owned by the Tyszkiewicz family in Łohojsk, donated through the agency of the Society of Fine Arts ‘Zachęta’ in Warsaw. The museum in Łohojsk (today in Belarus, not far from Minsk) was founded by Konstanty Tyszkiewicz (1806–1868). The rich collection of family portraits, paintings, engravings, and other works of art was enriched in 1862 by Count Michał Tyszkiewicz (1828–1897), who bequeathed a substantial part of the Egyptian antiquities brought from his travel to Egypt in 1861–1862. The Łohojsk collection was partly sold by Konstanty’s son, Oskar Tyszkiewicz (1837–1897), but some of these objects were purchased in 1901 by a cousin of Michał Tyszkiewicz, who then donated them to the Society of Fine Arts ‘Zachęta’. At this stage, the whole collection amounted to 626 items, of which 163 were connected to Egypt. During World War II, the National Museum in Warsaw suffered serious losses. At present, the exhibits originating from Łohojsk include 113 original ancient Egyptian pieces, four forgeries, and 29 paper squeezes reproducing the reliefs from the tomb of Khaemhtat of the 18th Dynasty (Theban tomb no. 57).

Thomas Christiansen: The Engineer and the Egyptian Mummies: A Scoop from the 1910s The article contains a wealth of new and valuable information on important ancient Egyptian objects that are today housed and on display in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and the Museum of Ancient Art (Antikmuseet) in Aarhus. Using Mediestream – a service provided by the Royal Library that allows you to access and search more than 35 million digitised Danish newspaper pages – it tells the curious story of a Danish engineer, Jacob Kjeldsen (1873‑1914), and three ancient Egyptian mummiesand coffins from the 21st Dynasty (c. 1070‑950 BCE). From the study of these newspapers it emerges that, during a trip to Egypt in 1910, Kjeldsen had acquired three mummies and coffins in Luxor from Mohammed Abd er-Rasul – a son of the infamous antiquities dealer Mohammed Ahmed Abd er-Rasul – who had discovered them in a tomb in Deir el-Bahari. Shortly after Kjeldsen’s return to Copenhagen, descriptions of the objects began to circulate in the press, and ValdemarSchmidt (1836‑1925), the first Danish Egyptologist, acquired the coffin and mummy of a priest of Amun by the name of Khonshotep for the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (inv. ÆIN 1069). During the autumn of the same year, Kjeldsen tried to sell his two remaining mummies, both female priestesses of Amun, and their coffins to the Museum of Aarhus (Aarhus Museum), but without success. Instead, they were impounded and auctioned off by the town magistrate in 1912, because Kjeldsen owed money to a patent office inCopenhagen. This is the last reference to the two mummies in the newspapers, until one of them cropped up out of the blue in Aarhus. In 1950 the newspapers reported that an industrialist, Ivan Lystager (1904‑1985), had donated an Egyptian mummy and coffin to the newly founded Museum of Ancient Art in Aarhus. The name, Taubasti, and titles, ‘Lady of the House’ and ‘Chantress of Amun’, inscribed on the coffin (inv. O 303) leave no room for doubt that it and the accompanying mummy once belonged to Kjeldsen. A letter in the archives of the museum informs us that Lystager had bought them in an antiquities shop in Copenhagen in 1939. The fate of Kjeldsen’s last mummy and coffin and their current whereabouts are still unknown. From the newspapers it can be deduced that the coffin stems from the same period (the 21st Dynasty) and was made for a woman, who also bore the titles ‘Lady of the House’ and ‘Chantress of Amun’, and probably answered to the name of Tamit. Because of onomastics and the fact that the three coffins all derive from the same period and were made for members of clergy of Amun in Thebes, it is likely that Mohammed Abd er-Rasul found the three mummies interred together in an unknown family tomb in Deir el-Bahari in 1910. The article is therefore supplemented with an appendix, which provides a catalogue of the names and titles inscribed in hieroglyphs on the two coffins in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the Museum of Ancient Art. Hopefully, it can assist researchers in the search for the now lost coffin and mummy (and potentially other grave goods from the same tomb) in state and private ancient Egyptian collections around the world.

Abstract Formed by the Kent family – farmers and landowners from the north of England – the little-known Kent collection brought together antiquities from Greece, Rome, Egypt and Cyprus, alongside weapons, armour, furniture and textiles. On the death of Benjamin Kent in 1968, most of the collection was bequeathed to the Harrogate Corporation, sparking debate on the value of such heterogeneous collections for general public audiences. This article investigates the collection’s history, examining the practices that formed it, the quasi-museum setting of the Kent family home, and the collection’s display following its transfer to municipal ownership. We focus on the ancient Cypriot objects, some of which can be traced to Thomas Backhouse Sandwith, British vice-consul on Cyprus from 1865 to 1870 and an important figure in the early collecting of Cypriot antiquities in the UK. Through this exploration, we consider how histories of collections, especially smaller-scale collections of private individuals, can re-contextualize objects and enrich their interpretation.

Before moving to Canada, Vincent and Olga Diniacopoulos acquired a large collection of antiquities. After settling in Montreal, they continued their activity of art dealers and collectors. In 2001, Queen’s Department of Classics and the Art Conservation Program acquired a large number of ancient pieces from the collection, including 627 Greek and Roman coins from different periods, still to be treated and identified. In my research project, I am currently working on cataloguing and identifying all of the coins in the collection. The coins in the collection are the best way for students to gain firsthand knowledge with artifacts from a research perspective. The study of ancient coins is one of the traditional fields of Classical archaeology because of their imagery, frequently complex and intricate in spite of the small space available, their direct connection to figures and events of ancient history and their use for civic and dynastic propaganda. The majority of the coins identified thus far appear to have been minted in Alexandria in Egypt, a country where the Diniacopoulos family lived for a while and acquired a large part of their collection. In my poster, I aim to present the project and to discuss a few coins that have been already identified.

Thesis (MA (Ancient Studies)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study deals with the ancient Egyptian family. Cultural anthropology is used as a point of departure to reconstruct the daily lives of the ancient Egyptians. Cultural anthropology usually applies to living communities but most of the principles it uses are just as relevant in the study of a dead culture. The emphasis of this study is on the different cultural domains, which include education, religion, family livelihoods, family recreation, entertaimnent and travel and social organization and how these are interrelated. Most of our ancient Egyptian knowledge comes from the tombs of wealthy individuals, and thus incomplete since we have no record of how peasants perceived the world, as they could not afford a good burial. Other sources are the ancient documents and artefacts from town sites all associated with wealthy individuals. While peasants were too poor to send their children to school, wealthier Egyptians did send their children to school especially boys. Agriculture was central in ancient Egyptian life. The nobility and other higher classes depended on the toil of the peasant for basic commodities and food. The peasant families in the rural areas were unable to attend the lavish festivals in the cities. Their basic focus was centred on their homes, families and on the success of the harvest. The peasant had his own private god or gods to whom he could tum for aid or comfort in times of trouble. Surplus items of food, clothing, oil and such like could be used for barter for purchasing essential items for everyday living. During their spare time the Egyptian families entertained friends, engaged in the various pastimes and travel. The peasant, as providers of food, formed an important social base for the Egyptian state.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie handel oor die Egiptiese familie. Kulturele antropologie word gebruik as metode om die daaglikse lewe van die antieke Egiptenare te rekonstrueer. Kulturele antropologie word gewoonlik op "lewende" gemeenskappe toegepas, maar die beginsels daarvan is net so relevant vir die bestudering van "dooie" kulture. Die fokus van hierdie studie is op die verskillende kulturele domeine wat insluit onderrig, religie, familie aktiwiteite, familie ontspanning, vermaak, reis en sosiale organisasie en hoe hierdie domeine op mekaar inwerk. Meeste van die kennis oor antieke Egipte word verkry uit die grafte van ryk individue en is daarom gebrekkig ten opsigte van kleinboere en hul siening van die wêreld, omdat hulle nie behoorlike grafte kon bekostig nie. Ander bronne is die antieke tekste en artefakte wat gevind word in dorpe, wat ook meestal behoort het aan ryk persone. Die kleinboere kon nie bekostig om hul kinders na 'n skool te stuur nie, maar ryk Egiptenare kon wel - veral dan seuns. Landbou was baie belangrik tot Egiptiese lewe. Die aristokrasie en ander klasse was afhanklik van die sukkelbestaan van kleinboere om hulle te voorsien van die basiese goedere en voedsel. Kleinboer families, wat in die platteland gebly het kon nie die groot feeste in die stede bywoon nie. Hul persoonlike oortuigings het daarom gefokus op die huishouding, familie en suksesvolle oeste. Kleinboere het 'n persoonlike god of gode gehad wat tot hul hulp kon kom, of troos kon bied in tye van krisis. Surplus goedere soos, onder andere, voedsel, klere en olie kon as ruilmiddel gebruik word om ander items wat benodig word, te bekom. In vrye tyd het families vriende onthaal, verskillende stokperdjies beoefen en rondgereis. Die kleinboere, as verskaffers van voedsel, het 'n belangrike sosiale basis van die Egiptiese staat gevorm.

The discovery and collection of multilingual inscriptions through excavation and the antiquities trade in the nineteenth century played a crucial role in the decipherment of Egyptian scripts. The history of the modern ownership of inscriptions now located in Egypt, Europe, and North America and their role in the development of Egyptology are closely linked. The chapter traces the history of scholarship on several Greek-Egyptian texts, including an unpublished inscription from the Delta, a decree in honour of a member of a prominent family from Upper Egypt, foundation plaques from a temple of Hathor-Aphrodite, and a sphinx from Koptos. The reassembly of stones which were often dispersed and broken into separate pieces through circumstances of excavation or the antiquities market allows us to establish equivalences between Egyptian and Greek concepts, people, and places, and sheds light on the sociolinguistic situation in individual communities, and in Egypt as a whole.

Chapter 9 anchors the history of the rediscovery of ancient Egypt in the archaeological site of Tell el-Amarna (Tall al-ʿAmarnah), Pharaonic Akhetaten, the city of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), abandoned after his death, together with his religion and cult of the Sun Disc. Excavated before the First World War by German Egyptologists, Amarna was reclaimed by British Egyptological institutions after it. It had a special hold on the archaeological imagination, on visual culture, as well as on the contemporary political imagination. Amarna and its ruler were associated with modernity in discussions on topics ranging from urban and suburban planning and living, through the modern family, to anti-war politics. Amarna’s ephemeral existence was interpreted as a failure of a utopia and as an imperial crisis at the heyday of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, analogous to the imperial crisis of the 1930s and to issues of Britain’s imperial defence. The chapter, which focuses on the excavations under the directorship of J. D. L. Pendlebury, follows representations of Amarna in popular and professional publications, as well as the material history of the findings and their circulation which reflected the economics of Egyptology. The chapter traces the exchange of Amarna objects for financial support, by museums in the USA (mainly the Brooklyn Museum) and in Belgium. The materiality and mobility of Amarna objects are connected to their value and uses, and their emotional value for collectors and archaeologists. The chapter also offers a history of the feelings towards ancient Egypt, demonstrated in the writing of archaeological workers like Mary Chubb.