Pisa 2013 Talking along the Nile Who discovered Belzoni's Tomb? B. Gessler-Löhr (original) (raw)

Belzoni, the Egyptian Hall, and the Date of a Long-Known Sculpture (1989)

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Pelagio Palagi and the Belzoni Family Collection of Egyptian Antiquities

2021

daniela picchi* (museo civico archeologico, Bologna) luca chilò (university of bologna) The manuscripts describing the origins of the Egyptian collection belonging to Bologna painter Pelagio Palagi are mostly unknown to scholars. Unpublished letters dating from March 1826 to March 1827 have enabled us to reconstruct the sequence of sale negotiations for Egyptian artefacts between Palagi's intermediaries and the family of the Paduan explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni. The negotiations failed but at least one of these objects, a faience shabti from the tomb of Sety I, was later acquired by Palagi on the antiques market. A detailed inventory of the antiquities inherited and offered for sale by Belzoni's family, significantly more than listed in his will, is published here. It lists a number of objects, including a limestone seated statue of the high priest of Amun Hapuseneb, that may also have been acquired by Palagi in the years following the end of negotiations with Belzoni's heirs. These antiquities are now kept at the Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna together with the entire Palagi collection, considered one of Italy's most important and of international relevance. * With this dedication to Emily, I wish to give her heartfelt thanks for the warm welcome she gave me when I joined the CIPEG board, her constant support, and for being an inspiring example as a museum professional.

Shabtis of the Egyptian collection on display at the Stibbert Museum, Florence

Bulletin de la Société d'Égyptologie de Genève , 2023

Le musée Stibbert abrite une petite collection d'objets pharaoniques achetés au marché d'antiquités dans la seconde moitié du XIX e siècle, en particulier une série de six ouchabtis inscrits et datant de la Basse Époque. Ils appartenaient à des prêtres et des officiers importants de la cour royale. * The Stibbert Museum hosts a small collection of Pharaonic artefacts bought at the antiquarian market in the second half of the 19th century, in particular a series of six inscribed shabtis dating back to the Late Period. They belonged to priests and important officers of the royal court.

Understanding Egyptomania. The case of the Sarcophagus of Seti I in Sir John Soane’s Museum.

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Museum History Course, 2018, 2018

The Sir John Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Field could be described as the symbolic pivot of Soane’s legacy and memory, a “web of complex associations and memorializing narratives in which every detail is designed to enshrine some aspect of his life for the benefit of future generations”. The architect of the Bank of England and Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy had collected and displayed a prolific collection throughout the years. The result is a unique house-museum in which antiquities are an essential part of a brilliantly conceived domestic Gesamtkunstwerk exemplifying two paradigms of British collecting, the Antiquarian and the Neoclassical. Soane was influenced by the Enlightenment generation of the 18th-century, but he was also not part of it. He was speaking a similar language, but he had a different perspective, embodying both Neoclassical precepts and Romantic Senshucht. To this extents, the acquisition in 1821 of the Sarcophagus of Seti I (1300 BC), originally part of the Henry Salt’s collection, is to be intended as a crucial moment for the transition from a private collection to a public museum as well as the sublimation of Soane two souls. As a sort of a climax, Soane created a powerful narrative around this object as a reference to intellectual pursuit and to the triumph of the artistic soul over the decadent body.

Scanning Seti: the Re-generation of a Pharaonic Tomb

'Scanning Seti: The Re-generation of a Pharaonic Tomb' celebrates the 200th anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Seti I – perhaps the most important and complete record of the art, science, philosophy, theology, poetry and magic of Ancient Egypt. The first serious facsimile was the re-creation of parts of the tomb made by Giovanni Battista Belzoni and shown at the Egyptian Halls in London in 1821. It caused a sensation, building on the excitement generated by Napoleon’s ‘Discovery of Egypt’. It can be seen as a critical moment in the European love of the Pharaohs and their civilisation. It was one of many events that fuelled the imagination and led Thomas Cook to form the travel agency that made it possible for the general public to first visit Egypt. In the 1880s, the tourism trade in the Middle East was effectively invented by Thomas Cook’s son, John Mason Cook, who became described as ‘the second greatest man in Egypt. An initial trickle of tourists led to a vast industry that grew throughout the 20th century and reached its peak at the end of the first decade of the 21st. But political upheaval in Egypt dramatically reduced the number of visitors to the Theban Necropolis, causing real hardship for those people who depended on them. The 19th century production of Belzoni’s facsimile seriously damaged the fabric of the tomb, as did the hacking out of cultural artifacts and souvenirs. But later so did the presence of millions of visitors a year. Since 2009 the Theban Necropolis Preservation Initiative has been working to rethink the relationship between tourism and preservation, and the facsimiles of rooms I and J are an important part of this work. In contrast to the destruction caused by Belzoni and others, this work is re-uniting with the tomb all the fragments that are scattered in museums around the world. It is a major undertaking that has required the support and involvement of many museums and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. Hopefully it will allow the tomb to once again provoke wonder, interest and amazement, and stimulate a new wave of a different kind of tourism to Egypt. Through an awareness of the extraordinary history of the Valley of the Kings, and the complex task of conserving it, this new generation of tourist will help preserve the tombs rather than contribute to their gradual destruction.