The Egyptian Collection in the MANN

Along with its famous Pompeian antiquities and the Farnese collection, the MANN can boasts one of the most ancient Egyptian collection in Europe. The Museum's Egyptian Collection comprises some 2500 items dating from the beginning of the Dynastic era to the end of the Byzantine era (3000 BC-640 AD), some 2250 of which are on display, including some that are unique or of exceptional historical relevance. Except for a group of Egyptian and Egyptianizing objects (i.e. those that imitated Egyptian workmanship), found in excavations carried out in the time of the Bourbon kings of Naples in Pompeii, Herculaneum and various other archaeological sites in Campania during the second half of the 18th century, they were acquired between 1803 and 1917, through the acquisition of private collections, which were put together in different period, and under different circumstances, hence reflecting different collecting attittudes, tastes and cultural motivations of the collectors.

In Room 18, a display of 18-century fakes, exemples of antique furnishings of the early exhibit designs, 19-century casts of Egyptian monuments - whose original are now kept in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo - and a gigantic reproduction of a painting by Paolo Vetri (Enna 1855 - Naples 1937), titled Museum (1875) and inspired by Giuseppe Fiorelli's installation in the post-unification period (1864-1866) - whose original is now kept in the Intesa Sanpaolo/Gallerie d’Italia Collection, Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano (Naples) - evoke the settings and the fascinating atmospheres of past museological arrangements of the collection.

A number of Egyptian and Egyptianizing objects (i.e. those that imitated Egyptian workmanship) have come to light in Campania, mainly in excavations carried out from the Bourbon period onward in Roman sites along the Phlegraean and Vesuvian coast. These antiquities bear witness to the diffusion of the cults of Egyptian gods such as Isis, Anubis and Serapis ever since the late Republic. Following Augustus’ conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, these cults spread throughout the Roman Empire. It became fashionable to decorate temples, baths, houses and gardens with Egyptian objects, for cultic or merely ornamental purposes. This fashion generated a demand for locally made imitation Egyptian objects.

Unearthed between 1764 and 1766, the temple dedicated to the goddess Isis in Pompeii is the most significant evidence of the phenomenon of the spread of egyptian religion in ancient Campanian towns. It is perharps the unique Iseum outside Egypt whose structure and decoration was almost completely preserved and, most significantly, in antiquity it was the only one to have been entirely restored in the period between the earthquake of 62 AD and the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Made famous by 18th century travelers on the Grand Tour, along with other Egyptian and Egyptianizing objects unhearthed in Campania, in the decade 1770-1780 - hence long before Napoleon's Expedition to Egypt (1798-99) and the post-napoleonic rediscovering of the Egyptian civilization - it became a unique source of inspiration for the earliest forms of "Egittomania" in Italy and in Europe.  

The statue of the "Noble, Prince, royal seal-beares, close friend (of the king), Director of the House of the Two Crowns, Priest of Horus, Head of the Dep District, Superintendent of the Seals, Wahibramerineit, son of Taqerenet", dating back to the XXVIth dynasty (664-525 BC), is one of the first Egyptian monuments to enter the Naples Museum, whose inventories attest to its presence as early as 1803. The naophore is a category of sculpture typical of Egyptian sculpture that make its first appearance in the New kingdom and is attested until the 30th dynasty. It represents generally a standing or a kneeling a figure of a man - being an official or a priest - holding in front of himself a small shrine containig a divine figure - here Osiris - or divine emblems. The name and titles of the owner of the statue, sculpted as usual on the back pillar of the statue,  is reported in the form of the "saitic formula" (from the name of the XXVIth dynasty capital, Sais, in the Delta), which the faithful prayed for the protection and the well-being of their city-god.

The Bourbon phase in the history of the Egyptian collection saw the largest increase in the quantity of materials, with the acquisition of various core collections different in size and kinds of objects. In 1821, the 18th-century Borgia collection came to form the most important core of the newly established "Portico of Egyptian Monuments". For the Bourbon Royal House the acquisition of this collection became a welcome occasion to increase the its dynastic prestige by developing the Museum according the most recent European trends. The Egyptian collection continued to grow until 1917 through the incorporation of several purchased or donated collections and individual objects. The addition of two steles donated in 1825 by H.R.H the Duke of Calabria, the small Hogg collection recently identified, the Schnars collection and the gilded heads of mummies from Thebes donated by the traveler Rudhart are interesting episodes in the formation of the collection. But  the most significant new addition in this period was the 19th-century collection of the Florentine Giuseppe Picchianti and his wife, the Venetian Countess Angelica Drosso acquired between 1827 and1828. 

Characteristic expressions of the prevalent cultural attitudes to Egyptian antiquities in their respective formative periods, the Borgia collection and the Picchianti's one makes the Neapolitan collection a valuable record of the history of Egyptological collecting in 18th and 19th centuries.

Largely shaped by the reading of Greek and Latin classic and models of classical sculpture, the Borgia collection is a remarkable testimony of the 18th century’s perception of ancient Egypt before Napoleon’s expedition (1798-1799). Along with a few forgeries, it includes almost all the sculptures now in the Egyptian collection of the MANN, among which statues reduced to portrait busts or heads, to create works evidently recalling classical sculpture and more closely matching the 18th-century collecting taste. It also comprises  a number of funerary and religious objects, mostly from the Delta and the Memphite region, which were more easily accessible to 18th-century Europeans.

The Picchianti collection is a typical testimony of the early 19th-century antiquarian tradition and as such offers an interesting contrast to the 18th-century Borgia collection. The collection is mostly formed of funerary objects, expecially mummies, coffins, canopic vases, and shabties of various periods. It also includes some everyday-use objects placed in tombs as grave-goods such as food and cosmetics conteiners, mirrors, sandals etc., which were lacking in the Egyptian collections of previous centuries. Picchianti’s collection reflects the typically European 19th-century romantic taste for the exotic and macabre, inspired by the huge cultural impact of the Napoleonic Expedition to Egypt (1798-99) and the news of the sensational finds made there by famous adventurers of the time, especially the Paduan Giovanbattista Belzoni.

The Borgia collection was started in the late 17th century by Clemente Erminio Borgia, who gathered objects found near Rome and Velletri in his family residence. In the second half of the 18th century, Cardinal Stefano Borgia augmented the collection considerably and was thus able to establish up a true private museum.

Stefano Borgia, born in Velletri in 1731, had a keen interest in history and antiquary. His political and ecclesiastical activities, as Secretary and later Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, offered him opportunities to pursue his interest in the collecting of ancient objects, and the acquiring of Oriental antiquities through an increasing number of missionaries sent in countries where other religions had prevailed. He was thus able to transform the core collection into a treasure trove of artifacts “from the four corners of the world.” and to acquire a great quantity of Coptic manuscripts and much earlier objects brought back from Egypt with them, putting together the most complete Egyptian collection of his time. 

 After Stefano Borgia’s death in 1804, his collection was dismembered and divided between the Congregation of Propaganda Fide and the Cardinal’s nephew, Camillo Borgia. After early attempts to sell it to the king of Denmark, that were blocked by the Pope’s veto, in 1814 Camillo sold the collection to Joachim Murat, king of Naples.



The Naples museum thus acquired the whole Velletri collection, including its Egyptian section. It comprised 628 objects of various types, including shabtis, small and middle-sized sculptures –among which were some valuable specimens, such as the “Dama di Napoli” and the Monument of Amenemone –, coffins, bronzes, and also a few fakes.

Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt (1798-99), although a military failure, had a huge cultural impact in Europe. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone in (1799) and the subsequent decipherment of hieroglyphs (1821-22), the publication of the monumental Description de l’Égypte (1809-1828), followed by I Monumenti dell'Egitto e della Nubia ( 1832-44) by Ippolito Rosellini and the Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (1849-58) by Carl Richard Lepsius, and the news of sensational finds in the Nile Valley sparked the interest of Europeans in pharaonic civilization, leading to a systematic exploration of the country and its antiquities and a growing demand for ancient objects.  Cairo saw the rise of a flourishing antiquities market for avid seekers of treasures bought on the spot. The hope of easy gains in the antiquities trade drew very different figures – explorers, collectors, and adventurers, including some Italians, such as the renowned Belzoni who made sensational discoveries in Egypt and Nubia. The sale of collections put together in Egypt at the time led to the formation of the nineteenth-century Egyptian sections that we admire in European museums. This is the context in which Giuseppe Picchianti put together his own collection, an important testimony of the antiquarian tradition of the nineteenth century, contrasting sharply with the eighteenth-century tradition documented by the Borgia collection.

In 1827, the Venician Countess Angelica Drosso Picchianti and the Florentine Giuseppe Picchianti offered for sale to the Royal Bourbon Museum a “collection of Egyptian monuments of various kinds” put together in Egypt during a ten-year journey, which archive documents place between 1814 and 1825. We lack biographical information about the two and only few clues survive about the itinerary they followed in Egypt. Picchianti only mentions a few stopovers along the Nile Valley, all the way to the stretch between the Third and Fourth Cataract: Giza, Saqqara, Thebes, and faraway Dongola in Sudanese Nubia, which Picchianti managed to reach in those years possibly by joining an Egyptian military expedition. Here he collected various objects, mostly from tombs, including grave goods and human and animal mummies.

The information Picchianti gives about the circumstances of the discovery of objects in most cases can be incorrect, and hence suggests that, at least in part, the exhibits came from excavationa by third parties or even purchases on the local antiquities market. Confirmation is provided by the presence in the collection of objects of several ancient Egyptian tomb owners, whose tomb dating back to the New Kingdom at Saqqara and Tebe supplied materials to several collectors, such as Passalacqua, the energetic Nizzoli and D'Anasthasi, and the Picchiantis in that period. The jar of the "Sem Priest Pthamose, great master of the crafsman" -  whose materials are kept in several collections in Europe (at least Leida, Florence and Naples) - is a testimony of the dismembering and dispersal of grave-good from a same tomb.

In 1833 the Bourbon Museum received a small collection donated by a "dottore inglese", actually a native of Glasgow named James Edward Hogg (1783-1848). In 1832-33, he made a trip to Egypt in the retinue of Ibrahim Pasha, when probably picked up the relics he later donated partly to the Naples Museum in 1833 and partly to the British Museum in 1840.  During his journey to Egypt he visited the tombs of Beni Hasan, the Temple of Dendera, Tebe, the temples of Karnak and Luxor, even reaching Philae, and finally Wadi Halfa.This collection, previously unknown and recently identified along with the identity of the collector, originally consisted of 10 "bundles" (animal mummies, two headrest and a scribal tablet).

Copies and imitations of ancient objects, such as those displayed here, are a familiar presence in collections of antiquities; works that long attracted the interest and admiration of collectors, scholars and the public have often been recognized as false.

There are various reasons for this: Roman copies of Greek, Oriental or Egyptian works; the various expressions of the rediscovery of antiquity in the Renaissance; the many copies made of noble materials or gypsum from the eighteenth century onward, mainly for didactic or decorative purposes; all these reproductions, even when they sometimes fell just short of counterfeit, answered a need for “cultural appropriation”, as well as the changing demands of the antiquities market. There is no dearth, however, of fakes actually made to deceive.

This showcase contains a small group of fakes produced in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century (Ns. 1-13), almost all in the Borgia collection. Together with imitations and forgeries of Egyptian antiquities the Borgia collection includes some objects relating to other Near Eastern civilizations (Syro-Palestinian, Mesopotamian, Phoenician, Ns. 14-19) and Etruscan objects (Ns. 23-26), mistaken for Egyptian and inserted in the inventory of the "class of Egyptian monuments" in the Borgiano Museum.

The gigantic reproduction of the Paolo Vetri's painting "Museo" (1875) in Room 18 is a faithful rendering of the post-Unification period exhibit design, depicting its layout and the polichromy, now lost,of the wall decorations. Under the directorship of Giuseppe Fiorelli (1863-1875), the Egyptian collection was incorporated into a larger "Section of Oriental Antiquities." Between 1864 and 1866, architect Michele Ruggiero designed a new installation of the collection in two rooms in the basement, whose vaulted ceilings were considered to be “in keeping with the style of the monuments.” In line with the museological criteria of the time, painter Ignazio Perricci decorated the rooms with motifs inspired by the decorations of Egyptian tombs of different periods. At the back of the gallery, a niche aligned with the entrance housed human and animal mummies, the main attraction of the exhibition. The compelling scenic relationship between the objects and their architectural background emphasized the spectacular character of the installation rather than the artifacts per se. Appealing to the funereal vision of Egyptian civilization prevailing in the West at the time, the installation recreated the mysterious atmosphere of an underground tomb and thus indulged non-scholarly perceptions of ancient Egypt and the Romantic fascination with the exotic and the macabre.

Over the time the new arrangement led to problems with conservation of the materials and accessibility to the collection. A project for a new entrance, the one now in place, leading to the collection, was realized between 1881 and 1889 by Renato De Petra, who had taken over from Fiorelli as the Museum's Director. After the new entrance staircase was added, in 1885 a collection of plaster casts of Egyptian and Assyrian works was put on display in rooms 17 and 18. Apart from these changes, the layout of the Egyptian gallery did not undergo substantial modifications until the early twentieth century. Between the directorship of Ettore Pais (1901-1904) and that of Giovanni Gattini (1906-1908) the collection was moved into five rooms (17-19 plus two rooms currently used as storage spaces). Described accurately in the 1908 Guida Ruesh, the new arrangement appears not to have rested on any scholarly principle.

In 1870, on the eve of the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology, Minister of Education Cesare Correnti wrote to Luigi Vassalli – a painter and capable Egyptologist who had been collaborating with Auguste Mariette since 1859 in the Bulaq Museum - the first museum of Egyptian antiquities in Cairo – asking him to send Egyptian materials to Italy. Since at the time the export of antiquities from Egypt was not allowed, between March and May 1871 Vassalli, with the assistance of restorer Michel Ange Floris, made casts of stelae and wall reliefs. At the end of July, he wrote to the minister, proposing actions to be undertaken to develop Italian Egyptological collections. He thus received his first assignment. In 1873, having visited the Egyptian collections of Bologna, Turin, Florence, Naples, and Rome, he published I musei egizi d'Italia, where he proposed expanding Egyptian galleries, drawing up general catalogues, and instituting chairs of Egyptology.

The correspondence between Minister Ruggero Bonghi and the director of the Naples Archaeological Museum, Giuseppe Fiorelli, mentions the sending to Naples in 1874 of 179 casts from the Gallery of the Florence Academy, where Prof. Casaglia had made three practically identical series of plaster casts made from Vassalli’s paper casts, which were used to integrate the Egyptian collections of Turin and Florence, as well as Naples. Ten years later, in 1884, Ernesto Schiaparelli, then director of the Egyptian Museum of Florence, produced a first classification of these casts, of which he also made some sanguigna-pencil tracings.This little-known episode in the collection's history emphasizes its importance among Italian and European Egyptological collections and its relation with the nascent Italian Egyptology