It’s just over two months since a collection of more than 700 objects arrived at the Egypt Centre on loan from Harrogate Museum. During this time, a lot of work has been undertaken in researching the objects and preparing them for publication on a new online collection catalogue hosted by Abaset Collections. So far, almost 400 objects have been photographed from multiple angles. Catalogue entries have also been written for around 100 objects, so there is still plenty of work to do before the launch. This is planned for the 7th October to coincide with the Egypt Centre’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary celebrations (more details on this in a future blog!). At the same time, the first temporary exhibition featuring the Harrogate collection will be launched. The title of the exhibition is Causing their Names to Live, which takes inspiration from a common vivification formula found on statues, stelae, and other objects. In fact, one of the statues (fig. 1) on loan from Harrogate (HARGM10634) is dedicated by Nebamun to his daughter Senetre “in order to cause her name to live” (sꜥnḫ rn.s). Over the past two months, more than seventy-five names have been read on the stelae, statues, shabtis, and other objects, so the loan of the collection to Swansea really is helping to cause their names to live!
Fig. 1: Statue of Senetre |
The Harrogate collection has already been used for student
handling sessions, including several stelae for a module on Egyptian Art and
Architecture (fig. 2).
Urška Furlan, who recently completed her PhD thesis at Swansea University on
Egyptian amulets from the Delta during the First Millennium BC has started
cataloguing the amulets from the Harrogate collection. It’s great to have
someone with an extensive knowledge and love of Egyptian amulets working on
these. At the same time, the pottery from the collection is being catalogued by
students as part of the Swansea University Pottery Project (SUPP). The majority
of the vessels date to the Predynastic Period, including several from the
excavations of Petrie at Naqada. It’s always particularly exciting to find a
tomb number written on the vessels!
Fig. 2: Students examining three Harrogate stelae |
Quite a few surprises have been made over the past few
months. In my initial
blog post on the Harrogate loan, I included a photo (fig. 3) of the beautiful faience
shabti of Seti I (HARGM3722). Little did I know at the time that the shabti had
a very close connection to Swansea University. While examining the manuscript catalogue
produced by Benjamin Kent for almost 1,000 of his objects, I was amazed to see
that the shabti of Seti had been purchased in 1919 from the collection of Lord
Swansea! It was Ernest Ambrose Vivian, 2nd Baron Swansea (1848–1922) who
decided to sell the contents of their large nineteenth century mansion,
Singleton Abbey. Lot 734 is described as “a collection of ancient Egyptian
objects, comprising a fine blue Ushabti figure of Seti 1st, Men-Maat-Ra, 4
others in faience and wood, an alabaster unguent vessel with lid, 2 alabaster
pots, swathed in the original mummy wrappings, with unexamined contents, 10
bronze amulets of Osiris on step plinth, a blue faience ring, etc.” In the same
year, Singleton Abbey was sold to Swansea Corporation. In 1920 the Corporation
rented and in 1923 sold the house and the nucleus of the estate to the
University College of Swansea (now Swansea University), which made the Abbey
its headquarters. Therefore, it’s quite ironic that the shabti is now back in
Swansea just 100 metres away from the Abbey where it was housed over 100 years
ago!
Another surprise took place just a few weeks ago when I was
looking at a rather grotty coffin fragment (HARGM10877) from the Harrogate
collection. The fragment contains the remains of a female goddess flanked by
columns of hieroglyphs (six in front and two behind). I was immediately drawn
by the palaeography of the hieroglyphs, which reminded me of a fragment (EC385)
in the Egypt Centre collection. The more I looked at the Harrogate fragment,
the more I thought about the Egypt Centre one, so I decided to get it from the
store for a closer look. As it happens, the fragments are not just similar, but
actually connect together (fig. 4)! This join helps to identify the name of the goddess as Nephthys,
while the owner of the coffin and his parents can now be read in full for the first
time. While we knew that there would certainly be links between both
collections, particularly since they were both formed via auction purchases, we
never expected fragments to connect like this!
Fig. 4: Connecting Harrogate (bottom) and Swansea (upper) fragments |
Last week we had a visit to the Egypt Centre by Karen
Southworth, a curator at Harrogate Museum, to discuss aspects of the loan.
Additionally, Katie and Gary from This Film
came to record some of the stories relating to the Harrogate collection that we
have been able to uncover over the past few months. This was a lot of fun and
involved several members of the Egypt Centre staff and volunteers. One of the
highlights was visiting the former library of Singleton Abbey, which is
possibly where the aforementioned shabti of Seti I was displayed prior to its
sale in 1919. This suggestion is based on an old grainy photograph showing what
looks like a shabti on a plinth atop the fireplace in the room. While it is
impossible to confirm if this is the case, we strongly believe that it is (fig. 5). It seems as
if it is fate that the Harrogate collection came to Swansea!
Fig. 5: The shabti of Seti I returning "home" to Singleton Abbey |
No such thing as coincidence ! How wonderful to reconnect the pieces to Swansea. Cant wait to see some of them on display in The Egypt Centre.
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