An Update on the Harrogate Collection

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!

Fig. 3: Shabti of Seti I

 

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