The Launch of the Harrogate Egyptian Collection Online

On Saturday 7th October, the Egypt Centre hosted a full day of celebrations to mark its 25th-anniversary. There were many special announcements, including the launch of the first exhibition of the Harrogate material, the display of the Djedhor the Saviour statue in the House of Death gallery, and the launch of the Harrogate Egyptian Collection online (fig. 1). The entire day was a fantastic experience and a good reminder of the amazing work of both staff and volunteers over the last quarter of a century. There were poignant moments remembering those no longer with us, and lots of laughter, particularly at the photos dragged up of our younger selves!

Fig. 1: Harrogate collection launch

I was tasked with presenting some of the successes of the Egypt Centre Online Collection, which I started work on back in 2019, and was launched three years ago in 2020 (fig. 2). Although putting together and presenting the slides provided me with an opportunity to take stock of the fantastic achievements of this collaboration, it was during the other presentations of the day by Egypt Centre staff, Swansea University lecturers, students, volunteers, conservators, and course attendees that it really hit home quite how big an impact the Online Collection has made. Seeing images of such a wide range of users interacting with the software made me quite emotional, and very, very proud!

Fig. 2: History of Abaset Collections

Following on from this success, The Harrogate Egyptian Online Collection has been designed to include all the same great features that have proven popular in the Egypt Centre Online Collection such as trails, hierarchical fields, and multiple images, audio, video, and 3D model capability (fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Impact of Abaset Collections

The story of the Harrogate loan to the Egypt Centre has already been written about in previous blog posts, but a great deal of work has been carried out since the collection’s arrival in March 2023. All 813 objects have been photographed and included within the Online Collection thanks to the tireless work of the Egypt Centre staff and volunteers (fig. 4). Many entries still require elaboration as research on the objects continues. The first trial, focusing on the objects in the first temporary exhibition is available and has already been translated into Welsh, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Ukrainian.

Fig. 4: Stelae from the Harrogate collection

The launch of the Harrogate Egyptian Online Collection has also been very successful with 425 unique users in the first twenty-four hours of its launch and 988 in the first week from all over the world (fig. 5).

Fig. 5: Percentage of unique users by country in the first week since launch

I am very pleased that the most popular object has been the wooden funerary figure (HARGM7673) as she was the reason I first visited the Harrogate collection, and suggested the Egypt Centre as the ideal location for research of the Egyptian objects to be undertaken. She was closely followed by the Funerary Stela of Hetepnesmin (HARGM3584), which is likely popular due to its position as the first object in the online catalogue! The ostracon requesting goose fat (HARGM10823) mentioned in Ken’s keynote at the celebration event, and of course, the famous Anubis mask (HARGM10686) claim third and fourth places in popularity respectively (fig. 6).

Fig. 6: Most popular object during the first week

We welcome any feedback, positive or negative, in order to help us improve things further. To do so, please email Ken Griffin at k.griffin@swansea.ac.uk or Sam Powell (Abaset creator) at abasetcollections@outlook.com; we hope you enjoy exploring our collection virtually!