Early Cards from the 'Musee de Boulag' , Ralph & Co., Cairo

                                                    Statue of King Amenemhat 111

                                                                 

           " This statue of King Amenemhat 111, found in his funerary temple, the so-called Labyrinth, near Hawara at the entrance to the Fayum, brings us at once over the time of apparent political and artistic weakness which followed the Old Kingdom, into the great period of the Middle Kingdom. Amenemhat the Third may be regarded as the very personification of this great period of national expansion; and this his royal statue is perhaps the most characteristic product of the art of his dynasty. The King is here represented with the same insignia as the Khephren statue but receives in addition an unexplained object hung on a string of beads about his neck. The peculiar features of his face, - the protruding lips, the high cheek bones and the unusually large ears, - permit the immediate identification of all statues of the King. The harshness of the face appears somewhat alleviated in our statue by the colour and softness of the stone." 
                   
                                                        Statue of King Khephren
                
                                                                

          "This imposing portrait of the builder of the Second Pyramid at Gizeh was found by Mariette together with a number of other fragmentary statues of the same king in a well in the so-called Granite Temple near the Sphinx. This temple is in fact the valley temple of the Second Pyramid and lies at the end of the ceremonial causeway leading to the Pyramid.
           Horus, in the form of his own sacred bird, the hawk, spreads his protecting wings over the head of his own representative on earth. The king sits adorned with the symbol of his kingship, the royal Egyptian head-dress with the uplifted cobra; and his face, looking straight forward, expresses the quiet strength and dignity of a great oriental ruler. The long unnatural beard, common to royal statues, is half broken away; and this accident gives the head the full effect of a human portrait little disturbed by the stiff insignia of Egyptian royalty. The strength of the modelling, although influenced possibly by the great hardness of the stone, shows nevertheless a true artistic intention. The portrait was to be not merely a human likeness but a portrait expressive of the majesty of the king."

                     
                                                  
                        Central Hall                    Museum Entrance                      Mummies

                                                              
                    Mycerinus Triad                   Boulak Museum                Senusert (X11Dyn) 

                                                                       
                       Mery,Cunefer                    Amenemhet 111                          Senmut

                    In 1858, Napoleon 111 recommended that Said Pasha, who was a friend of France, put the French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette, in charge of a pharaonic museum. The Pasha's decree of June 1, 1858 appointed Mariette Director of Antiquities, but did not mention the establishment of a museum. Mariette was aware that if pressed for a museum he would face the opposition of the dealers, the European museums and the Egyptian government. He let the issue lie temporarily and proceeded to excavate a large number of sites. For the storage of the excavated objects he obtained the old buildings of a river transport company on the Nile at Boulak. Mariette used four rooms to exhibit the most beautiful objects, and stored the other finds. He had the assistance of only one handyman, who made all the pedestals and cases. This small collection was so popular with the Pasha and the public that Mariette was able to greatly enlarge it. It was installed in a new building which was officially inaugurated on October 18, 1863 by the new ruler, Ismail Pasha.
            Some of the new museum's pieces were shown at the international exhibition in London in 1862. In Paris in 1867, the best of Egypt's antiquities were exhibited in a specially constructed building, in the style of a small Ancient Egyptian temple which was approached by an avenue of sphinxes. At the Paris exhibition, the Empress Eugenie was so impressed with the marvels of Egyptian art that she asked the Pasha to give her the entire collection. He referred her to the director of the museum, Mariette, who refused. Profiting from this experience, Mariette henceforth would not allow any of the museum's important possessions to leave the country. Only small objects and facsimiles were sent to the exhibitions in Vienna in 1873, Philadelphia in 1875 and Paris in 1878.
          In 1878 the antiquities service became a governmental department under the Ministry of Public Works. Larger sums were allocated for the new department and the collection soon outgrew the building at Boulak where, however, the lighting was excellent and the exhibits were well displayed. Larger, but not entirely suitable, quarters were found in the Giza Palace on the opposite bank of the Nile, and the collection was moved there in 1891. The Egyptian Museum's present building at Midan El-Taheer, inaugurated in 1902, was the result of an international competition. It was designed by the French architect, Marcel Dourgnon, in a Neoclassic style. In subsequent years, with the continuous influx of objects from new discoveries and excavations, the Museum again became seriously overcrowded.
        After the death of Mariette on January 18, 1881, his successors as Director of Antiquities were in turn Maspero, Grebaut, Jacques de Morgan, Victor Loret, Maspero again, Lacau, and Drioton. After Drioton, in 1952, Islamic and Coptic antiquities were united into one department.
          The Egyptian Museum exhibits over 100,000 works, ranging from prehistoric times to the beginning of the Greco-Roman period. They are shown more or less in chronological order, beginning at the main entrance and continuing clockwise around the Ground Floor, which is devoted to large works in stone, such as sculpture, sarcophagi, and stelae. The Central Atrium contains other large objects of mixed dates. The Upper Floor, reached by the southwest stairway, is also laid out clockwise and exhibits various categories of smaller objects.
         Since 1952, the Egyptian Museum has developed considerably. Budget and personnel have increased, and various administrative projects carried out. In 1960 a travelling exhibition of 119 items from the Museum, called 'Five Thousand Years of Egyptian Art', was shown in Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and London. The same exhibition was held in Tokyo and Kyoto in 1963. From late 1961 to the end of 1963, an exhibition of 31 Tutankhamun and 3 Twenty Second Dynasty items travelled to a number of cites in the United States : Washington, Philadelphia, New Haven, Houston, Omaha, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Boston, St.Louis, Baltimore, Dayton, Toledo, Richmond, and New York. In 1964 it  went to Canada - to Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Quebec - after being shown in the United Arab Republic's Pavilion at the New York World's Fair.
       Forty five items from the Tutankhamun collection were exhibited in Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto and Fukuoka) in 1965, including works that had never left the country before - such as the golden mask, the bed sheathed in gold and the wooden chair with the carved, open-work back. In 1967 an exhibition of the Tutankhamun treasures at the Petit Palais in Paris drew a record number of one million visitors. In Japan the number reached a record of almost three million. In 1972, the British Museum held its own 'Treasures of Tutankhamun' exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon. This was also a huge success, and a further impetus to design influence on the British !

                                                                
                                          
                 The following is an extract from the introduction to the portfolio of photographs (e.g.images of Amemenhat 111 and Khephren) showing   STATUES, RELIEFS, PAINTING, HANDIWORK, and ARCHITECTURE in the Egyptian Museum. Although not dated, the work would appear to date from the1910s.

                             Explanations by Ludwig Borchardt  (translated by George A. Reisner)

       "The collection of Egyptian antiquities in the Khedivial Museum at Cairo was begun half a century ago and has been increased continuously ever since by the proceeds of the excavations of the Department of Antiquities of the Egyptian State and by those of foreign expeditions. It is therefore naturally enough the richest of all Egyptian collections. In fact, it is doubtful whether all the important European and American collections taken together would equal the Cairo collection either in the number or in the importance of its objects. The collection is so enormous that anyone unfamiliar with Egyptian art can hardly hope even by repeated visits to make the acquaintance of all its best pieces alone. There is, moreover, so much else in Cairo for the traveller to visit, so many strange sights and new impressions crowding upon him, that it is quite impossible for most visitors to spend much time in the Museum.
         This album is intended therefore to help the traveller who feels more than a passing interest in Egyptian art to review in memory the worthiest works of art seen in the Cairo Museum. It is, of course, not possible in the scope of these plates to give all the masterpieces of Egyptian art in this wonderful collection. Indeed, in making the selection, it is not merely the relative value of the object in Egyptian art which has been considered but also its intrinsic, artistic worth, its appeal to modern eyes to which the mannerisms of Egyptian art are often disturbing. Thus, as a rule, in statues, only the heads are reproduced; for the bodies even in the finest pieces appear stiff and unnatural to the advanced taste of the present day. In the desire, however, to cover all periods, it has been necessary to include some pieces which are merely good examples of Egyptian art from times which appear to have produced nothing of real artistic worth. Finally in order to make the selection completely representative of the Cairo collection, a few objects have been reproduced whose claim to attention rests on the fact that they are characteristic products of certain arts peculiar to Egypt. But the artistic standpoint has been kept in mind throughout the whole selection, and it has therefore not been considered possible to include any of the great historical monuments in which the Museum is so rich.
         The chronological sketch which usually accompanies publications treating of the art and culture of Ancient Egypt is intentionally omitted. All the handbooks for travellers present chronological tables which are complete even if they are not unanimous in their absolute dates; and absolute dates are not of importance for the present purpose. It is sufficient to keep in mind the relative arrangement of Egyptian history according to dynasties and the large divisions known as the ' Old, Middle and New Kingdoms' and the 'Late Period'. "

                                                 Second Coffin of Queen Merit Amon
               
                                                                      

                  This gigantic coffin contained the body of the wife of Amenophis 11, the daughter of Thutmose 111. The tomb was robbed and restored in antiquity; thus the eyes are not original and the missing inlays of semiprecious stones and glass paste have been painted in. It is, however, not the spectacular size, nor the value of the materials, nor the perfection of the cabinet maker's technique that makes this coffin so unusual, but the vitality of the face, in which the surfaces are modulated so as to create a continuous passage from plane to plane. An examination of the mummy proved that this is not a portrait of the Queen. Rather, a search for a tranquil physical beauty coincided here with traditional craftmanship. 

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