Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum

Last updated
8600 - St Petersburg - Hermitage - Egyptian antiquities.jpg

The Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum dates back to 1852 and includes items from the Predynastic Period to the 12th century AD. It belongs to the Oriental Art section of the museum. The Egyptian exposition is hosted in a single large hall on the ground floor on the eastern side of the Winter Palace. The hall serves as a passage to the exhibition of Classical Antiquities in other Hermitage buildings and is situated right under St. George's Hall. It was redesigned for the exhibition by Alexander Sivkov in 1940 and earlier served as the main buffet of the Winter Palace.

Contents

History

Limestone stele of a chief potter, 18th century BC Stela nachal'nika goncharov Pepi.jpg
Limestone stele of a chief potter, 18th century BC

The collection was established in 1852, the year the museum was made open to the public, when it purchased the collection of statuettes from Countess Alexandra Lavalle, previously stored in her mansion on English Embankment, and received the items collected in Egypt by Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg, including two black basalt sarcophagi of the Late Period, now displayed in the middle of the hall, as well as the sculpture group of Theban governor Amenemheb with his wife and mother (14th century BC). In 1853 the statue of Sekhmet (15th century BC), brought by Alexei Norov from Theban Necropolis of the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt in the 1830s, was moved from the Imperial Academy of Arts to the Hermitage. Some items were purchased for the museum from antiquities traders in Egypt and collections of Russian merchants or received as gifts.

In 1862, the collection expanded significantly, as the Castiglione collection, which was purchased by the Imperial Academy of Sciences from Carlo Ottavio Castiglione in Milan in 1826 and consisted of more than 900 items, core of the Egyptian museum of the Kunstkamera, was transferred to the Hermitage. However, there were no Egyptologists in Russia at that time. Vladimir Golenishchev became the first Russian Egyptologist and started to work in the Hermitage in the 1870s. At the insistence of Golenishchev in 1881 the remainder of the Egyptian museum of the Kunstkamera was moved to the Hermitage. The Hermitage collection continued to grow in the 1880s, when Coptic written monuments and two fragments of Egyptian water clocks were acquired. In 1891, Golenishchev published the first complete inventory of the collection. Since the 1870s Golenishchev had collected a private Egyptian collection, which was sold to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 1909, shortly before he emigrated. For a few years, as the building for the Moscow museum was being constructed, the items were also stored in the Hermitage. Soviet Orientalist Vasily Struve was in charge of the Hermitage's Egyptian collection from 1918 to 1933. The highlights of the exhibition include the mummy of priest Petese (10th century BC) and a fragment of a tablet of Ramesses II's Egyptian–Hittite peace treaty (13th century BC).

Other Egyptian antiquities in Saint Petersburg

Other notable Egyptian antiquities in present-day Saint Petersburg include the two sphinxes of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, adorning the Quay with Sphinxes in front of the Academy of Arts Building on Universitetskaya Embankment since 1832.

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pushkin Museum</span> Museum of European art in Moscow

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is the largest museum of European art in Moscow. located in Volkhonka street, just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The International musical festival Sviatoslav Richter's December nights has been held in the Pushkin Museum since 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermitage Museum</span> Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia

The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Egyptian Museum</span> History museum in Cairo, Egypt

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo, commonly known as simply the Egyptian Museum, located in Cairo, Egypt, houses the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world. It houses over 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display. Located in a building built in 1901, it is the largest museum in Africa. Among its masterpieces are Pharaoh Tutankhamun's treasure, including its iconic gold burial mask, widely considered one of the best-known works of art in the world and a prominent symbol of ancient Egypt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pergamon Museum</span> Museum in Berlin, Germany

The Pergamon Museum is a listed building on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin, Germany. It was built from 1910 to 1930 by order of Emperor Wilhelm II according to plans by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann in Stripped Classicism style. As part of the Museum Island complex, the Pergamon Museum was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999 because of its architecture and testimony to the evolution of museums as architectural and social phenomena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kunstkamera</span> Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia

The Kunstkamera or Kunstkammer is a public museum located on the Universitetskaya Embankment in Saint Petersburg, facing the Winter Palace. Its collection was first opened to the public at the Summer Palace by Peter the Great in 1714, making it Russia's first museum. Enlarged by purchases from the Dutch collectors Albertus Seba and Frederik Ruysch, the museum was moved to its present location in 1727. Having expanded to nearly 2,000,000 items, it is formally organized as the Russian Academy of Science's Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, abbreviated in Russian as the МАЭ or МАЭ РАН.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Cache</span> Ancient Egyptian tomb

The Royal Cache, technically known as TT320, is an Ancient Egyptian tomb located next to Deir el-Bahari, in the Theban Necropolis, opposite the modern city of Luxor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boris Turayev</span>

Boris Alexandrovich Turayev was a scholar who studied the Ancient Near East. He was admitted into the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1918.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vladimir Golenishchev</span>

Vladimir Semyonovich Golenishchev, formerly also known as Wladimir or Woldemar Golenischeff, was one of the first and most accomplished Russian Egyptologists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoological Museum (Saint Petersburg)</span> Russian zoological museum

The Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a Russian museum devoted to zoology. It is located in Saint Petersburg, on Universitetskaya Embankment. It is one of the ten largest nature history museums in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Museum Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan</span>

The Department of Ancient Egypt is a department forming an historic part of the British Museum, with Its more than 100,000 pieces making it the largest and most comprehensive collection of Egyptian antiquities outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

The appearance of Saint Petersburg includes long, straight boulevards, vast spaces, gardens and parks, decorative wrought-iron fences, monuments and decorative sculptures. The Neva River itself, together with its many canals and their granite embankments and bridges help to give the city its particular ambience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vasily Struve (historian)</span> Russian orientalist (1889–1965)

Vasily Vasilievich Struve was a Soviet orientalist from the Struve family, the founder of the Soviet scientific school of researchers on Ancient Near East history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Universitetskaya Embankment</span> Embankment in Saint Petersburg, Russia

Oscar Eduardovich Lemm was a Russian Egyptologist and Coptologist who specialized in the study of Coptic writings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabergé Museum</span> Museum in Baden-Baden

The Fabergé Museum is a privately owned museum located in the German spa city of Baden-Baden, dedicated to items made by the Russian jewellery firm Fabergé. It was opened by Russian art collector Alexander Ivanov on 9 May 2009. It is owned by the private limited company Fabergé Museum GmbH, which was originally co-founded by Alexander Ivanov and Konstantin Goloshchapov in January 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Savva Chevakinsky</span>

Savva Ivanovich Chevakinsky was a Russian architect of the Baroque school. He worked in Saint Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences</span> Russian research institute

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of Saint Petersburg</span> Overview of and topical guide to Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg – second-largest city in Russia. An important Russian port on the Baltic Sea, it has the status of a federal subject. Its name was changed to "Petrograd" in 1914, then to "Leningrad" in 1924, and back to Saint Petersburg in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Solkin</span> Russian Egyptologist

Victor Victorovich Solkin is a Russian historian (Egyptology), museologist, lecturer, founder and leader of the Association for the Study of Ancient Egypt MAAT.