Dealing with a long-standing issue

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The long and complex research presented in this article, which began a few years ago and is still ongoing, has the eventual aim of clarifying the never-explained inventory sequence of the so-called “Vecchio Fondo” (literally “Old Fonds”) and reconstructing its formation history as much as possible. The expression “Vecchio Fondo” designates the set of 69 different collections that arrived at the Museo Egizio in Turin over a period of 64 years, between 1824 and 1888,1 plus the Savoy and Donati collections, which were acquired at an earlier date and transferred from the University building to the museum around 1830. This paper also aims to trace the history of the inventories and the growth of the Museo Egizio’s collections during the 19th century up to 1888, when 2the second and last volume of the Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the museum was published. This catalogue is the first comprehensive museum inventory ever to be compiled for the Ancient Egyptian section. It was commissioned by the director at the time, Ariodante Fabretti (1816–1894), with the help of Egyptologists Francesco Rossi (1827–1912) and Vittorio Ridolfo Lanzone (1834–1907), and is still in use today.2

When the antiquities arrived in the Museo Egizio, they began a new chapter in their history, one in which they were given an additional identity to the one conferred on them by their previous history. This happened when a number was assigned to them on a tag or sticker affixed to the objects, or written directly on the objects themselves. Had all the objects been already accompanied by correct provenance information, this new identity would have made it possible, over the decades, to trace them back to the time of their acquisition and thus to the collection to which they belonged. Unfortunately, this only happened for some of them, due to the objects becoming mixed with others and losing information about their collections of origin. Furthermore, between 1824 and 1888 the museum adopted new inventory numbering systems on more than one occasion, each time starting over from the beginning. Each of these systems was autonomous and almost completely disconnected from its predecessors. Their adoption was motivated by a wish for clarity, for creating a new, single, and definitive inventory. However, each new number gave the object a new identity, distinct from its previous one, which made its provenance even more confusing, separating it from the rest of the group to which it belonged (its collection of origin) and stripping it of all traces of its recent past. This naturally creates a certain amount of chaos whenever an attempt is made to study and reconstruct the history of an object or a particular collection in the Museo Egizio. Today, when there are several different labels with numbers on an object besides its current inventory number, this means that it was registered in earlier inventories than the last and current one, which was published in 1882 and 1888 (Fig. 1; see above, note 1). These different numbers on a single object, however, do make it possible to trace its history through successive inventories. Unfortunately, on many of the objects of the 19th century collection these labels have been removed or have fallen off.

However, there are some tools that allow us to attempt to reconstruct the history of how the collections have been managed and inventoried over time, and to partially retrace an object identity that has changed several times. Here, the main objects that will be discussed are those from the above-mentioned Vecchio Fondo, which received a new and final identity (“C.” or “Cat.”, for Catalogo, “Catalogue”) in 1882/1888, still used at the Museo Egizio today, as we just mentioned above. The tools available for this investigation will be examined below, and an example of a museum biographical reconstruction will be provided.3

The Drovetti collection and its inventories: The genesis of the “Catalogue”

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The Museo Egizio was founded in 1824, the year in which an important collection of antiquities acquired in Egypt by Bernardino Drovetti was purchased by the Kingdom of Sardinia and arrived in Turin.3 After the crates containing artefacts from Egypt had been stored in the warehouses of the firm Morpurgo & Tedeschi at the port of Livorno for some years while waiting for a buyer, between 1823 and 1824 the Savoy government and Drovetti concluded their negotiation. As early as November 1823, the first antiquities headed for Turin after having stopped in Genoa.4 Approximately twelve months later, and precisely on November 8, 1824, the future keeper of the museum, Giulio Cordero di San Quintino,5 was able to state in a letter to his friend, the Marquis Antonio Mazzarosa,6 that he had rearranged most of the antiquities:

Ho sistemato il nostro museo bellissimo in modo che vengano già gli Oltremontani a posta a vederlo.7

I arranged our beautiful museum in such a way that even the Ultramontanes [the French] may come expressly to see it.

Accompanying this collection was a Catalogue de la Collection d’antiquités de Monsieur le Chevalier Drovetti, of which at least two handwritten copies exist today, one held in the Museo Egizio, the other in the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. This catalogue, written in French, lists the antiquities that were part of the collection that Drovetti intended to sell to Europe, subdivided by categories. It was eventually also published in print, in 1880.8 This document (henceforth, the “Catalogue”) is mentioned in some letters written by Drovetti, from his residence in Alexandria, Egypt, to friends and collaborators in Europe, starting in 1822.

In the various documents and letters connected with the purchase of the Drovetti collection, a series of summary lists are cited, some of them now held in the State Archive in Turin. The purpose of these lists was to determine the number and character, and assess the economic value, of the antiquities the Savoy king had decided to buy.9 One of these summary lists is dated to April 4, 1820, four years before the purchase, and is held in the State Archive in Turin.10 This document, which is the outcome of the “Council of Conference” (Consiglio di Conferenza) with the King on April 4, records the purchase of the collection, which was subsequently given to, and managed by, the University of Turin, and consisted of 131 crates and packages, with a declared total of 1400 pieces. The list of objects corresponds to the shipment of antiquities that left Alexandria and arrived in the port of La Spezia on February 27 of the same year, i.e. a few weeks earlier. The document, however, ends by adding that “much remains in Livorno and much more in Egypt”, thus stating that the purchase did not concern only the antiquities that came with the 1820 shipment, but a larger collection, whose overall composition, as is specified, was unknown.

4As can be seen in Fig. 2, the document is a simple list, enumerating the cases and packages containing the objects without descriptions or any further details. This information is nevertheless important, not only because it shows how complex and lengthy the negotiations for the purchase were, but especially because, for the first time, it gives us an idea of the size of the collection that Drovetti was willing to sell to the Savoy house at that time. In fact, the Savoy government had no clear knowledge of what they were about to purchase until the very end of the deal, when an inventory check was performed in September-October 1823, confirming the existence and size of the collection. This check was performed three and a half years after the King’s decision to purchase. Around the middle of this time lapse, the above-mentioned “Catalogue”, whose origins are still far from clear, came to the aid of the Savoy family. There is some doubt about its author and about whether it was compiled in Egypt or in the warehouses of Livorno after the decision was taken to sell the collection to the Savoys. While no solid information is available, it can be assumed from some letters that it was produced in Livorno itself, on Drovetti’s orders, in the spring of 1822. A terminus post quem for its drafting seems to be found in a letter to Drovetti’s friend Pierre Balthalon, dated January, 1822, almost two years after the above-mentioned summary list, where Drovetti writes: “Messieurs Morpurgo m’écrivent que vous les avez engagés à envoyer un cathalogue de mes antiquités à Turin. Cette demande, qui ne me fût [sic] jamais faite (…)”.11 This last sentence suggests that, before the above date no one, at least in Piedmont, had made such a request. On January 17, 1822, the diplomat informed his French friend that he had given power of attorney to Francesco Rignon, his collaborator in Turin, to complete the negotiation of the sale of the collection to the Savoy family:

J’ai envoyé ma procuration à Turin pour traiter définitivement cette affaire et passer le contrat si le gouvernement sarde y est encore disposé. Je suppose bien que, pour mon malheur, l’absence de M. le Comte Vidua fils entrainera des retards auxquels je ne m’attendais pas, mais je compte cependant recevoir bientôt un oui ou un non. MM. Morpurgo ont bien fait d’envoyer les notes qu’ils ont pu recueillir sur les antiquités dont se compose mon cabinet je suis cependant surpris de la demande qu’on en a faite à Turin. J’ai écrit à M. François Rignon, que j’ai nommé mon procureur, qu’en cédant ma collection, je voulais qu’il insère pour condition essentielle du marché que l’Université de Turin recevrait à titre de présent tous les monumens que j’ai trouvé et acheté depuis le mois de Xbre 1820, époque à laquelle je me suis engagé à lui céder mes antiques.12

As can be read in the final part of this excerpt, Drovetti states that he ordered for the antiquities that arrived in Livorno after December 1820 (the date on which he officially committed to selling the collection) to also be included in the negotiation. We find these antiquities dispersed within the “Catalogue” marked with an asterisk along with their description, according to Drovetti’s instructions. This was a way of indicating the increase in the number of objects with 173 items spread among the various categories. We can also presume there was a subtle message to indicate the regard that Drovetti had for the buyer (the Kingdom of Sardinia) by increasing the collection (and thus its value) but still keeping the price agreed upon in 1820, 400,000 Piedmontese lire. The fact that these asterisks were dispersed within the list shows that it was drawn up after the above order was received. If the “Catalogue” had been drawn up earlier, we would expect to find the objects with asterisks, as a later addition, at the end of each category.13

However, it seems that, after initially agreeing to the sale, Drovetti tried to suspend the consignment, and this information can be derived indirectly from the following. In the spring of 1822, a catalogue of antiquities from the Drovetti collection actually came into the hands of Prospero Balbo14 – or rather, as it appears, in those of Carlo Vidua,15 who was in Turin during that period:

Pochi giorni dopo, mentre mi proponevo di ritornar da M. de Cholex mi giunse alfine da Livorno il tanto sospirato catalogo, e ritardai la visita fin che ne avessi fatto fare una copia elegante, mentre temevo assai che mi si domandasse in che consiste questa collezione.16

5A few days later [an unspecified date in April], as I was planning to return to M. de Cholex, the 5long-awaited catalogue finally reached me from Livorno, and I delayed my visit until I had an elegant copy made, as I was very much afraid that I would be asked what this collection consisted of.

This may be the same copy of the “Catalogue” also mentioned by Drovetti. On May 20, once again writing to his friend Pierre Balthalon, he confided to him that the Savoy government, through one of its emissaries, Cesare Spagnolini, Consul General of Sardinia in Tuscany based in Livorno, had asked the firm Morpurgo & Tedeschi in April for a catalogue of the antiquities to perfect the negotiations underway, and that the firm had sent it, a fact that had greatly unnerved Drovetti:

Les avis que j’ai reçu de mon frère et de M. Rignon, mon procureur à Turin, ne me laissent aucun espoir de ce côté-là. Cependant, MM. Morpurgo me mandent en date du 25 avril que M. Spagnolini, consul sarde à Livourne, leur a demandé avec un vif empressement le catalogue de ma collection et qu’ils ont cru bien faire de le remettre. C’est j’en suis sûr encore un coup de ténacité de M. le Comte Vidua qui prétend que je dois donner ma collection à l’Université de Turin aux conditions qu’il leur plaira de dicter. Je suis très fâché de la complaisance de MM. Morpurgo auxquels j’avais écrit de ne plus donner le catalogue qu’on leur avait demandé de Turin.17

This intention to suspend the consignment presumably stemmed from Drovetti’s wish and hope that he would still be able to sell the collection to France; despite what he had previously expressed, he was evidently trying to keep all possibilities open. In any case, the extract also confirms that the “Catalogue” was delivered to the Piedmontese in the spring of 1822. Vidua also sent the minister a summary catalogue on June 14, 1822, now housed in the State Archive in Turin, with the number of objects in each category, corresponding to those listed in the “Catalogue”.18 He gave at least one copy of the latter to the new minister for internal affairs, Gaspard-Jerôme Roget de Cholex, who was responsible for conducting the negotiations, pleading the case for its purchase. De Cholex promised to give the “Catalogue” to the King. Due to Vidua’s great efforts, and the fact that he had at least two copies made, this catalogue is sometimes (incorrectly) also referred to as the “Vidua Inventory” or “Vidua Catalogue”.19

San Quintino’s verification of the “Catalogue”

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As far as manuscripts are concerned, a copy of the “Catalogue” was recently found by the authors of this article among papers handed over by the heirs of Ernesto Scamuzzi (director of the Museo Egizio from 1946 to 1964) to the Museo Egizio in 2021. It consists of three booklets, unlike the one held in the archives of the Accademia delle Scienze, which is instead divided into five booklets (“cahyers”) and which also contains (at the end) a list of coins and medals, which the former does not have.20 This “new” specimen also has numerous pencilled annotations, probably made by San Quintino during the inventory check he performed in Livorno. For the most part, they concern the contents of each individual case or package, with notes of the absence of items that were listed but not in fact present. In only one instance is there a comment on the object: “the most beautiful thing” (“Più bella cosa”, in section V, no. 302 – today, Cat. 1568). This manuscript is a very valuable document, as it is a testimony of the process whereby the Museo Egizio was established, and is held today in the museum’s archives (Fig. 3).

Unfortunately, San Quintino’s inventory check brought to light some discrepancies between the “Catalogue” and the antiquities that he examined at Livorno.21 He therefore compiled two additional documents for the minister, one with a list of antiquities that were missing, although they were included in the “Catalogue”, and the other listing antiquities that were present in the collection at Livorno, but not included in the “Catalogue”.22 Therefore, by subtracting and adding, respectively, the objects in San Quintino’s two lists to the “Catalogue”, we should theoretically be able to determine the actual number of objects that probably made their way to Turin in the following months. The “Catalogue” lists 5268 antiquities + 3007 coins and medals – the latter are now in the Medagliere of the Royal Museums of Turin.23 The total amount therefore is 8275 objects, although San Quintino speaks of 8273, perhaps through miscalculation.24 From these, we must subtract the artefacts that San Quintino did not find: 1 papyrus, 2 objects in bronze, 2 objects in the group “Tableaux ou pierres sépulcrales”, 1 object in the group “objets divers”, 7 objects of wood, 26 objects in the group “petites statues et autres objets en pierre dure”, 1 object of alabaster, 3 statues, 2 objects in the group “Monumens”, and 1 statue fragment – 46 in total.25 If we subtract these 46 antiquities from the total of 8275, we are left with 8229 (8227 for San Quintino).26 We must then add to this figure the 68 objects that were not included in the “Catalogue” but were found by San Quintino in Livorno and registered in his list. This raises the total to 8297 entries (8295 for San Quintino).27 This would appear to be the actual number of the objects in the Drovetti collection sold to the Savoy family.

Matters are further complicated by the existence of two additional documents from San Quintino. One is another summary list of antiquities, also written in Livorno, listing 8291 objects.28 It was attached to the deed of the purchase of the collection. This list also 6includes 15 modern wooden models of some Upper Egyptian and Nubian temples, not included in any previous list, and 48 additional objects, as San Quintino specifies, to those in the “Catalogue”. The other document is a letter to the minister where San Quintino reports 64 of these additional objects.29 We can reasonably assume that the two different numbers given by San Quintino, according to the documents available, are simply due to counting or transcribing errors, and that the number of 8297 entries – to which must be added the 15 wooden models of temples from the modern period (attributed to J.J. Rifaud)30 – corresponds to the actual size of the collection. To these antiquities Drovetti later added a few others, which are not part of the “Catalogue”, such as four granite statues (likely statues of the goddess Sekhmet) that were originally reserved for the Louvre but were donated, instead, to the Savoy state in January 1824.31

Unfortunately, there are other complications. The number we have arrived at so far, 8297 (+ 15 modern models of temples = 8312), does not correspond to the number of objects actually existing in the Drovetti collection, but only to the number of entries listed by San Quintino. Several entries actually include more than one object. Such is the case, for example, for entry no. 351 in “Wooden objects” (section V), which encompasses three statuettes of the goddess Meretseger (called “of Agathodaemon” for their visual affinity with the thus named snake-shaped Greek god). These objects could/should have each had their own number. The entries describing papyri very often number two or more fragments, without giving any information about the fragments themselves. A note placed in the margin of a document dated to March 1, 1832, now held in the historical archive of the Accademia delle Scienze in Turin, fonds: “Rapporti con il Museo di Antichità e con il Museo Egizio”, takes stock of the papyri collection at that time, within a report written by A. Peyron, S. Borson, C. Gazzera and C. Boucheron in regard to what San Quintino had done to the collection in the museum. This part of the text reads:

7I papiri sommando nel catalogo a 260 (a) questo numero non si poté affatto ottenere non ostante che si sieno scrupolosamente numerati anche i frammenti; si sarebbe tuttavia sperato di trovare 7un numero assai maggiore di Papiri per l’aumento di quelli stati poscia ricavati dalle mummie, o da statuette.

(a) i papiri nel catalogo sono 170, ma perché varii numeri come il 78, 96, 100, 102, 104 etc. etc. ne comprendono chi tre, chi quattro, ed anche 33, e 38, il vero loro numero ascende a 260.

Although the papyri in the catalogue add up to 260(a), this number could not be obtained at all, despite the fact that the fragments, too, were scrupulously numbered; one would have hoped to find a much larger number of papyri due to their being increased with those later obtained from mummies or statuettes.

(a) the papyri in the catalogue number 170, but because various numbers, such as 78, 96, 100, 102, 104 etc. etc., include some three, some four, and even 33 and 38 [fragments], their true number rises to 260.

Due to the very specific nature of papyrus fragments, it is currently difficult to identify all of those that were part of the Drovetti collection, and it is even more difficult to determine the exact number of manuscripts originally in the collection, something that was not feasible even back in 1824 and 1832. Today, the papyri with Cat. inventory numbers add up to 502 manuscripts and 638 objects, each a distinct inventory item with its own Cat. number.32 Although some papyri with Cat. inventory numbers may not belong to the Drovetti collection, having been acquired subsequently, it is reasonable to assume that the Drovetti collection contained many more than the 170 entries in the “Catalogue”, or even the number of 260 calculated in 1832. In the absence of later papyrus tallies, 8in our calculations we retain the number of 260 in the report of the Turin scholars.

When undertaking a new count of the Drovetti collection, not numbering the entries but individual items, we of course obtain a higher number. Once we perform the additions and subtractions based on San Quintino’s inventory check, we end up with 395 more items than “8670 artefacts (5490 objects + 90 papyri by the additional 1832 count (=5580) + 68 additional objects found by San Quintino +15 modern wooden models of temples (=5663) + 3007 coins and medals).”

The “Catalogue” was divided into 18 different sections, as can be seen in Table 1. The objects were numbered progressively, with the numbering starting over from 1 within each section. The numbers of the “Catalogue” could be written directly on the object, on a label34 glued to its surface, or on a wooden or paper card attached to it (Fig. 4).35

Today, unfortunately, these numbers have only partially survived, making the identification of the objects rather uncertain and complex. San Quintino can be regarded to be responsible for this confusion, as he removed many of the identification numbers not long after the arrival of the Drovetti collection in Turin. In the early 1830s, a commission was set up to assess his work, which ended up barring him from directing the museum (a decision that was later followed by his resignation).36 Some aforementioned scholars – A. Peyron, F. Borson, C. Gazzera and C. Boucheron – had already complained about how San Quintino’s removal of the labels from the objects made it hard to keep track of them:

(…) Ma a malgrado delle loro cure [Pedemonte’s and Drovetti’s, who had entrusted their “Catalogue” to San Quintino], congiunte a quelle operosissime del Sig.r Avv.to Barucchi, e del Sig.r Cantù, già Assistente allo stesso Museo, essi non poterono compiutamente riconoscere alcuna delle classi del Catalogo; giacché il Sig.r Conservatore tolse alla massima parte degli oggetti il numero loro apposto, e corrispondente a quello del Catalogo Drovetti. A tutte le stele manca affatto il numero; nella classe dei Bronzi, ferro e piombo, che somma a 487,37 soli cento ancora lo conservano; pochissimi papiri hanno il numero antico; altrettanto dicasi delle altre classi. (…) Pertanto il Conservatore turbò gli ordini del primo catalogo, senza introdurre un nuovo ordine facendo un nuovo catalogo, soppresse i numeri primitivi, senza apporne nuovi. Cioè non adempì ai doveri né di Conservatore, né di ordinatore: solamente liberò tutti dal potere [di] riscontrare singoli gli oggetti con quelli descritti e numerati nel Catalogo Drovetti. (…).38

9(…) But in spite of their [Pedemonte’s and Drovetti’s, who had entrusted their “Catalogue” to San Quintino] care, combined with the most industrious efforts of Mr. Barucchi, lawyer, and Mr. Cantù, former Assistant at the same museum, they were unable to fully recognise any of the classes of the “Catalogue”; because the keeper removed the number assigned to most of the objects, and corresponding to that of the Drovetti catalogue. All the stelae completely lack numbers; in the Bronze, Iron and Lead class, which totals 487, only one 9hundred still have them very few papyri have their old number; the same goes for the other classes. (…) Therefore the keeper disrupted the orders of the first catalogue, without introducing a new order by making a new catalogue, suppressed the original numbers, without adding new ones. In other words, he fulfilled neither his duties as a keeper nor his duties as a cataloguer: all he did was preclude anyone’s possibility [to] match individual objects with those described and numbered in the Drovetti Catalogue. (…).

This is still an issue today, although a number of objects in the Museo Egizio’s collection can be identified in the “Catalogue” in cases where it offers a clear description.39 The beginning had actually been promising. In December 1824, when San Quintino was proposing new regulations for the newly founded museum, he interestingly spoke of the need for a new catalogue, and to verify to what degree the existing inventory lists matched the actual objects in the collection. This catalogue was to be countersigned by every new keeper of the museum upon coming in office, who would thereby assume responsibility for the entire collection.40 It is very likely, however, that this catalogue was never made. No mention of it is to be found in the Museo Egizio’s archives, and further evidence of this can be found in the above-mentioned 1832 document signed by the Piedmontese scholars:

(…) A tale stato di cose altro rimedio non vi ha, che di apporre nuovi numeri a singoli monumenti ed oggetti, allora quando se ne faccia un nuovo Catalogo

(…) There is no other remedy for this state of affairs than to put new numbers on individual monuments and objects, when a new Catalogue is made,

which confirms that at this time, eight years after 1824, a new catalogue still remained a desideratum.

By combining a study of the object descriptions in the “Catalogue” – which often require an interpretative effort – with careful examination of the objects themselves (some of which still bear the old Drovetti markings), we managed to identify some of them. Some of the results of this work, which is currently still in progress, relative to some of the classes of materials in the “Catalogue”, can be seen in the appendixes to the present article.

The catalogue published in the years 1882 and 1888 (known as the “Fabretti, Rossi and Lanzone Catalogue”) gave a final numbering of the Egyptological component in the Regio Museo di Antichità ed Egizio, recording no less than 7400 object entries in the museum. This number comprises only those antiquities (including casts and modern reproductions) considered to be Egyptian, while the coins and 19 Graeco-Roman artefacts, although part of the Drovetti collection, were not included. These antiquities, not being considered to be Egyptian art, were displayed separately, and when the two sections of the museum were split in 1939, they must have been assigned – with the sole exception of a marble votive foot (S. 17137) – to the newly created Museum of Antiquities. We infer this from the fact that they can no longer be found in the Museo Egizio collections, and that many of them are indeed today in the “Drovetti collection” in the Museum of Antiquities, Turin. Within the “Catalogue”, as well as in the two catalogues published before the Fabretti et al. catalogue,41 these 19 antiquities are included and described as Graeco-Roman,42 while they are ignored as we said, by the aforementioned catalogue by Fabretti, Rossi, and Lanzone.

Towards a new inventory: the 1830s

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In order to understand the museum’s further acquisitions after 1824, we must start from the number of items present in 1888, taken from the Fabretti, Rossi and Lanzone catalogue. This contains 7400 entries, from which those present in the Drovetti “Catalogue” must be subtracted (excluding medals and coins, which are inventoried separately). The number to be subtracted is 5286 entries. We arrived at this number after subtracting the above-mentioned 19 Greco–Roman antiquities from 5305, the official number indicated above (Table 1). As said above, these objects are included in the “Catalogue” but not in the Fabretti, Rossi and Lanzone catalogue, presumably because they were regarded as non-Egyptian.

After subtracting 5286 from the 7400 entries in the 10Fabretti-Rossi-Lanzone Catalogue, we are left with 2114 entries. This should then correspond to the number of objects that were donated or sold to the museum after 1824 and up until 1888, plus those in the aforementioned Savoy and Donati collections, which were transferred to the museum building in the 1830s. Since, as we have seen above, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the number of entries and the number of objects – as one entry may contain more than one object, and vice versa a single object may be split into several entries – the number 2114 is purely indicative, and this imprecision is compounded by the fact that some objects may have been transferred to other museums, lost, or inaccurately inventoried.43

Due to the considerable difficulty in identifying the objects in the Drovetti collection in the past, the Museo Egizio staff drew up a new inventory after 1832, but presumably still in the 1830s (surely before 1852), today called “Inventory X” ever since Giorgia Cafici named it thus, as it bears no date or signature.44 Unfortunately, not all of this document survives; for example, almost all the stelae (wooden and stone) that arrived in Turin in 1824 are missing in what has come down to us.

Inventory X, now in the Museo Egizio fonds in the State Archive in Turin,45 is subdivided into 14 booklets and contains 5230 objects, numbered progressively from 1 to 5230, unlike the “Catalogue”, which instead, as we have already seen, starts over from 1 at each new category. In this document, too, the antiquities are subdivided by type or material, except in the first booklet. Moreover, for the first time, a detailed description in Italian of each individual object is given. Each one is presented by indicating the inventory number, usually followed by two dimensions of the object (height and width, but these are not always given), its material, and a brief description.

The first booklet lists the objects from number 1 to number 171, comprising the antiquities displayed in the two statue galleries (today Gallery of Kings – Rooms 14a and 14b). This part of the document lists the objects not according to their current location or object class (as is the case with the rest of the booklets), but in random succession.

Only this first booklet contains a final column for a “N° del Catalogo ragion.” (literally “Number of the Catalogue raisonné). This number is never indicated, but this available space was, in some cases, used (at a later date, because the handwriting is different) for annotations relating to the object. Another object was added at the end of this list in pencil, as number 172 – an addition that did not take into account the fact that the number 172 was already present in Inventory X as the starting number of the second booklet, and thus mistakenly assigned the same number to two different objects (Fig. 5).

Interestingly, there are other documents associated with this inventory, unfortunately also undated, which nonetheless illustrate how the two large rooms of the Gallery of the Kings were organised at that time. This gives us an idea of the efforts employed by museum staff to produce a comprehensive product.

This group of documents therefore all stem from a single phase of reorganising the inventory of the collection, whose final aim was to draw up Inventory X.

Starting from number 172 in Inventory X (at the beginning of the second booklet), the association of the pieces with their actual position in the Museum layout ends.

Inventory X contains no references to the Drovetti “Catalogue”, but simply lists the antiquities according to their category, which is almost always indicated at the top right of the page. The list places the objects in order, within the categories, following a subdivision by material – which is indicated in a column for each object, or written once on the page and valid for all the objects on the page. The inventory, from the second booklet onwards, is structured as follows: idols (Nos. 172–270), figurines (Nos. 271–449), idols (Nos. 450–556), “Greek style” objects (Nos. 557–599), idols (Nos. 600–711), figurines (Nos. 712–840), idols (Nos. 841–979), figurines (Nos. 980–1700), amulets (Nos. 1701–2343), scarabs (Nos. 2344–3695), amulets (Nos. 3696–3996), scarabs (Nos. 3997–4026), “hard stones” (Nos. 4027–4095, mostly comprising further scarabs), amulets (Nos. 4096–4268), small jars (Nos. 4269–4280), vases (Nos. 4281–4343), spoons (Nos. 4344–4350), lamps (Nos. 4351–4354), oil lamps (Nos. 4355–4384), vases (Nos. 4385–4741), oil lamps (Nos. 4742–4789), vases (Nos. 4790–4837), individual lids (Nos. 4838–4870), vases (Nos. 4871–4875), mummies inside vases (Nos. 4876–4885), empty vases (Nos. 4886–4888), furniture (Nos. 4889–4924), writing implements (Nos. 4925–4932), seals (Nos. 4933–4958), measures and weights (Nos. 4959–4979), musical instruments (Nos. 4980–4993), weapons (Nos. 4994–5017), tools for the mechanical arts (Nos. 5018–5033), art tools (Nos. 5034–5073), baskets (Nos. 5074–5099), sandals (Nos. 5100–5102), footwear (Nos. 5103–5129), straps (Nos. 5130–5139), footwear (Nos. 5140–5171), cloths (“stoffe”) (Nos. 5172–5193), and textiles (“tessuti”) (Nos. 5194–5230). Again, identifying the objects only on the basis of their descriptions is often difficult. Sometimes there is still a number written in ink directly on the object or on a glued-on tag, often in hidden areas or on the back. This is the only surviving visible trace of the inclusion and description of antiquities in this list (Figs. 6, 7), as later inventories make no mention of it. Again, the appendixes show the work done so far (Appendix 1-5).

As mentioned previously, there is no hard evidence allowing us to date this important document. However, its descriptive style and some references to Champollion suggest that it dates from a period not too far from the publications of the Father of Egyptology.48 Unfortunately, there is no hard evidence to date the attached documents either. The mention of Rosellini could refer to the Tuscan scholar’s most important work, I monumenti dell’Egitto e della Nubia 13disegnati dalla spedizione Scientifico-Letteraria Toscana in Egitto, which he commenced in 1832.49 A certain Felix is also mentioned, identifiable as Orlando Felix (1790-1860), an English military man who in 1830 published Notes on Hieroglyphs and Notes on the Dynasties of the Pharaohs with Hieroglyphs Preceded by their Alphabet and Collected in Egypt in 1828.50 The latter work, translated into Italian, was published in Florence and is held in the Museo Egizio’s library. A date later than 1832 is also supported by another piece of information, namely that it was precisely in 1832 that a new inventory was to be drawn up at the behest of the riformatore (head of higher education) Vincenzo Bruno di San Giorgio, as these years witnessed a series of very important events for the Museum:

1) The antiquities of the Museo Egizio were merged with those of the Museum of Antiquities in the building that still houses the Museo Egizio to this day, the former Collegio dei Nobili.51

2) The direction of Ignazio Barucchi (already director of the Museum of Antiquities) was extended to include the Egyptian section, thus establishing the Regio Museo di Antichità ed Egizio.

3) Cordero di San Quintino, the keeper of the Museo Egizio from 1825 onward, was placed under investigation for “damage and defacement” of antiquities. He was then demoted and placed under Barucchi, which was followed by his resignation.52

By the end of 1824, as already mentioned, the need had become apparent to compile a new inventory to make up for the loss of the labels with the “Catalogue” numbers, but this new inventory never appears to have seen the light. We can therefore assume that Inventory X is indeed the first inventory to have been drawn up, in an effort to reorganise the collection, after the Drovetti “Catalogue”, and including other collections as well as Drovetti’s. It includes the Mensa Isiaca and two statues collected in 1760 by Vitaliano Donati, which were transferred to the museum in 1829–1830 (together with the objects of the Museum of Antiquities, all of which were previously displayed in the University of Turin building);53 this confirms that this inventory was drawn up no earlier than that date.

A terminus ante quem is the publication date of the first volume of the Orcurti Catalogue, (1852), which we will discuss shortly. Bearing in mind that Inventory X is written in handwriting that is certainly not Orcurti’s, this would allow for the hypothesis that it was compiled prior to his presence at the museum, or, in any case, that someone else drew it up. Further evidence that the inventory was created before Orcurti published his catalogue is an entry describing a statue of the god Ptah, inventoried as Cat. 87 in the Fabretti et al. catalogue. In the Drovetti “Catalogue” and in Inventory X, this statue is described as having no head, whereas in Orcurti’s inventory it already appears with a head, a modern restoration.54 This can be regarded as proof that Inventory X was compiled between 1832 and 1852, with the first part of this time span being more likely for the references to Champollion and Rosellini, certainly among the best-known scholars of Egyptology in the 1830s. A letter sent to Barucchi on February 14, 1838, from Provana di Collegno, from the Directorate of the Royal Universities of the Kingdom of Sardinia, reads:

In conseguenza del colloquio avuto domenica mattina colla S. V. Ill.ma intorno alla brama non ha guari espressa per parte del Governo Prussiano, di avere l’elenco degli oggetti di antichità egiziane che si conservano in codesto R. Museo, mentre io ho già risposto non trovarsi alcun catalogo stampato di tali oggetti siccome mi riservai tuttavia di procurare all’anzidetto Governo la indicazione manuscritta di ciò che rispetto alle antichità Egiziane si possiede di particolare, così mi occorre pregare la S. V. Ill.ma a volersi occupare nel modo ch’ella ravviserà migliore della formazione di quella nota.55

As a result of the conversation I had on Sunday morning with Your Excellency concerning the Prussian government’s recently expressed desire to be given a list of the Egyptian antiquities held in this Royal Museum, while I have already replied that there exists no printed catalogue of such objects, since I nonetheless engaged myself to provide the said government with a handwritten indication of the Egyptian antiquities the museum possesses, I must ask Your Excellency to deal with the preparation of this record in the manner you deem best.

14Unfortunately, it is not clear from this letter whether a handwritten inventory, such as Inventory X, had already been drawn up or not.

Another very interesting letter, dated to August 21, 1841, in which the museum director Francesco Barucchi reminds the Ministry that he has completed the arrangement of the collection of antiquities, explains that he had done this

acciocchè i forestieri, in occasione del Congresso degli Scienziati tenutosi in settembre [of the previous year, 1840], non fossero privati della facoltà di visitare questo insigne stabilimento, e potessero ammirarne i più preziosi monumenti

so that foreigners, on the occasion of the Congress of Scientists, held in September [of the previous year, 1840], would not be deprived of the right to visit this illustrious establishment, and could admire its most precious antiquities.56

Shortly after completing the reorganisation of the rooms, the aforementioned third catalogue emerged, compiled and published in two volumes between 1852 and 1855 by Pier Camillo Orcurti, the future director of the museum and, at the time of its drafting, assistant to director Francesco Barucchi.

The Orcurti catalogue, the first one to be published in print

(TM)

In the first volume of this third catalogue, Pier Camillo Orcurti describes the antiquities on the ground floor, which were displayed in the two large rooms corresponding to the present-day Gallery of the Kings, Rooms 14a and 14b, essentially without major changes from the documents just described.57 This is the last catalogue to include the 19 Graeco–Roman antiquities from the Drovetti collection. These, as we pointed out above, were later separated from the Egyptian collection, but in this case they are still considered to be part of it. They were displayed on the ground floor galleries (the Gallery of Kings) together with object number 20, a Latin inscription donated by the vice-consul in Cyprus, Marcello Cerruti. (These antiquities were still to be found in the museum guide published by Francesco Rossi in 1884,58 but were ignored by Rossi himself, the director Ariodante Fabretti and Vittorio Ridolfo Lanzone, in their catalogue of 1882/1888.)

The second volume, instead, describes the antiquities on the upper floor, displayed in an almost strictly typological arrangement in a vestibule and two large rooms. Although the museum still also included non-Egyptian antiquities, Orcurti only describes the Egyptian material. Clearly, this new and innovative catalogue, the first to be printed, is an important source about the organisation of the museum in the middle of the nineteenth century, but once again, in addition to being incomplete, it fails to take account of previous inventories, making no reference to either the Drovetti “Catalogue” or Inventory X. What is even more disturbing is that it gives the objects a new progressive number, ignoring the pre-existing ones, starting over from number 1 at each new showcase. This choice was motivated by the need to create a work designed as a guide to the museum. Over time, this new numbering has led to further confusion, as the new number assigned to each object ended up being regarded as a new identifier, replacing whatever number the object had in previous inventories or lists. Therefore, for the biography of the objects in their new home, away from Egyptian sands, this numbering cannot be disregarded.59 Thus, by 1855 (the year the second volume of the Orcurti catalogue was published), in just 31 years of the Museo Egizio’s life, thousands of antiquities (starting of course with the Drovetti collection that had arrived in 1824) had already received three or even more different catalogue numbers! Just by way of an example, the famous statue of Ramesses II, before being inventoried under the current number, Cat. 1380, had been identified as follows: Orcurti, Vol. I, p. 60, No. 6; Inventory X: No. 4; Alphanumeric Catalogue: D6; Drovetti “Catalogue”: XVIII, No. 83.

Other antiquities, on the other hand, did not receive a third number (or a second one, depending on when the objects arrived at the museum), as the objects described by Orcurti in his two volumes amounted to only 4789 (164 in volume I + 4625 in volume II), a much lower number than one would expect for the museum in the mid-19th century, as the Drovetti collection alone comprised well over 5,000 items, excluding coins, as we have seen in the 15previous pages. This allows us to assume that not all the material was on display, but stored elsewhere in the building, perhaps in the basement, which served as a storeroom.60

The volumes published by Orcurti give us a clear idea of how the museum was organised in the mid-19th century: two rooms on the ground floor – the present-day Gallery of Kings or Statuario – and two rooms and a vestibule on the “upper floor”, that is, on the fourth floor of the building, corresponding today to Floor 2 in the museum’s current layout. The room “to midday” (“sala a mezzogiorno”, meaning the room to the south) is today’s Room 4 (where First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom antiquities are currently displayed), the room “to midnight” (“a mezzanotte”, to the north) is today’s Room 5 (displaying antiquities of the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom).

L’ordine seguito in questa seconda parte è alquanto diverso da quello che ho tenuto nel catalogo delle sale inferiori [i.e., the Gallery of Kings]. Molte persone si sono lagnate che la classificazione scientifica del catalogo essendo diversa dalla distribuzione dei monumenti, assai difficile riusciva loro il cercare nel libro il numero corrispondente al monumento. Quindi io ho pensato di attenermi ad un ordine misto che non si discostasse gran fatto da quello con cui i monumenti sono disposti nelle sale. Ben è vero che la difficoltà di cui si lagnavano questi forestieri non era che immaginaria: poiché ove prima si guardi sul monumento la lettera della divisione primaria, e poi il numero, tosto si ritrova il suo corrispondente nel catalogo; e solo la cosa riesce penosa e difficile quando altri voglia cercare nelle sale un monumento che ha letto nel libro: oppure cerchi il numero senza badare alla lettera. Tuttavia mi parve che nel catalogo delle sale superiori quest’ordine fosse più conveniente per la grande moltitudine degli oggetti che facilmente avrebbe ingenerato confusione, ed anche richiesto non piccolo spazio di tempo a visitare tutte le sale egizie col libro in mano.61

The order followed in this second part is somewhat different from that which I kept in the catalogue of the rooms below [i.e., the Gallery of Kings]. Many people have complained that the scientific classification of the catalogue being different from the distribution of the objects, it was very difficult for them to look up in the book a number corresponding to an object. So I thought I would stick to a mixed order that did not deviate much from the order in which the objects are arranged in the rooms. It is true that the difficulty that these foreigners complained about was merely imaginary, because if one first reads the letter of the primary division on the object, and then the number, one will quickly find the corresponding number in the catalogue; and the thing becomes toilsome and difficult only when somebody means to find in the rooms an object in the book, or looks just for the number, disregarding the letter. However, it seemed to me that in the catalogue of the upper rooms this order was more convenient because of the great multitude of objects, which would have easily caused confusion, and have required no small amount of time to visit all the Egyptian rooms with the book in hand.

The above words of Orcurti indicate that the didactic system used for antiquities along the museum’s visitor route was not very clear to visitors, as the object was identified by an alphanumeric reference code placed next to it. This system is possibly traceable today to the one used in the “alphanumeric” document for the rooms of the Gallery of the Kings, described above in connection with Inventory X. Evidently, Orcurti decided to keep this system, not on the ground floor, but for the rooms on the upper floor. There is possibly an echo of this system in the Fabretti, Rossi and Lanzone catalogue, which will be discussed shortly. He assigns a letter to the objects in the upper-floor rooms, corresponding to their position in the display cases in the rooms.

Orcurti continues:

Siccome il Museo superiore egizio consta d’un vestibolo e di due sale, l’una a mezzogiorno, e l’altra a mezzanotte, così i monumenti del catalogo sono distribuiti in modo che uscendo da una sala si entri nell’altra, ed in ciascuna non si facciano che tre giri per osservare i monumenti delle pareti, e della fila di mezzo.62

16 As the Egyptian museum on the upper floor consists of a vestibule and two halls, one to the south and the other to the north, the objects in the catalogue are distributed in such a way that on exiting one hall one enters the other, and that in each one only makes three rounds to view the objects on the walls and in the middle row.

The descriptions of the antiquities in the catalogue follows the typological order used in the display rooms, thus separating the objects from the collections to which they belong, about which no information is given. Many of the antiquities described are hard to identify today, as no new labels were applied to the objects, no concordance with previous numbering systems is provided, and the descriptions are often not detailed enough. Orcurti’s list is the one that gives the least information about the objects’ collection of origin, and the most dependent on the way they were arranged in the museum; accordingly, it is the one in which object identification is most difficult today.

The definitive inventory: the Fabretti, Rossi and Lanzone catalogue

(TM)

This intricate and continuous succession of lists and catalogues finally came to an end in 1882 and 1888, when a definitive catalogue was compiled and printed in two volumes as a result of the important work of director Ariodante Fabretti with the help of Professor Francesco Rossi and Vittorio Ridolfo Lanzone. This catalogue rarely took previous lists/catalogues into consideration, except for references in some entries to Orcurti’s thirty-years-earlier catalogue. Occasionally, the collection to which an object originally belongs is indicated, without, however, providing a reference number to the original list of this collection, when such a list exists. As already mentioned, between 1824 and the publication of Fabretti, Rossi and Lanzone’s catalogue, 69 different collections entered the museum (including the Drovetti collection) – mostly very small groups of objects, often comprising just a few antiquities.

The following entries in the catalogue contain provenance information:

One more document, the museum’s Register of Entries, called Acquisitions et Distractions, compiled whenever a collection or an individual artefact, donated or acquired, entered the museum of Antiquities, the Museo Egizio or the Medagliere, partially helps with the task of reconstructing provenance (Fig. 8).66 Unfortunately, this register was only updated until 1868, but it is still possible to trace the Egyptological collections that arrived at the museum up until that date.67 In addition to the Drovetti collection, there is an important collection that was sold in 1833 by Giuseppe Sossio 17for the sum of 4000 lire, a catalogue of which was recently found and enumerates all of 1244 or 1260 objects,68 most of them small, such as amulets and scarabs. The lack of references to this list currently prevents us from reconstructing this collection, except for a few objects which are identifiable thanks to their descriptions. We are planning a more thorough study of the Sossio collection in the short to medium term.

Conclusion

(BM and TM)

This article has attempted to bring order and clarity to the history of the Museo Egizio in Turin in relation to the inventory sequence of part of its collections. It has managed to shed light on some significant aspects of the management of its collections in the early years of its history. It has, however, left several questions open, such as that of the definitive identification of every single object in the museum today and its provenance history.

The study of the Museo Egizio’s history continues to be the main area of research of the authors of the present article, with the aim of filling the many gaps of information about the first decades of the museum’s history that no one has ever really dwelled on, given the complexity of the situation, as seen in the previous pages. These gaps of information are becoming greater and harder to fill with the passing of time. The work that can be seen in the appendixes shows what we have been able to do so far with a few hundred museum objects, mainly of stone or wood, that were originally part of the Drovetti collection.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our thanks to the editorial staff for their comments and to Shenali Boange for translating the original Italian manuscript into English.

Reference Archives

Archive of Fondazione Museo Egizio

Historical Archive of the Accademia delle Scienze of Turin (Accademia delle Scienze di Torino)

Historical Archive of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio (SABAP) per la Città Metropolitana di Torino

State Archive in Turin (Archivio di Stato di Torino)

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Appendix 1: Concordance of stelae in the four inventories

Appendix 2: Concordance of wooden objects in the four inventories

Appendix 3: Concordance of statues in the four inventories

Appendix 4: Concordance of fragmentary statues in the four inventories

Appendix 5: Concordance of “monumens” in the four inventories