Egyptian Museum in Turin

Brief information

The Egyptian Museum in Turin did not begin with an actual Egyptian antiquity, but with the Tablet of Isis — an altar tablet made in the Egyptian style for a Roman cult. It was this object that prompted the search for antiquities in Egypt and then grew into a museum that the source text calls the world's first museum dedicated to the civilization of Ancient Egypt.

The meaning of the place is better understood not as a “large collection,” but as an assemblage in which different objects show different forms of European interest in Egypt: the purchase of major collections, work with papyri, archaeological finds, and the relocation of a monument from Nubia during the construction of the Aswan Dam. For a long time, the museum itself was housed in the former building of the seventeenth-century Academy of Sciences, so the Egyptian collection is placed within a European scholarly shell.

What to notice first

It is worth comparing the objects according to how they entered the collection and what this changes in how they are perceived. The Tablet of Isis is important not as an ancient Egyptian original, but as an imitation of Egyptian style: it shows that interest in Egypt in Turin began through a Roman reworking of the image of Egypt. The small temple from Nubia, by contrast, is connected with the relocation of a real monument during the construction of the Aswan Dam.

Another focus is the materials and forms of knowledge. Papyri, including the Turin King List, the papyrus map, and versions of the “Book of the Dead,” show Egypt through text and writing; sarcophagi, mummies, and funerary objects show it through the structure of burial; the intact tomb of Kha and Merit makes it possible to see not an isolated rarity, but a preserved complex of things. These groups are best perceived side by side in the mind: the museum shows not a single image of Ancient Egypt, but several ways of reading it.