Draft chapter from: Catalogue of Egyptian Coffins in Provincial Collections of the United Kingdom, I: the South West by Aidan Dodson © 2011 Exeter: Royal Albert Memorial Museum he Devon and Exeter Institution was established in Exeter Cathedral Close in T 1813. From its earliest days it included Egyptian material, including a Twenty- first Dynasty mummy, mummy board and coffin, given in 1819 (EXE.3-4). Between 1868 and 1871, the Institution transferred its holdings to a new museum that had been commissioned in memory of Albert, Prince Consort (1819-1861), a fund having been launched by Sir Stafford Northcote, MP (later 1st Earl of Iddesleigh: 1818-1887) in 1861, with plot of land on Queen Street donated by Richard Somers Gard, MP (1795-1868). Designed by John Haywood (1808-1891), the foundation stone was laid in 1865, the North Wing being completed in 1868 and the South Wing in 1869. Even before then, however, objects had started to be gathered at a temporary repository in Colleton Crescent. Not only did the building contain the museum and art gallery itself, but also the School of Science (eventually to become Exeter University), the School of Art and the Free Public Library. It took the name ‘Royal Albert Memorial Museum’ (RAMM) following the opening of an extension by the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George V and Queen Mary) in 1899. As with other such polymath buildings, as the various elements outgrow their parent, they moved into their own premises; what was now the Exeter Technical and University Extension College went to a new building close by, at top of Upper Paul Street, in 1900. Various individual and groups of objects from Egypt were donated to museum from its earliest days,1 including in 1869 one of coffins and mummies brought back from Egypt by the Prince of Wales (EXE.8). This large group had been dispersed to a number of British provincial collections, another being allocated to Truro (see TRU.5), although the fate of a number of pieces remains obscure. A final coffin, this time accompanied by its cartonnage mummy-case, came to the museum in 1897 (EXE.6-7), given by R. B. West, Streatham Hall, Exeter, although three mummy- masks and a number of coffin-fragments were also later to be donated (EXE.1, 2, 5, 9 & 10). Little information survives on the way in which the Egyptian material was displayed, and attracted little scholarly attention until the early 1960s, when Cedric Vyvyan Anthony Adams (1919-1998), then Assistant Curator of the RAMM, undertook the examination of the three mummies.2 Unfortunately, all but one of the mummies were destroyed by cremation in 1971, while only one coffin-set now remains in the collection (EXE.6–7), the others being broken up in 1973 (EXE.4 and 8) or given away in 1982 (EXE.3). 1 For a detailed account of some of the principal donors, see Morkot 2004. 2 Adams 1963; 1966; 1990a; 1990b; Simon and Zorab 1961. EXETER EXE.1 Face from mummy-mask Owner: No data. Number: 1936.22 Dimensions: Height of face: 7 cm Width of face: 7 cm Material: Wood, gilded Fig. EXE. 1.1 Description: A small human mask, with the remains of a striped headdress above the brow, probably from a rishi-type mask (see Remarks). Mode of acquisition: Given by Elmer Montgomerie Neilson (1875-1958), ‘Evelaw’, Chudleigh, Devon; the donor had taken part in Petrie’s 1922 work at Abydos.3 Provenance: Abydos. Modern history: Conserved 1998. Associated material: None Dating: Seventeenth/early Eighteenth Dynasty (see Remarks). Remarks: Intact examples of such masks range from the Seventeenth Dynasty through into the early Eighteenth Dynasty. Complete parallels include Cairo JE45629 and Liverpool Museums M11020.4 Bibliography: None. EXE.2 Mask from coffin of unknown person Owner: No data Number: 5/1946.626 Dimensions: Height: 26.6 cm Width: 25.0 cm Depth: 10.5 cm Height of face: 18.5 cm Width of face: 10.5 cm 3 Petrie 1925: 1; his wife, Edith E. Montgomerie-Neilson, died aged 72 in 1938, and his son, Somerville, was killed in action in 1917. 4 Dodson 1998; 2011. 2 ROYAL ALBERT MEMORIAL MUSEUM Fig. EXE.2.1 Fig. EXE.2.2 Material: Wood, paint. Description: Face carved from a single piece of wood and painted in polychrome that formerly fitted onto an anthropoid coffin. Mode of acquisition: Bequeathed by Lt. Col. Leopold Agar Denys Montague, VD, JP, FRNS (1861–1940) of ‘Penton’ Crediton, Devon.5 Montague was the only son of Arthur Montague, was educted at Clifton College, Bristol, and joined the 1st Rifle Volunteers in 1858. He subsequently served with the Sherwood Foresters before becoming Captain of the Crediton Company of the Volunteers. He was heavily involved in local life and built up a substantial archaeological and ethnographic collection, which went to the RAMM in 1946 and 1953. Provenance: Unknown. Modern history: Found and presented to Montague by his sister-in-law, Marion Florence Lind (1869–1956). Dating: Style appears to fit best with a date between the late Middle Kingdom to early New Kingdom. Bibliography: None. 5 Middleton 1998: ix-xiv. 3 EXETER EXE.3 Coffin of Iussenunut Transferred to University of Wales Swansea 1982: see SWU.XX. Fig. EXE.3.1: Coffin (EXE.3) and mummy of Iussenumut with C.V. Anthony Adams, early 1960s EXE.4 Mummy-board of Iussenumut Owner: , var. .: Iussenumut Titles: : Lady of the House, Chantress of Amun and Mut. Number: A417 Dimensions: Length. 178 cm Width. 38.5 cm Depth. 17.5 cm Height of face. 12 cm 4 ROYAL ALBERT MEMORIAL MUSEUM Material: Wood, gesso, paint. Description: An anthropoid mummy board, painted in polychrome on a yellow ground, and restored from eight fragments, with significant portions now lost (fig. 4.1). The deceased is shown wearing rosette-form earrings and a tripartite wig, with a floral fillet around the temples and a lotus-flower over the brow (fig. 4.2); a set of yellow, red cross-hatched, plaits(?) crosses the brow and descends down the centre of the lappets to be covered by the horizontal bindings of the latter and then emerge in a tapering form. The lappets cover the upper margins of the breasts, which are given rosettes over the nipples. A floral collar extends down to the sleeved arms, which are depicted as partly covered by the collar, the hands projecting through the collar. A winged-scarab pectoral is shown between the breasts and the hands. Below the arms are a pair of vignettes, back to back either side of the centreline (fig. 4.3). Both comprise an atef- crowned raptor, with a small figure of Osiris in front of it, being adored by a ba, the intervening space being filled with texts. Below, a winged cobra protects the back of head of a winged kneeling figure of Nut (largely lost), under whose wings are recumbent canids. These lie on a line that marks the upper edge of the board’s body- decoration, which conforms to type YIIc. The central section comprises panels of banded floral motifs alternating with panels with mythological vignettes. The latter comprise: I. a winged scarab; II. a pair of winged and armed wadjet-eyes adoring a fetish; III. a pair of seated goddesses adoring [LOST]. IV. a winged scarab in a bark; V. too damaged to identify. Fig. EXE.4.1 5 EXETER The remainder of the centre line is lost, except for a fragment of the column of text along the centre of the feet, with part of the owner’s titles . The lateral panels of decoration begin at the top with a pair of scenes of the deceased making offerings to a seated Hapy on the left and to a genius who has lost its head and label-text on the right. All remaining decoration on the left has been lost, except for a small portion near the foot, where can be seen the mummiform bodies of two deities. On the right, two more survive, the first with a mummiform figure in front of a Duamutef and the second with a pair of mummiform deities. The remainder is lost. Mode of acquisition: Given to Devon and Exeter Institution by the Rev. Robert Fig.4.2 Fitzherbert Fuller (1794–1849) in 1819, who appears to have acquired it (and its enclosing coffins) while in Egypt in the company of Colonel Joseph Straton Fig. EXE.4.3: chest area. (1777-1840)6 during 1817–18.7 Transferred from the Institution’s premises in Exeter Cathedral Close to Queen Street [RAMM] in 1869-71. Provenance: According to donor, ‘Said, Upper Egypt’ – presumably simply the colloquial Arabic designation of the south of the country; on basis of design, certainly from Thebes. 6 The donor of coffin-set Edinburgh A.UC.70 (Manley and Dodson 2010: 41–46[10–11]). 7 See Morkot 2016. 6 ROYAL ALBERT MEMORIAL MUSEUM Modern history: Restored in late nineteenth or early twentieth century, when the fragments were affixed to a supporting board;8 disposed of 1973, but rescued from skip by C.V. Anthony Adams9 and Robert Child10 and returned to museum; conserved 1996-98 and 2010. Associated material: Outer coffin (apparently destroyed by insect infestation before 1868), inner coffin (EXE.3=SWU.XX) and mummy (destroyed 1973). A number of objects apparently belonging to the same lady are known,11 including several shabtis12 and pBrooklyn 37.1801E.13 Dating: On the basis of the dated attestations of design YIIc, between the middle of the pontificate of Menkheperre to late in that of Panedjem II (c.