Scattered Finds ‘Scattered Finds is a remarkable achievement. In charting how British excavations in Egypt dispersed artefacts around the globe, at an unprecedented scale, Alice Stevenson shows us how Alice Stevenson ancient objects created knowledge about the past while firmly anchored in the present. No one who reads this timely book will be able to look at an Egyptian antiquity in the same way again.’ ‒Professor Christina Riggs, UEA Scattered Between the 1880s and 1980s, British excavations at locations across Egypt resulted in the discovery of hundreds of thousands of ancient objects that were subsequently sent to some 350 institutions worldwide. These finds included unique discoveries at iconic sites such as the tombs of ancient Egypt’s first rulers at Abydos, Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s city of Tell el-Amarna and rich Roman Era burials in the Fayum. Finds Scattered Finds explores the politics, personalities and social histories that linked fieldwork in Egypt with the varied organizations around the world that received finds. Case studies Archaeology, Egyptology range from Victorian municipal museums and women’s suffrage campaigns in the UK, to the development of some of the USA’s largest institutions, and from university museums in Japan to new institutions in post-independence Ghana. By juxtaposing a diversity of sites for the reception and Museums of Egyptian cultural heritage over the period of a century, Alice Stevenson presents new ideas about the development of archaeology, museums and the construction of Egyptian heritage. She also addresses the legacy of these practices, raises questions about the nature of the authority over such heritage today, and argues for a stronger ethical commitment to its stewardship. Alice Stevenson Alice Stevenson is Associate Professor of Museum Studies at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. She has previously held posts as the Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and as Researcher in World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Her academic specialization is Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egyptian archaeology, but she has a written on a broad range of topics including the history of archaeology, anthropology and museums. Cover image: Courtesy of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL. Free open access versions available from Cover design: www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press www.ironicitalics.com Scattered Finds ScatteredCanada in Findsthe Frame Archaeology,Copyright, Collections Egyptology and and theMuseums Image of Canada, 1895– 1924 Alice Stevenson Philip J. Hatfield 9781787353008_Canada-in-the-Frame_pi-208.indd 3 11-Jun-18 4:56:18 PM First published in 2019 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press Text © Alice Stevenson, 2019 Images © Copyright holders named in captions, 2019 Alice Stevenson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as author of this work A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Stevenson, A. 2019. Scattered Finds: Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums. London, UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111. 9781787351400 Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ ISBN: 978-1-78735-142-4 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-141-7 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-140-0 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-78735-143-1 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-78735-144-8 (mobi) ISBN: 978-1-78735-145-5 (html) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111. 9781787351400 Acknowledgements I first conceived of this book during my postdoctoral research in the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford between 2009 and 2012. Towards the end of my contract, funding from an anonymous benefactor and support from Michael O’Hanlon allowed me to undertake a pilot project to develop a grant proposal for the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This was to look more closely at the history of finds distribution from British excavations in Egypt to museums worldwide. I feel enormously fortunate to have been able to spend my early career at the Pitt Rivers Museum, an institution that has shaped my own thinking and practice. I am especially grateful to Jeremy Coote, Dan Hicks, Alison Petch and Chris Morton, together with the University of Oxford’s early history of anthropology research group, for discussions over the years. With backing from John Baines, the application to the AHRC was successful, and the ‘Artefacts of Excavation’ project was funded between 2014 and 2017. By that time I had taken up the curatorship of UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, and a full-time post- doctoral researcher, Emma Libonati, took on responsibility for a key element of the project: digitizing and uploading archives from the Petrie Museum to a newly created online resource, the Artefacts of Excavation website, hosted by the University of Oxford’s Griffith Institute (http:// egyptartefacts.griffith.ox.ac.uk/), initially designed by our part-time researcher Sarah Glover. Volunteer Alix Robinson, meanwhile, digitized the finds distribution archives of the Egypt Exploration Society, with help from Carl Graves, and Emma Libonati once again took on the arduous task of making these accessible on the website. The site is intended to provide information that might help identify material excavated in Egypt by British organizations in museum collections worldwide. Additionally, it provides an overview of the scope of distribution, the history, politics and significance of which are analysed in this book. I am hugely grateful to John Baines for his unwavering support for the project, as well as to Emma Libonati for the many long hours spent provisioning the website with such a considerable amount of material, identifying destination names in the archives, and ensuring that the project’s conference, held at UCL in April 2016, was such a success. It was Emma who first suggested the term ‘object habit’ for this symposium, a concept that I have developed further in this book. Emma also contributed to research on the history of objects sent to Italian institutions, discussed in Chapter Three. v Thanks are due to the staff (past and present) of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at UCL: Debbie Challis, Pia Edqvist, Anna Garnett, Tracey Golding, Helen Pike, Maria Ragan, Briony Webb and Alice Williams. Towards the end of the project, additional assistance was received from Massimiliano Pinarello and Heba Abd El Gawad. Similarly, the project could not have succeeded without the help of the Egypt Exploration Society – Carl Graves, Chris Naunton and Cedric Goebell – and the staff of the Griffith Institute in Oxford – Liam McNamara, Francisco Bosch-Puche and Cat Warsi. A steering committee, including Liam McNamara, John Taylor and Alison Petch, was especially helpful in the early stages of the project’s development. In undertaking the research for this book I have been in correspondence with dozens of curators and archivists at institutions ranging from the USA’s White House and Britain’s Royal Palaces to universities in Japan and local museums in Cornwall. Special mention, however, goes to Ashley Cooke, Carl Graves, Faye Kalloniatis, Margaret Maitland, and Campbell Price, who were always exceedingly generous with the information that they shared about the collections and archives they look after. Thanks are due to Lawrence Berman of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and Adela Oppenheim of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for assistance during a research visit in April 2015; to Anlen Boshoff, Esther Esmyol and Lambert Vorster for assistance in South Africa during research visits in 2014 and 2017; to the University of Kyoto for the invitation to participate in their symposium in February 2016, and to the museum staff at the University for the opportunity to study the University’s collections there; and to Prince Lawerh and Irene Morfini for help in the National Museum of Ghana during a research visit in September 2017. Brian Weightman and Meg Wilson were very generous in sharing transcriptions of the archives at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, and Christina Donald helped with explorations of the collections at the McManus Museum and Art Gallery’s stores in Dundee. For assistance identifying further archival sources, museum objects and references I would like to acknowledge Louise Allen, Maura Anderson, Brigitte Balanda, Yekaterina Barbash, Stephanie Boonstra, Michael Carver, Chris Davey, Josh Emmitt, Ben Harer, Angela Houghton, Sue Giles, Imogen Gunn, Gabrielle Heffernan, Maarten Horn, John J. Johnson, Gina Laycock, Steven Lubar, Jennifer McCormick, Samantha Masters, Peter Morris, Mark Norman, Alessandro Pezzati, Nathan Schlanger, Jon Schmitz, Sarah Scott, Paul Smith, Angela Stienne, Veronica Tamorri, John Taylor, Ross Thomas, Amara Thornton, Carolyn Thorp, Alexandra Villing, Marianne Weldon and Martha Zierden. vi My own linguistic inadequacies have left me indebted to more able colleagues who have translated texts from various corners of the globe. For help with Japanese sources I am very grateful to Kento Zenihiro, Noriyuki Shirai, Hyung Il Pai, Ryan Botta, and especially to Tomoaki Nakano. I would like to thank Chloe Ward for French translations, Elizabeth Wood for German, Anlen Boshoff for Afrikaans, and Heba Abd El Gawad and Ahmed Mekawy Ouda for Arabic. Several individuals kindly commented on earlier chapter drafts and shared references, unpublished papers and archival sources. I am grateful for their expertise and advice: Tine Bagh, John Baines, Wendy Doyon, Heba Abd El Gawad, Thomas Gertzen, Daniela Picchi, Christina Riggs, Kathleen Sheppard, Stephen Quirke and Alice Williams.