Contact person/contact:
Seminar for Egyptology and Coptology
Cultural Studies Centre
Prof. Dr. Heike Behlmer
Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14
37073 Göttingen
Tel.: 0551 39-24561
aegypten@uni-goettingen.de
www.aegyptologie.uni-goettingen.de
The University of Göttingen's Aegyptiaca, some of which were acquired for the Academic Museum at the end of the 18th century on the initiative of J. F. Blumenbach (1752-1840), are spread across various collections. Mummies, parts of mummies and grave furnishings are kept in the Archaeological Collections, the Anthropological Collection and in the collection of the Centre for Anatomy. In contrast, most of the artefacts in the Department of Egyptology and Coptology today are on permanent loan from the Ethnological Collection and still bear the corresponding inventory numbers. These came into the possession of the Institute of Ethnology (now the Institute of Ethnology) in 1939 via the private collector Emilie Ronath. Mrs Ronath had collected them while working as an educator in Egypt between 1881 and 1887. The teaching collection of the Department of Egyptology and Coptology is supplemented by a ceramics teaching collection established by Hermann Kees (1886-1964), director of the department from 1924 to 1945 (catalogued and dated by Eva-Maria Engel in 2012).
The Aegyptiaca from the Ethnological Collection were transferred to the Department of Egyptology and Coptology on permanent loan following an exhibition of small Egyptian artefacts in 1997. They are catalogued in Barbara Böhm's "Catalogue of the Aegyptiaca of the Ethnological Collection of the Georg August University of Göttingen" (Göttingen 2005), which contains 73 objects with inventory numbers.
As part of the 2017 "Wissensdinge online" internship programme, high-resolution photographs were taken of all objects with inventory numbers. The cataloguing data of the items recorded in the 2005 catalogue were transferred to the Göttingen collection database and data records for other objects were created.
On the occasion of the Göttingen Handel Festival in 2020/21, the virtual exhibition "Die Gesänge der Ptolemäer. Egyptian Reception in the Operas of George Frideric Handel" was realised with items from the collection.
Seminar for Egyptology and Coptology
