Other studies of the department’s collections

Lead researcher: María del Carmen Pérez Die, Emeritus Conservator of the National Archaeological Museum

Study and cataloguing of Egyptian shabtis at the National Archaeological Museum

The National Archaeological Museum is home to one of the world’s most important museum collections of shabtis, in terms of both size and quality. These funerary figurines, very typical of ancient Egypt, are an inexhaustible source of information about the titles and names of the people to whom they belonged. The types, inscriptions and materials of which they were made also reveal essential details that facilitate their study. We are gradually cataloguing and studying these shabtis with the ultimate aim of creating an online catalogue of these pieces to be published by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. The catalogue is being prepared in the form of PDF entries in Spanish and English, in accordance with the standards of the BIS (Base Internationale des Shaouabtis) database. We are using the Multilingual Egyptological Thesauri, copying inscriptions with the GLYPH program, and including four photographs of each piece. We are currently studying the shabtis of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, which will be included in the first volume of the catalogue.

Study and cataloguing of 21st-dynasty Egyptian coffins at the National Archaeological Museum

The 21st-dynasty coffins are perhaps the most remarkable pieces in the National Archaeological Museum’s Egyptian collection. They were donated by the Egyptian government in 1887 following the discovery of the Deir el-Bahari cache, which contained the bodies and coffins of the priests of the god Amun. Another coffin entered the museum with the E. Toda collection.

These coffins are being studied by Dr Carmen Pérez Die of the National Archaeological Museum and Professor Niwinski from the University of Warsaw, who visited Madrid to examine them in 2018. They are translating the texts and interpreting the religious iconography that covers the surfaces, the coffins’ possible reuse and their different museographic presentations since they entered the museum. High-resolution photographs have also been taken to illustrate the texts. The results will soon be published in a bilingual (English/Spanish) volume.

Study and cataloguing of artefacts from the First Intermediate Period/Early Middle Kingdom necropolis at Herakleopolis Magna, Egypt, now held at the National Archaeological Museum

This programme aims to study artefacts from the Egyptian site currently being excavated by the Spanish Archaeological Mission, which dates back to 1966. The pieces—wall reliefs and false doors found at the First Intermediate Period/Early Middle Kingdom necropolis and allotted to the National Archaeological Museum in the 1980 partage—are being included in the records and general inventory of the dig site, along with other finds made years later at the same necropolis, many of which pertain to the same archaeological complex. All the finds are entered in an Access database and accompanied by photos and drawings. The report on this necropolis is already being written in preparation for future publication.