Museums
Museo delle Antichità Egizie (Torino)
Category: Ancient art
“The road to Menfi and to Thebe passes through Turin” wrote Jean-Francois Champollion, the internationally famous French Egyptologist and first European to decipher the language of the hieroglyphics. A statement that dates back to 1825 when the father of Egyptology came to Turin to study the founding contents of the Museo Egizio, in particular, the fragments of the papyrus of Turin which contains the list of the names of the pharaohs edited during the 17th dynasty. The museum, which preserves the most important collection after the museum in Cairo, was founded by Carlo Felice in 1824 after the acquisitions from the consul archeologist Bernardino Drovetti, whose symbol is the statue of the Pharaoh Ramses II. The collection has increased over the years with findings from new digs and expeditions and through acquisitions from Ernesto Schiaparelli. Today, the museum consists of about 30,000 pieces – only a part of which is on exhibit – which document Egyptian history and culture from the Paleolithic to the Coptic Eras, and preserves unique pieces and collections of objects of art, of everyday use, and of funerary use, including, the Isiac Tablet, the Gebelein painted canvas, the intact tomb of Kha and Merit, the Ellesjia cliff temple. For the Winter Olympics 2006, a especially striking staging was created by the set designer Dante Ferretti, who won an Oscar in 2005.
Information
Via Accademia Delle Scienze, 6 - 10123 Torino
Tel. +39.011.5617776 - Fax +39.011.5623157
E-mail: info@museitorino.it
www.museoegizio.org
