Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives
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Bristol’s Museums, Galleries & Archives
Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery
Queen’s Road
Bristol City Council BS8 1RL
Tel 0117 922 3571
Fax 0117 922 2047
History of the collection
The forerunner of today’s Bristol’s Museums, Galleries & Archives was the Bristol Institution, founded in 1823 and associated with the Bristol Philosophical and Literary Society, founded in 1808. The main focus of the Institution was the natural sciences. From the beginning, the Institution was collecting Egyptian material, although not much. In the first 10 years, out of about 1,250 donations, only 12 were of Egyptological items, and 3 of those were books. The 10th item donated to the Institution was ‘A fine Mummy’ presented by John Webb of Leghorn on March 1823. The 11th donation was from the Revd Morris of Leghorn, who gave ‘8 Egyptian Idols’ and a mummy of a cat.
From the late 19th century, a large part of the collection came from field work by the Egypt Exploration Fund, and later from the British School of Archaeology in Egypt. Other material came from tourists collecting mostly unprovenanced material, and from professional and amateur collectors.
The Egyptian material from the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution is on loan to Bristol. This includes the large slabs from the coronation reliefs of Ramesses II, which once decorated the donor’s front garden in Bath.
The collection includes the archive of Belzoni material: some 300 paintings of the wall decoration of the tomb of Sety I, as opened by Belzoni in 1818. Most of these were part of the ‘models’ of the 
tomb made for the London and probably the Paris exhibitions. Some are sketches for reference, or drawings for the plate makers and colourists working on his book of plates. There is also a sketchbook of Belzoni’s, a notebook of Sarah Belzoni’s, and various sketches for the tomb paintings and plates of the ‘Narrative’. There are a few objects bought from an exhibition of Belzoni’s collection in Bath, given by Wells Museum.
Few new accessions are made. The last two accessions were material from the EES excavations at Qasr Ibrim in the 1970s, and a collection of amulets made in about 1900 from a private donor.
Current Work
A new Egypt gallery opened in October 2007. It replaced a smaller gallery open from 1982-2005. It is not chronological or thematic, but looks at people in ancient Egypt and how they lived, worked and died. All the objects on display are genuine Egyptian artefacts.
The collection is being catalogued onto a powerful new database (KE EMu). A version of the database is now available on-line.
Renaissance in the Regions funding paid for two part-time paper conservators to clean, repair and rehouse the Belzoni collection. Each painting is now mounted on conservation board in standard-sized mounts, and stored in Solander boxes in a new paper store. The last exhibition of Belzoni paintings was in 2007. The paintings are digitised & online, making them more widely accessible.
Staff
The Egyptology collection is the responsibility of the Curator of Ethnography & Foreign Archaeology. Egyptology learning is the responsibility of one of the Museum Learning Officers. Conservation staff worked on objects for the new gallery, including stone, faience, pottery, linen and papyrus. Three members of staff are involved in field projects: at Qasr Ibrim on the Tarharqa Project, at Saqqara and Tell el Amarna; and at South Asasif .
Website
For more information about the museum and updates about the gallery and the Egypt collection please visit our website.
