Rediscovering Grigory Stroganoff as a collector of Egyptian art

Journal of the History of Collections (2009) pp. 1–18
Not for
public release
Rediscovering Grigory Stroganoff as a collector
of Egyptian art
Marsha Hill, Georg Meurer and Maarten Raven
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A famed connoisseur of European paintings and of objects of fine art from many cultures, Count Grigory
Sergeievich Stroganoff of Rome, Paris, and St Petersburg also had a large collection of Egyptian art. This
early Egyptian collection was dispersed with scarcely any record at the time of Stroganoff’s death, and so
has been known almost exclusively from a slender booklet produced in connection with an exhibition
mounted in 1880 in Aachen. The three authors join their own researches from different perspectives to
create a portrait of Stroganoff as a collector of Egyptian antiquities.
Grigory Sergeievich Stroganoff, 1829–1910,1
a member of the well-known Russian family of connoisseurs and collectors, was himself a collector of
paintings and objects of fine art from Europe, Russia,
the Countries of the Mediterranean basin and the
Near and Far East, including ancient Egyptian
objects.2 The Count’s Egyptian collection has been
known almost exclusively from the slender booklet produced in connection with the 1880 exhibition
of his collection in Aachen, Sammlung Aegyptischer
Alterthümer des Grafen Gregor Stroganoff, which
enumerated and described quite cursorily and
without measurements the astonishing 501 pieces
involved.3 Recent years, however, have brought
fresh attention to the Count’s collections, including
that of the current authors who had each begun work
from different perspectives on Stroganoff’s Egyptian
collection.4 Even as renewed research makes it apparent how many questions remain, it is possible to
begin to suggest a more detailed picture of the
Count’s Egyptian collecting activity and to place
it within the context of its time and related collecting society. The first section by Marsha Hill considers the trajectory of the Count’s Egyptian collecting
life in overview. The second section by Georg
Meurer deals with all aspects of the Count’s involvement with Aachen. The last section comprises two
considerations of remarkable objects once in the
collection, by Marsha Hill and Maarten Raven,
respectively.
count
Stroganoff and Egyptian art: an overview,
by Marsha Hill
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Collecting and exhibiting
A highly cosmopolitan individual, Stroganoff travelled extensively with his family throughout the
world, east and west, from the early 1860s, returning
intermittently to St Petersburg and the Russian and
Ukranian countryside, but maintaining Rome as their
winter home.5 Those travels would have provided
opportunities for collecting, and it has been specifically
noted that the Count purchased from dealers throughout Europe, including in Rome, Paris, Cologne,
Munich, and other unspecified cities.6 The eventful
years from 1875 to 1882 saw personal tragedies – the
suicide of Stroganoff’s teenage son in 1875 and the
ensuing ill-health of his wife with her eventual death
in 1882 – but also the purchase in 1880 of the house in
Rome on Via Gregoriana that was to become associated with him and his important collections.7 During
the same years the Count certainly made one and
­possibly two trips to Egypt: a prolonged tour of Asia
and Egypt that followed closely on his son’s suicide
figures in family records, while a trip to Egypt that
included visits to Alexandria, the Fayum, Upper
Egypt, and to Zagazig in the eastern Delta definitely
took place in 1879-80, probably during the winter
months.8 He also witnessed the initiation of the exhibition of his Egyptian collection in Aachen in 1880.
It was following this period that the collections of
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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paintings and fine arts for which Stroganoff is best
known were attentively formed,9 although, as will be
seen, he continued to collect Egyptian antiquities at a
diminished level.
The Aachen exhibition came about because from at
least 1876 Stroganoff regularly spent time in the
spa-city of Aachen with its rich remembrances of
early European history, where he was one of a group
of cultured gentlemen who supported the Museum
Society. Georg Meurer’s continuing work on the
history and cataloguing of the Egyptian collection of
the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen, latest
successor of the earlier Museum Society, has permitted him to write a detailed and revealing examination
of this earliest and most substantial manifestation of
Stroganoff’s Egyptian collecting activities. This study
which follows immediately hereafter considers such
questions as the acquisition of the collection presented
at that exhibition and the history of Stroganoff’s subsequent loans to Aachen; it identifies donations that
still remain in the Museum and it places the collection
in the context of other early private collections of
Egyptian art in Germany.
Among the critical junctures identified by Meurer
in the history of the exhibition, loans and gifts to
Aachen, it seems that the exhibition in the form
recorded in the catalogue ended by 1886 with the
withdrawal of hundreds of pieces. Some portion
of these pieces may have been incorporated in the
collections in the newly finished villa in Rome,
but possibly a certain culling and refining of the
Egyptian collection began to take place already then.
Certainly Stroganoff continually refined other
aspects of his collections through auction and sales
to dealers.10
At the same time he apparently continued to buy
selectively. For example, a fine panel painting now
in the Vatican museums (discussed further below)
and another painting donated to Aachen are unlikely
to have been purchased before 1887 when the
great finds of such mummies with painted portraits
began to be made in Egypt,11 while Maarten Raven’s
contribution below suggests the Nubian bed-legs
now in Leiden would have been acquired about
1893. Moreover, besides the possible mid-1870s
tour including Egypt and the 1879-80 buying trip to
Egypt which is documented in the Aachen catalogue,
there is evidence that suggests at least one other
in 1887.12
Consolidation and dispersal of the collection
The first decade of the twentieth century was much
occupied by plans and consultations for the publication of a select catalogue of Stroganoff’s collections, to
be written by Ludwig Pollak and Antonio Muñoz. A
significant dispersal of Egyptian pieces, whether they
had figured in the Aachen exhibition or not, seems to
have been take place as part of a general inventorying,
clearance, and consignment to dealers in the early part
of the twentieth century before Stroganoff’s death,
perhaps in conjunction with that catalogue project.
As it transpired, the first volume, Les Antiquités by
Ludwig Pollak, of Pièces de Choix de la Collection du
Comte Gregoire Stroganoff à Rome, appeared in 1911
shortly after the Count’s death on July 27, 1910 in
Paris. Indeed, only one piece from the Aachen exhibition, the bronze torso of King Pedubast (no. 81; see
below), was illustrated and described in Pièces de
Choix, and this is the sole piece that has remained reasonably well-known to the Egyptological community.
The authors’ introduction to the same volume notes,
however, that Stroganoff retained also in his collection even a good number of the scarabs that figured so
largely in the Aachen exhibition thirty years earlier.13
The Sangiorgis in particular dealt with at least some
of the Egyptian objects from this period of dispersal
apparently sanctioned by Stroganoff himself if not
actually before his death.14
The villa in Rome remained mostly closed in
the years immediately following Stroganoff’s death,
although some works were distributed by his daughter
who continued to live mainly in Russia. Apparently an
unknown number of objects remained in the Roman
villa on the family’s complete return to Russia at some
point before World War I, and those began to be sold
only when last remnants of the family – the wife and
son of Stroganoff’s grandson – were able to escape
Russia after the Revolution and reach Rome at the end
of 1920.15 The torso of Pedubast was definitely among
the pieces in the house, and was committed to a sale
at Frederik Muller in Amsterdam in December 1921,
where it was purchased by Calouste Gulbenkian
through the dealer Joseph Duveen.16 One way or
another, after his death and continuing after his family’s
return, the Count’s entire collections were dismantled
and dispersed through art dealers and sales, dismaying
many in Roman art circles;17 there were criticisms at
the time that Stroganoff’s very fine collection of small
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and decorative arts was insufficiently appreciated and
poorly tracked, and this has every appearance of being
true also for the Egyptian antiquities.18
In the absence of a continuous trail, identification
of pieces from the collection is difficult: even for those
that figured in the Aachen exhibition the descriptions
by Brugsch are abbreviated and have proven imprecise,
while identification of Egyptian pieces not included
in the exhibition is quite fortuitous. A few pieces
as noted by Meurer below are still in Aachen. The
Egyptologist Alfred Wiedemann, who saw Stroganoff
pieces in Aachen by 1886, adds details or, in a few
cases, corrections about certain other pieces in the
catalogue. In an 1886 article, he focuses on two Stroganoff pieces, and makes remarks that proved important in following the history of the Pedubast torso (no.
81), while correcting the name on the menat (no. 84) to
Nikauba.19 In the supplement to his history, he cites
Stroganoff pieces according to their Aachen catalogue
numbers, often correcting or adding significantly to
Brugsch’s descriptions or readings, such as correcting
the name on the shawabtis (nos 91-3) from ‘King
Psamtik’ to ‘Pabu with the good name Psamtikseneb’,20
and, even when he says little, his more trustworthy
scholarship provides revelatory information about
pieces summarily described in the catalogue simply
by listing them alongside comparable known or traceable pieces in public collections. Finally, he provides useful descriptive remarks on an unusual large
blue scarab with the name of Sheshonq III (no. 80).21
Now and then pieces have the name Stroganoff
attached or can be recognized when they surface in a
museum collection, auction catalogue, or other source:
the lion hunt scarab of Amenhotep III (no. 45) and the
scarab with the name of Sheshonq III (no. 80) in the
Museo Egizio in Turin,22 one of the three shawabtis
no. 91 at a sale in Florence,23 a faience bead with the
names of Amenhotep III and Tiye in the Miho
Museum (no. 51) (Fig. 1),24 a stela of Osorkon II (no.
77) that was recorded by a cast in the Vatican and
published,25 and a glass vase now in Toledo that is
certainly from the collection and was possibly no.
336.26 Other objects would seem to offer features that
are traceable, but so far the necessary links are not
known to the present writers.27
A few Egyptian objects that once belonged to
­Stroganoff’s collection but did not appear in the
Aachen catalogue were given by him to the Museum
as discussed below by Meurer, and a few others not
known from the Aachen catalogue have reached public collections in recent years. A fine panel painting
mentioned above figured in Pièces de Choix, passed
eventually into the collections of Federico Zeri, who
bequeathed it to the Museo Gregoriano Egizio, Rome
(Fig. 2);28 the Nubian bed-legs were acquired by the
Rijksmuseum in Leiden in 2000; two rings are now in
the Gualino collection in Milan.29
Fig. 1. Large bead with the name of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III
and his wife Queen Tiye, Miho Museum, Shigaraki, Japan.
Photograph © Miho Museum.
Fig. 2. Encaustic panel painting of a man, Museo Gregoriano
Egizio, Rome, Inv. 56605. Photograph © Vatican Museums.
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were scholars/connoisseurs/antiquaries connected
with the German Archaeological Institute, established
in Rome since 1829 and central to the city’s antiquities
culture, and were influential figures in the ancient art
circles in Rome. Pollak, although he was primarily concerned with Greek and Roman art, extended himself to
other ancient traditions, and was an important influence and companion in the last decade of Stroganoff’s
life. He met Stroganoff first in 1898, and travelled to
Egypt and the Near East himself in 1900. After completing a catalogue of the Byzantine collection of the
Count’s countryman and fellow resident of Rome the
Russian Ambassador Alexander Nelidow, he became
more intensely involved with Stroganoff from about
1905, began to plan the Pièces de Choix project (with
Muñoz) from 1907, and to concentrate on it from about
1909.34 Younger Italian Egyptologists Orazio Marucchi
and Ernesto Schapparelli were certainly in contact with
this society in at least a general way.35 Names of antiquaries/dealers such as Augusto Jandolo, Augusto
Castellani, and Giuseppe and Giorgio Sangiorgi figure
with those of others in the accounts of the era, and
Stroganoff’s contact with all of them is known or safely
surmised.36
Although very little is known about Stroganoff’s
activities when he was regularly in Paris where his
daughter and son-in-law had a home, the city’s long
and early involvement with Egypt was reflected in
its great academic institutions and museums that
nurtured a famed network of Egyptological scholars
beginning with Mariette and Maspero, collectors and
antiquaries/dealers.37 One of the most important of
the latter, H. Hoffmann, from whom Stroganoff is
known to have purchased Asian antiquities, was also a
major source of Egyptian antiquities.38
Egyptian art in Stroganoff’s circles
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As Georg Meurer discusses below, it is conceivable
that most of the pharaonic collection exhibited in
Aachen was purchased, perhaps within a very restricted
period, through the proxy of Emil Brugsch. Even so,
other possibilities cannot be ruled out, all the more so
as Stroganoff was a rarely privileged and cosmopolitan man; both before and during the phase when the
Aachen collection was formed and also later in his life,
in collecting Egyptian antiquities just as with every
aspect of his collections, he could have had access to
expertise and to an art market almost without limitations. In the absence of any specific information, it
nevertheless seems necessary and possible to create
some idea of the potential sources of expertise and
objects available to him, and, particularly for Rome,
to suggest something of the society he shared. Of
course, the Count’s own visit(s) to Egypt constituted
collecting opportunities. In addition, his Aachen connection, his buying in Cologne and Munich, and his
involvement with Brugsch in Cairo could possibly
signal direct relations with Egyptological scholarship
in Germany of the period. And, again, although virtually nothing conclusive relative to Stroganoff’s collecting of Egyptian art can be documented, certainly
Rome, his main abode, and Paris, where he regularly
summered, supported separately and in common a
rich mixture of collectors, scholars and dealers who
included Egyptian art in their concerns.
In Rome, the community included Italian and international collectors and scholars, and antiquaries or
dealers. Memoirs and notebooks of Ludwig Pollak,
who was associated with the German Archaeological
Institute in Rome, document and reflect on the
antiquarian-minded society of Rome from his arrival
in 1893.30 In particular, two great Roman lovers and
collectors of Egyptian art were Stroganoff’s con­
temporaries and attested acquaintance, Count Michel
Tyszkiewicz (1828–97) and Senator Giovanni Barracco
(1829–1914).31 Tyszkiewicz had excavated in Egypt,
formed and sold more than one famed Egyptian collection, and in his own memoir recalls one occasion when
Stroganoff instructed him on the recognition of forgeries of goldwork from southern Russia.32 Barracco had
travelled frequently to Egypt and was distinguished in
Roman collecting circles by his affinity for and scholarly
knowledge of Egyptian language and art.33 Wolfgang
Helbig (1839-1915) and Pollak himself (1868-1943)
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Collecting tastes
In general, and although Brugsch’s taciturnity certainly
conceals items of delicacy and beauty, the Aachen
exhibition catalogue suggests that Stroganoff had
acquired pharaonic material in a historical-typological
way that seeks to comprehend the major structural
axes of history and religion in an alien culture. It was
an interest that he appears to have shared with others
of his era and that he may have retained until the
end of his life (if we are to judge from the scarabs he
had withdrawn from the Aachen exhibition and kept
among his collection).39 He seems, however, not to
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have strongly sought out types of Egyptian art generally acknowledged as characteristic and admirable,
such as stone sculpture and relief.
Without knowing more about the circumstances of
formation of the collection exhibited at Aachen, it is
not feasible to evaluate the range of choices actually
available to Stroganoff up to that point. After 1880,
even though his collecting activity seems to have been
concentrated in other areas he did continue to collect
Egyptian art at least occasionally, to judge from the
presence of objects associated with his collection that
did not appear in the Aachen catalogue, so it is possible to consider the implications of these as choices.
Since major contemporary private collections in Rome
(like that of Giovanni Barracco) and in Paris included
significant Egyptian stone sculpture and related items,
it certainly would have been possible for someone like
Stroganoff to make such acquisitions if he had chosen
to do so.40 Their apparent absence in his collection
suggests that these Egyptian genres did not strongly
command his attention. Among significant ­acquisitions
almost certainly from the post-Aachen exhibition
years, the Leiden furniture legs described below by
Maarten Raven (see Figs. 6–7, below) and the fine
panel painting in the Vatican (Fig. 2, above) are certainly aesthetically striking pieces, but again are not
characteristic pharaonic genres. The bronze torso of
Pedubast (see Fig. 5, below), even if it was part of the
Aachen collection and therefore conceivably originally chosen for its historical rather than its aesthetic
significance, clearly did meet his own artistic criteria
as it was the one pharaonic piece that appeared in
the Pièces de Choix catalogue. Possibly the surface
attention, the modelling, colour and movement of the
piece, appealed more nearly to this connoisseur’s personal tastes insofar as they are represented by the classical bronzes and Byzantine and Islamic decorative
arts that heavily populated his collections.
being its first local museum. The Museum was to
have divisions for natural history, history-archaeology,
and art. The secretary of the Society, retired Captain
Fritz Berndt, was at the same time the first director
of the Museum. In 1880,42 even before any significant collection had been acquired for the permanent
installations of what was later to be the Suermondt
Museum, the young Museum Society presented
Stroganoff’s Egyptian collection as its second special
exhibition.
An internationally known Egyptologist, Emil Brugsch
(1842-1930),43 wrote the exhibition catalogue entitled
Sammlung Aegyptischer Alterthümer des Grafen Gregor
Stroganoff (The Collection of Egyptian Antiquities of
Count Grigory Stroganoff). How the contact between
Brugsch and Stroganoff came about, or why Brugsch
in particular was brought in to write the catalogue,
unfortunately remains unknown. Possibly the Count
had become acquainted with Emil Brugsch and his
older brother Heinrich on an earlier visit to Egypt;
Heinrich Brugsch was also an Egyptologist and, in
fact, an incomparably more important scholar, as well
as a tour guide sought by nobility and royalty. On the
other hand, the younger Brugsch was a deputy to the
first two directors of the Museum and the Service des
Antiquités, Auguste Mariette (1821-1881, director of
the Service from 1858, and of the Museum from 1863)
and Gaston Maspero (1846-1916, director of the
­Service and the Museum 1881-6 and 1899-1914), and
was employed as curator in the Egyptian Museum in
Boulaq (from 1902 in its current central Cairo location) from 1883 until his retirement in 1914, and
through his position he came into contact with all the
archaeological excavations in Egypt and their finds.
Beginning in the 1880s, on the instructions of the
Service des Antiquités and with the concurrence of
the government, he sold duplicates on behalf of the
Egyptian Museum (in particular, shawabtis from Deir
el-Medina, amulets, sarcophagi and mummies from
Akhmim, etc.) to tourists and interested museums
worldwide.44 However, it is apparent that Emil also
exploited his position in the Museum to deal in objects
for his personal benefit. Possibly he had obtained
objects in one way or another for Stroganoff already
and in this way had been in contact with him. It is in
any event quite likely that Brugsch had put together
the core of the Count’s collection from the available
duplicates in the Museum, as he is documented to
have done later, for example, for the American collector
Stroganoff and his Egyptian collection in the
present-day Suermondt-Ludwig Museum,
Aachen, by Georg Meurer 41
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The Aachen exhibition of 1880 and the origins of the
Stroganoff Egyptian collection
In February 1877 a Museum Society was founded
in Aachen through the initiative of several engaged
citizens with the purpose of helping the city bring into
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Anthony W. Drexel, when he received $3,000 for his
services from the collector.45 So it can be conjectured
that the exhibition catalogue for Aachen was written in
Cairo, where Brugsch could have known all the objects
from the beginnings of the collection or had even procured them.46 The alternative would be a sojourn by
Emil in Aachen or Rome, which cannot be documented.
Emil Brugsch’s 1880 catalogue organized the collection totaling 501 objects primarily in four sections, ‘Historical Collection, ordered by dynasties’, ‘Pantheon’,
‘Diversa (scarabs, statuettes, items from vitreous materials, jewelry elements, etc.)’, and ‘Bronzes’; it
included brief descriptions of the pieces or explanations of their meaning, but gave no measurements or
pictures. At the front of the booklet is a ‘Chronological
Overview of the Dynasties (according to Lepsius,
Königsbuch)’, which made it possible for a layperson
to understand, at least, the chronological order of the
objects. Nos 438-47 were added as an afterword,
and nos 448-501 were placed in an appended section
entitled ‘Terracottas and Bronzes of Count Grigory
Stroganoff, collected by him in Egypt in 1879/80’.47
A proportion of the catalogued antiquities were also
rated (r, rr, rrr) according to their rarity and their
resultant scholarly importance, so that the visitor could
easily recognize the most important objects. Eight
pieces in all were emphasized as absolute Rarissima
(rrr): the torso of a bronze statue of Pedubast, which
is now in the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon (no.
81),48 a Coptic tunic (no. 369), a bronze of the goddess Selket (no. 372), an aegis-menat (no. 398),49 an
arm-censer (no. 424), a bronze ram-headed sphinx
(no. 425), a statuette of a particular form of the
Goddess Isis-Hathor (?) (no. 426), and a gold statuette
of the god Seth (no. 447). In fact, most of these
objects could certainly be classified as remarkable
from the modern viewpoint. Two are still today in the
Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, the Coptic tunic and
the aegis (Fig. 3). Moreover, of the twenty objects
in the second category (rr), the mummy cartonnage
(no. 370) (Fig. 4) is still in the Museum, while the
small wood figures also in the Museum probably
formed part of the wooden bark (no. 368).50
Fig. 3. Aegis, Suermondt Ludwig Museum, Aachen, AK533.
Photograph © Suermondt Ludwig Museum, by Ann Münchow,
Aachen.
the Alte Redoute in Comphausbadstrasse, the Egyptian
antiquities were displayed in gallery vi, which was
intended for ‘ancient craftworks’ according to the
Museum’s organizational scheme. The objects were
presented in two cabinets as well as in two small
showcases,51 and were labelled ‘Collection of Egyptian
Antiquities of Count Stroganoff, who has loaned it
to the Museum for some years in the friendliest
manner.’ At this time, then, they were still the Count’s
property. Scarabs, statuettes of gods of wood and
­terracotta, amulets and jewelry, as well as terracotta
statuettes, lamps, and so on from the Graeco-Roman
Period were found in cabinet 9. The bronzes were on
their own in cabinet 10. In the showcase adjacent to
cabinet 10 was the wooden bark, and in the showcase
opposite, next to cabinet 9, were the mummy cartonnage and textile fragments (possibly the Coptic tunic).
The Stroganoff Egyptian collection in Aachen
According to the catalogue of 1886, in this same year
from 1886
Count Stroganoff still had sixty objects in all from his
According to the 1886 guide to the Suermondt-­ private collection on long-term loan, including all
Ludwig Museum, then located in its earliest home in eight of those marked with rrr in the 1880 catalogue
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loans were now only very cursorily cited: one cabinet
contained ‘a collection of scarabs and small representations of gods’, another ‘mostly pottery, lamps and
other things; in the uppermost row, on the narrow
side toward the window, a Tanagra figurine.’ This last
item too was a loan from the Count, which he later
donated to the Museum.55 The adjacent showcase displayed ‘an ancient Egyptian mummy garment’ (surely
the mummy cartonnage) and ‘on the floor an ancient
Egyptian textile with colored decoration from the 4th
and 5th centuries AD’ (probably the Coptic tunic).
So, one can deduce that between 1886 and 1892 the
selection of pieces placed at the disposal of the
Museum had changed minimally – only the wooden
ship was definitely no longer exhibited.
The last guide produced for many decades for the
Museum, which had in the meantime moved to
the new building at the Casalettsche Stadtpalais on
Wilhelmstrasse, dates to 1902 and was written by the new
director Dr Anton Kisa. It reveals a restructuring, not
only as a result of the move, of the presentation of all
the holdings including also the Egyptian collection.56
In 1893 the Museum had purchased on the art market
a mummy with its coffin from Akhmim. This was
probably the reason that the Egyptian display was
divided: some of the Aegyptiaca were placed in a cabinet in an anteroom on the ground floor, which held
the ‘Ethnographic Collection and Oriental Artworks’.
There the mummy cartonnage was displayed, with its
gold mask that unfortunately no longer exists, and
also its linen wrappings and the separate cartonnage
for the feet, both items now lost too. Then, on the
floor were the Coptic tunic (‘rich Coptic fabric, 3rd
century A.D., gift of Count Grigory Stroganoff’) and
in the lower part of a cabinet the ‘ancient Egyptian
female mummy from Panopolis (that is, Akhmim), ca.
16th century b.c.’ In the same gallery four further
cabinets presented South American objects, weapons
from Nubia and the South Seas, from Java and
­Borneo, as well as craftworks from China (statuettes
of gods from boxwood and stoneware, gifts of Count
Stroganoff), Java (a gilded wood Buddha, likewise the
gift of Stroganoff), Japan (for example, two ancient
Japanese sets of armour) and the Dutch East Indies
(weapons and implements). The remaining Aegyptiaca were now in a cabinet of a small gallery for ‘Ancient
Art’ on the second floor. In this cabinet were, among
other things, the aegis-menat, a seated statuette of
Isis, the foot piece of a coffin, some small vessels of
Fig. 4. Cartonnage, Suermondt Ludwig Museum, Aachen,
AK568. Photograph © Suermondt Ludwig Museum, by Anne
Gold, Aachen.
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and six of those marked with rr, indicating that he
had withdrawn the remainder of the collection some
time before 1886.
The objects still on loan had evidently been selected
according to their significance, since, for example, the
lion-hunt scarab of Amenhotep III52 and the bronze
kneeling king offering nu-pots were included.53 From
the fact that Stroganoff himself had made this selection it can be deduced that he continued to place these
important pieces from his collection on loan with a
view to the long-term benefit of the Museum.
The Museum guide of 1892 shows the Egyptian
objects still exhibited in the same cabinets in the same
gallery.54 The gallery was now identified as for ‘Goldwork, older craft works and other items’. The Count’s
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alabaster, and wooden oarsmen. On the wall was
exhibited a mummy portrait. All these pieces were
labelled as the donation of Count Stroganoff. In an
adjacent flat wall-case Coptic textiles, which derived
from the bequest of the Canon Franz Bock, were
presented. A second cabinet in the Ancient Gallery,
whose wall and ceiling were decorated in Pompeian
style, exhibited electroplated copies of the treasures
of Myceneae as well as Greek and South Italian
ceramics.
Comparison of the catalogues and inventories with
the pieces now present in the Suermondt-Ludwig
Museum happily indicates that, of the pieces finally
donated by Stroganoff to the Museum, almost all are
still present.57 The following items from the Count’s
property are in the Museum today: various components of the aegis/menat; the bronze statuette of a
seated Isis; fourteen wooden servant figures, probably
originally from a boat; two small wooden papyrus
­columns, originally from a boat or shrine; the mummy
portrait; eleven small stone vessels; the foot-piece of a
coffin; the mummy cartonnage; and – probably also
stemming from his collection – the limestone statuette of a woman.
Gustav Lübcke (1868-1925), himself an art dealer and
hence provided with inside information, donated his
collection to the museum in Hamm which is for this
reason named after him, but it likewise contained no
large objects. The same is true for the collection of
August Kestner (1777-1853), which represented the
basis of the collection for the museum in his name in
Hanover. He had begun his collecting in Rome some
decades earlier and had cultivated close contacts
with Egyptologists. In contrast, Wilhelm Pelizaeus
(1851-1930) lived in Cairo, financed excavations in
Egypt over the course of a decade, and in this way
received a part of the finds, which included large
sculpture. What is more, in Egypt he could make good
purchases for his collection, which today forms the
core of the collection of the Roemer- und PelizaeusMuseum, likewise named after him.
While Stroganoff sojourned regularly in the spatown of Bad Aachen over several years,61 he actually
lived in Paris and more especially Rome, where he
had spent the winters since the 1860s.62 For the exhibition in Aachen he probably had his entire Egyptian
collection of 501 objects transported there. In the
foreword to the catalogue by Brugsch it is noted that
the exhibition would continue ‘for some time’, but
unfortunately the surviving documentation about the
Museum and the Museum Society does not permit
the precise length of the presentation to be established.63 Nor is it known how many of the available
nine galleries of the Museum it took up, compared to
the permanent collection that was then only in its
formative years. Possibly Stroganoff first withdrew all
the loans after the closing of the exhibition of 1880,
only later to resolve on a further loan: a document in
the Aachen city archives dated 14 December 1884
lists various art works placed on loan by Stroganoff at
a total insurance value of 15,500 Marks. At the head of
this list stands the entry ‘ancient Egyptian objects, 41
pieces, according to the special list’; unfortunately,
however, the special list has not been preserved.64 The
worth of the named Aegyptiaca for insurance purposes is declared at 2000 Marks. From the Museum
guides of the years 1886 and 1892 it can be gathered
that Stroganoff placed part of his collection, some
sixty objects, on loan over at least a decade. In the
interval from 1892 to 1902 he then withdrew them.
Presumably this occurred at the time the Museum
moved into the new building on Wilhelmstrasse in
1901 (opened on 26 November 1901), since on this
Stroganoff as collector of Egyptian art and patron of
the Suermondt Museum
The exhibition catalogue of 1880 demonstrates that
Stroganoff had purchased at least a part of his Aegyptiaca on a trip to Egypt in 1879/1880, probably in the
winter months.58 In fact, if it were the case that this
quite large Egyptian collection was not provided
en bloc by Emil Brugsch, the Count surely could not
have begun building the collection only shortly before
the Aachen exhibition, but must already have made
earlier purchases on the art market in Europe. Or perhaps he had already been in Egypt at some time and
brought objects home. Indeed, one later Egyptian
tour in the year 1887 is certainly known to the present
writer.59
As concerns the objects themselves described in
the exhibition catalogue by Emil Brugsch, they are
almost entirely small pieces. Given Stroganoff’s widely
reputed passion for collecting, in which, admittedly,
the Egyptian collection appears to have played a rather
subordinate role, he may have had infrequent opportunities to obtain larger Egyptian pieces, as seems to
have been the case with other important collectors of
his time.60 For example, the collector of Egyptian art
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occasion the entire holdings underwent reorganization based on the ideas of the new director Dr Kisa,
and, in spite of the considerably enlarged area, the
entire available space was intended to be used for the
permanent collections.
From time to time the Count parted with works
from his different collections and transferred them as
gifts to the Museum.65 Judging from the valuation
system applied in the 1880 exhibition catalogue, it
is clear that he chose not only insignificant pieces
for this purpose, but also some pieces which Brugsch
had designated as ‘Rarissima’ (the aegis-menat, Coptic
tunic, and mummy cartonnage). The entire scarab
collection, though, was withdrawn.66 The Fayum
mummy portrait described in the 1902 guide and the
‘alabaster cups and bowls’ were not mentioned in
1880. Presumably in the interval Stroganoff had made
further purchases for his collection, but later divested
himself of some of the less important – the mummy
portrait was certainly not in good condition even in
1903.67 Papers preserved in the city archive also indicate that the Count donated the Egyptian artworks
still in the Museum collection piece-by-piece, at least
in the well-documented period between 1886 and
1893, and not as a single larger gift.68
Presentation of the exhibition of Stroganoff’s Egyptian antiquities in Aachen created a small sensation. If
one bears in mind the size of the collection with its
501 exhibited objects, even by today’s standards it was
an unusually large exhibition. Moreover, the (temporary) public presentation of private Egyptian collections in Germany 130 years ago was completely out of
the ordinary, no other instance being known to the
present writer.69 And, indeed, one has to recall that at
that time in Germany itself there were only a few
Egyptian collections to be seen in publicly accessible
museums.70 To be sure, the most important Egyptian
museums today in Germany, those in Berlin (founded
in 1828) and Munich (from 1833),71 had already
existed for some time; however, with the exception of
these two museums and those in the cities of Dresden
(1832 dissolution of the princely collection and creation of the Historical Museum), Gotha (founded
1824), Karlsruhe (before 1766),72 Kassel (founded
1779), Leipzig (founded 1874), Wiesbaden (from
1825) and Würzburg (from 1857), in 1880 there was
otherwise no place in Germany where noteworthy
Egyptian objects could be freely viewed. All the other
collections known today were nascent at this time and
formed within the next decades.73 The exhibition in
Aachen was therefore not only of interest for laypersons, but also for Egyptologists, as is evidenced by the
visit of Alfred Wiedemann, who was later the first
holder of the chair of Egyptology at the University of
Bonn.74
695
Stroganoff, forerunner, catalyst and honorary
member
The special stature of the collection loaned by the
Count – a man who was not native to Aachen but who
merely passed time there as a spa-guest – was fully
acknowledged by the city authorities: on 2 September
1880 the Museum Society named Stroganoff as its
third honorary member on the basis of his special
merit.75 This honour was direct response to his loan
of the Egyptian collection, which had remarkably
advanced the new Museum at this early stage of
its creation.76 Fortunately a copy of the certificate of
honour is preserved and reads77:
Grégoire Serge Stroganoff! In thankful recognition of the
active goodwill which you, most honoured Count, have
shown for the efforts of the Society for years through the
loan of art objects for the exhibition of the Museum Society,
whereby the interest of the same has been advanced in an
outstanding way, the undersigned committee has the honour to appoint you according to Statute 6 as an Honorary
Member of the Museum Society in the City of Aachen and
to respectfully and faithfully present this diploma as testimony to you.
Aachen, 2 September 1880. The Committee of the Museum
Society.
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Two case studies of extraordinary objects
from the Stroganoff collection
The bronze torso of King Pedubast from the
Stroganoff collection, by Marsha Hill
The still-spectacular fragmentary bronze torso of
King Pedubast (c.818-793 bc) today in the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, is one of the great artistic
monuments of the Egyptian Third Intermediate
Period (Dynasties 21-25, c.1070-664 bc), a politically
decentralized and obscure era marked, nonetheless,
by a high level of inventiveness and artistry in metalwork (Fig. 5).78
As preserved, the torso measures 27 cm high; the
original statue probably measured about 74-78 cm,
exclusive of any headdress it may have worn, and
showed the King striding forward and probably
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Lands, Usermaatre-Chosen-of-Amun, son of Re,
lord of Diadems, Pedubast-son-of-Bastet-beloved-ofAmun.’ Over a pleated kilt Pedubast wears a featherpatterned belt and apron, with a panther head adorning
the top of the apron and a row of uraei across the
bottom; this costume is conjectured to emphasize the
King’s divinity as son of the sun god and his protection by the sky goddess, and may have associations
with the royal renewal festival called the heb-sed.
Blocks of gold and copper-enriched reddish-gold
chevrons are inlaid in cells to form the feather patterning on these costume elements. These cells and,
therefore, the colour blocks are intentionally offset
from one side of the apron to the other so as to create
an asymmetry and visual movement.
The animation of the surface of the statue through
the layout and colour of the inlays, along with the
strong sense of motion in the treatment of the figure,
attest to the vibrancy of temple ritual statuary in the
Third Intermediate Period, when metal-working
skills reached new heights, and when temples, as the
focal points of the political strivings of the era, were
richly endowed with such elaborate statues. The use
of sophisticated alloys that suggest a previously unsuspected spectrum of possibilities for metal polychromy
and the presence of an iron armature both confirm
and extend the observations of other recent studies of
Egyptian ‘great bronzes’ and other bronzes of the
period.
The statue was no. 81 in the Aachen exhibition of
the Stroganoff Egyptian collection in 1880.79 A
number of details indicate that the statue had only
been partially cleaned of its archaeological corrosion
when Brugsch saw it to record the inscription for the
catalogue, although the entire inscription had been
cleaned and was visible when it was seen by Wiedemann
who published his description in 1886.80 It seems
likely the statue may have been excavated only shortly
before it was seen by Brugsch and purchased by
Stroganoff. The catalogue itself gives no archaeological
origin for the piece, and historians of the Third Intermediate Period have generally followed Kenneth
Kitchen, author of the major synthetic work on this
difficult period, in discarding as late and unsubstantiated a statement by Petrie from 1905 that the statue
was excavated among the ruins of the great northern
city of Tanis in the eastern Egyptian Delta.81 However, evidence from an 1887 account by Maspero
reveals that there is a stronger tradition of this origin,
Fig. 5. Torso of King Pedubast, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian,
Lisbon, no. 52. Reproduced with permission. Photograph by
William Barrette, New York.
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­ resenting an offering in his now missing hands.
p
Even the fragment conveys a strong sense of motion,
because the King was represented as if in the course of
activity: the weight shifts between his legs to the rear
and to the front, the left swinging strongly in front
of the right. The surface was richly decorated. Only
traces remain of precious metal inlay on the chest, but
enough to indicate that two groups of confronted gods
were represented, that on the figure’s right side led
by a mummiform deity followed by a male and then a
female goddess, the group on the figure’s left being
led by a male holding an Egyptian god’s sceptre and
followed by two figures. Gold inlays at the centre
of the statue’s belt delineate his name ‘UsermaatreChosen-of-Amun, Pedubast-son-of-Bastet-belovedof-Amun’, and on his apron appear again his names
‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two
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and the history of investigations at the site gives
­substantial (if circumstantial) credibility to this tradition.82 Such a possible provenance has important
implications for discussions about the nature and geographic centre of Dynasty 23 in the Third Intermediate Period that are outside the focus of the current
presentation of the piece, but dealt with at greater
length elsewhere.83 Whether the provenance of the
piece was known by Brugsch or Stroganoff is a matter
for speculation, as are the reasons for its omission (if
known to them) from the text.84
Meurer reveals above that the statue remained in
Aachen with Stroganoff’s loans from 1886, and
may then have stayed there even until 1901. It was
included in Pièces de Choix,85 and remained as part of
the Stroganoff collections in Rome until after the
family’s return to Rome in 1921. Then it was sold
through Frederick Muller in Amsterdam as lot 612 in
the sale of 13-16 December 1921, when it was obtained
with the assistance of Duveen for the oil magnate and
art collector Calouste Gulbenkian, then resident in
Paris86. Quite soon thereafter, from 12 July 1922 until
December of that year, it was loaned to the Exposition Champollion at the Louvre to celebrate the
‘Centenaire de Champollion,’ the hundredth anniversary of Champollion’s ‘Lettre à M. Dacier’, which
announced his success in deciphering hieroglyphic
script. The torso appeared in exhibitions focusing on
the Egyptian art in the Gulbenkian’s collection in
1937 and 1949; it has been in the Gulbenkian Museum
in Lisbon since its opening in 1969, is published in
the Gulbenkian Museum catalogue of its Egyptian
collection, and has appeared in international loan
exhibitions.87
Fig. 6. Nubian bedlegs, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, F
2000/6.1-2. Photograph © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.
was a well-known collector and dealer in Rome, who
possessed his own art gallery (the Galleria Sangiorgi).
In the 1950s the family moved from Rome to Monaco,
where the bed-legs became part of the owner’s ‘Egyptian
cabinet’. After Sangiorgi’s demise, they remained in
the possession of his son Sergio until the latter sold
them at Christie’s in New York,89 where they were
bought by the Leiden Museum.90
Due to the fact that until recently these two objects
were always in private hands, they have so far escaped
the attention of the scholarly world, although they
well deserve it in view of their rarity and outstanding
quality. They form a set and depict a human-headed
sphinx seated on a rectangular base; the rather squat,
leonine body has here been combined with a rounded
head which clearly shows negroid features; the eyes are
recessed and were originally inlaid, the nose is rather
flat and there is a wide mouth and a heavy chin. The
African aspect is further stressed by the peculiar hairstyle consisting of close-cropped hair in combination
Two Nubian bed-legs, by Maarten J. Raven
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In 2006, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden
acquired two rather spectacular items of furniture
(inv. F2000/6.1-2: Figs. 6–7). These can be identified
as the legs of a funerary bed, are made of wood and
carry the remains of paint. The most complete leg is
50.2 cm high, whereas the width of both legs is 8.6 cm
and the depth 13.5 cm.
These two extraordinary objects once formed part
of the Stroganoff collection, although they do not
­figure in the 1880 catalogue.88 Together with other
objects, the Count sold the two bed-legs around 1900
to his close friend Giorgio Sangiorgi who had helped
him to make an inventory of his antiquities. Sangiorgi
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The sphinx is of course well-known in ancient
Egyptian art. The leonine body and human head stood
for the combination of animal power and human intelligence. Sphinxes frequently symbolize the incarnation
of divine spirits in bodily form, or represent the warlike aspect of the Pharaoh; in general, they served as
guardians of sacred precincts or cemeteries. The application of sphinxes, lions, or other apotropaic animals
on items of furniture is quite common. Lions and other
felines are also symbols of the sky, and we find them
depicted on beds, thrones, and other ‘elevated’ structures, stressing the symbolic link between the furniture
legs and the four struts of heaven. Together with the
hieroglyphic mottos inscribed on their bases, the
sphinxes would therefore have ensured the protection
and revivification of the person using the item of furniture in question. Both lotus and papyrus can also be
connected with concepts of new life, joy, and health.
So far, the representations can be seen to conform
to ancient Egyptian traditions. However, there are
other elements which are distinctly un-Egyptian.
In the first place, there is the material from which
the legs have been carved – a dark brown wood with
yellowish patches, probably some kind of ebony
and definitely of tropical origin. Very characteristic
are the negroid heads which seem to point to a Nubian
origin for these pieces, although female sphinxes with
the same hair-style are occasionally depicted in Egyptian
art.91 They seem to depict an aspect of the goddess
Hathor, protectress of love and fertility but also associated with rebirth and the afterlife.92 The Nubian hairstyle may be connected with Hathor’s role as patroness
of the deserts and of foreign countries.
Close parallels to this sphinx motive have been
found in the Nubian royal cemeteries of el-Kurru,
Ballana, and Qustul.93 These are the burial-places of
those kings who ruled over Nubia after the withdrawal
of the Egyptian occupation at the end of the New
Kingdom. Between the eighth and the sixth centuries
bc these rulers resided at Napata close to the Fourth
Cataract; from the fifth century bc the balance grad­
ually shifted in favour of the new capital of Meroe
further south. The Napatan and Meroitic cultures are
characterized by a peculiar mixture of Egyptian and
local Sudanese elements. Excavations in the contemporary cemeteries have provided the necessary information for a proper identification of the furniture
pieces which concern us here. Élite burials dating to
these periods were provided with funerary beds on
Fig. 7. Nubian bedlegs, side view, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden,
Leiden, F 2000/6.1-2. Photograph © Rijksmuseum van
Oudheden.
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with four groups of braided tresses falling over the
front and rear and to the sides. A concentric collar lies
over the shoulders, terminating in a range of dropbeads below; the lion’s chest is incised with a stylized
pattern depicting the mane of the animal. All the
incised parts have been filled with a yellow paste in
imitation of gold; small traces suggest that there may
have been a painted design involving further colours.
The bases of both sphinxes are decorated with
framed panels of incised Egyptian hieroglyphs. Those
on the front read ‘all life and dominion’, whereas the
panels on the sides mention ‘all joy’ and ‘all health’;
the rear of the bases is undecorated. The heads of both
sphinxes are surmounted by a square, flaring post
with a rounded top (damaged in one instance); the
front of this post is incised with a clump of papyrus
below and a pendant lotus flower above. Otherwise,
there are two square perforations, the upper one running from the front to the rear of the post, the lower
one in transverse direction, indicating that the objects
served as the legs for an item of furniture.
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which the deceased were laid to rest. Several isolated
legs of these couches have been found, some of which
are highly ornamental.94
An almost identical wooden bed-leg with sphinx
motive is held in the British Museum.95 This is
undoubtedly the third leg of the bed to which also the
two pieces from the Stroganoff collection belonged.
Unfortunately, its provenance is unknown (it was
accessioned in 1893 with a group of objects bought by
E. A. Wallis Budge). The same goes for the fourth leg,
which has recently been identified in the collections of
the Louvre96 and was bought in 1948. In spite of the
lack of evidence, there cannot be any doubt that the
legs in question once belonged to the funerary bed of a
high-ranking person from one of the Napatan cemeteries and that it should be dated somewhere between
800 and 400 bc. The legs in London and Paris are
42.5 cm high, whereas the undamaged Leiden specimen has a height of 50.2 cm. This suggests that the
bed-frame was mounted at an incline. Presumably, the
head end (with the legs now in Leiden) would be raised
and the foot end would be at a lower level. This is in
accordance with the Egyptian custom to make beds
with a protruding footboard but without a corresponding headboard. It is also seen in contemporary mummy
biers and mummification tables, such as those made
for the embalming of the Apis bulls in Memphis.
When and how Stroganoff acquired the bed-legs
now in Leiden is unknown, but the evidence cited at
the beginning of this contribution suggests it was
between 1880 and 1900. This is corroborated by the
acquisition of the third leg by Budge, recorded as having been made in Egypt in 1893. Perhaps the Count
likewise picked up the items now in Leiden during
one of his travels in Egypt (maybe during the elusive
trip of 1887), rather than on the European art market.
Whatever be the case, his acquisition again reflects his
rather exotic taste in Egyptian antiquities, as demonstrated by various other articles of his collections. It
was exactly this quality – rather too unusual for most
collectors – which helped the Leiden Museum to
acquire the bed-legs at the auction in New York.
Dr Maarten Raven, Egyptian Department, National Museum of
Antiquities, P.O. Box 11114, NL-2301 EC Leiden, Netherlands.
M.Raven@RMO.NL
Notes and references
1 Morris Bierbrier (ed.), Who Was Who in Egyptology, 3rd
edn (London, 1995) mistakenly identifies Count Stroganoff
as Grigory Alexandrovitch Stroganoff (1823–79), another
member of the family altogether.
2 Penelope Hunter-Stiebel (ed.), Stroganoff. The Palace and
Collections of a Russian Noble Family (Portland, OR and New
York, 2000) gives an overview of the Stroganoff family.
3 Emil Brugsch, Sammlung Aegyptischer Alterthümer des Grafen
Gregor Stroganoff (Aachen, 1880).
4 Varduì Kalpakcian, ‘Il palazzo romano del conte G. S.
Stroganoff negli acquarelli di F. P. Reyman’, Pinakothe-ke16–17 (2003), pp. 184–95. Dr Kalpakcian studies Stroganoff’s
paintings, in particular, but pursues a better understanding of
all his collecting activities and the dispersal of his collections.
She has been most generous with information; other articles
by her and by other colleagues investigating other aspects of
Stroganoff’s collection are cited throughout.
5 Antonio Muñoz, ‘La collezione del conte Stroganoff,’ Rassegna
Contemporanea 3/10 (October 1910), pp. 85–6: ‘E Roma era poi
stata la meta continua dei viaggi di lui che aveva pellegrinato
per tutto il mondo, in Oriente e in Occidente.’
6 Ibid., p. 86: ‘Il conte Gregorio si dette con passione, che era
quasi mania, a raccogliere le cose più belle che gli venivano
presentate dagli antiquarii a Roma, a Parigi, a Monaco, a
Colonia…’
7 Kalpakcian, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 185–6, where the date of the
son’s death is given as 1877. New archival discoveries and
further research have given the earlier date for his son’s death:
Varduì Kalpakcian, ‘La passione private e il bene pubblico. Il
conte Gregorio Stroganoff: collezionista, studioso, filantropo
e mecenate a Roma fra Otto e Novecento,’ in Lucia Tonini
(ed.), Il collezionismo in Russia da Pietro I all’Unione Sovietica
(Naples, 2009), pp. 90, 91 and n. 25.
8 Family records of a prolonged visit to Asia and Egypt after the
son’s death are noted in Kalpakcian, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 90,
95, and an email from Varduì Kalpakcian dated 29 May 2009.
The visit to Egypt of 1879-80 is documented by the Aachen
catalogue in the heading for the terracottas nos 448-501, where
it reads like an insertion at Stroganoff’s behest. Stroganoff’s
daughter married in 1879 as noted by Kalpakcian, op. cit.
(note 7), n. 25, apparently in St Petersburg or possibly Rome,
an event that he would certainly have attended and that must
have predated the 1879-80 trip to Egypt, so that suggests
either that there were two visits or that its proximity to his
son’s death was not so marked as later recalled.
9 Muñoz, op. cit. (note 5), p. 86.
10 In an email of 25 May 2009, Varduì Kalpakcian shared with
me her record of letters in the Central State Archives Rome
(2° Versamento, 1 serie, busta 205, fascicolo 3398, Anni: 1888,
1891 e 1892) indicating that in 1892 the Count came to the
office for exportation of art and antiquities with regard to a
case containing a collection of 4,000 Egyptian coins that he had
bought ‘some years ago’ when he was in Egypt, and now wished
to dispose of, shipping the case somewhere outside Italy for
Addresses for correspondence
985
Dr Marsha Hill, Department of Egyptian Art, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028, USA.
marsha.hill@metmuseum.org
Dr Georg Meurer, Wilsnackerstrasse 33, 10559 Berlin, Germany.
g.meurer@snafu.de
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that purpose. Possibly these are the ‘medals’ purchased on the
putative visit of 1887 (see note 12).
in bronzes, silver, ivories, and textiles of the collection as
compared to interest in sculpture and painting.
11 See Morris Bierbrier, ‘The discovery of the mummy portraits,’
in Susan Walker (ed.), Ancient Faces. Mummy Portraits from
Roman Egypt (New York, 2000), pp. 32-3. The fragmentary
panel Aachen AK548 is discussed further below.
19 ‘Inschriften aus der Saitischen [sic] Periode,’ Receuil de
Travaux 8 (1886), pp. 63–4.
20 Ägyptische Geschichte. Supplement (Gotha, 1888), p. 623 n. 11.
21 Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeologists 13 (1891),
pp. 35-6; at the time the royal names were understood to refer
to Sheshonq I.
12 In the Archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow Dr
Varduì Kalpakcian noted a document issued by the Russian
Consulate in Egypt, dated 15 May 1887, which states that a
case containing ‘the collection of medals belonging to Count
G. S. Stroganoff is sent from Cairo to Naples, where the
owner is now.’ (See also note 10 for later discussion possibly
concerning the same material.) A separate visit to Egypt is
perhaps also suggested by the annotation for the Aphrodite
in Ludwig Pollak and Antonio Muñoz, Pièces de Choix de la
Collection du Comte Gregoire Stroganoff à Rome (Rome, 191112), 1ère partie, Les Antiquités, by L. Pollak, (1911), p. 20 and
pl. 21 indicating that Stroganoff believed he purchased it in
Egypt, since the piece does not occur in the Aachen catalogue.
A similarly glossed terracotta lamp (p. 71 and pl . 45) does
not seem to be in the Aachen catalogue but it is difficult to be
sure.
22 Scarab no. 45 is Museo Egizio 17132, acquired 1931 and in
C. Blankenberg-van Delden, The Large Commemorative
Scarabs of Amenhotep III (Leiden, 1969), pp. 98-9 no. C60
and pl. 20; also Ernesto Scamuzzi, ‘Scarabeo della caccia ai
leoni di Amenhotep III’ Bollettino della Società Piemontese di
Archeologia e Belle Arti, anni VI-VII (1952-53), Torino, p.
1, note 1. Scarab no. 80 is Museo Egizio 17131. Elisa Fiore
Marochetti of the museum noted the material of the scarab
is ‘definitely not blue paste and perhaps not even lapis lazuli
(lazulite, anhydrite?),’ email 14 December 2005. The scarab is
illustrated in Giulio Farina, Il R. Museo di Antichita di Torino,
Sezione Egizia (Rome, 1938), p. 55. Not recognizing that they
were the same piece, the Turin scarab and the scarab described
by Wiedemann were both compared to a problematic one in
the British Museum and similarly questioned by John Cooney,
Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum iv. Glass
(London, 1976), p. 165. The last piece (EA64203) is currently
classified as a forgery.
13 Pollak and Muñoz, op. cit. (note 12), vol. i, p. viii. In an email of
25 May 2009 Varduì Kalpakcian notes that she has located the
inventory of Stroganoff’s palazzo after his death in the Archive
of the foreign policy of the Russian Empire, Department for
history and documentation of the Ministry of the Foreign
Affairs of the Russian Federation, Section: Rome, Consulate;
Year: 1910 - 1911; N° 65; Description 525d; hopefully she will
be able to publish the entire document. On 4 and 5 October
1910 the inventory notes certain not particularly recognizable
Egyptian pieces in the Studio: a bronze cat, an Egyptian
portrait with gilded cornice, an Egyptian idol in (the word
wood is struck out) stucco with four necklaces in enamel and
a base in black wood mounted in metal, an Egyptian bronze,
and in three drawers of a small cabinet ten Egyptian idols and
eighty-six scarabs and incised stones.
23 Sale catalogue Pandolfini, Florence, 6 June 2002, no. 47, as a
shawabti of Psamtik III.
24 Sale catalogue Christie’s, New York, 3 June 1999, lot 40 p.
51, now in the Miho Museum, Miho Museum. Catalogue of
Ancient Glass (Tokyo, 2001), pp. 28 and 192, no. 19. The bead
measures 2.2 cm in diameter, and the inscription is given as:
‘the good god, Neb-maat-re [Amenhotep III] given life [and]
the King’s wife Tiye [beloved] of Hathor, mistress of Dendera,
who lives.’
25 Orazio Marucchi, ‘Di una stela egizia dedicata inoccasione
del giubileo del faraone Osorkon II’, Atti della Pont. Accad.
Rom. di Archeologia, Rendiconti, vol. I (Rome, 1923), pp. 7788 and plate, reports on p. 77 that he was informed that the
stela had been purchased by a ‘rich American’ from Sangiorgi.
Unable to prevent the export licence for what he considered
an important historical piece, Marucchi arranged with
the Vatican to make a cast which was then displayed in the
Hemicycle as no. 181. Jürgen von Beckerath, ‘Die angebliche
Jubiläums-Stele Osorkons II.’, Göttinger Miszellen 154 (1996),
pp. 19-22 republishes the stela with a drawing after the cast
pictured in Marucchi, and reproduces Marucchi’s error (p. 77)
in referring to Wiedemann’s mention of the stela, op. cit. (note
20), as being on p. 55 when it should be p. 555. Dr Alessia
Amenta, Curator of the Egyptian and Oriental Antiquities,
confirms that the cast is still in the collection of the Vatican.
14 See the section below by Maarten Raven.
15 Ludwig Pollak, Römische Memoiren. Künstler, Kunstliebhaber
und Gelehrte 1893–1943 (Rome, 1994), p. 229 and n. 41 gives
the date 1914. Most recently Varduì Kalpakcian, ‘Il destino
della collezione romana del Conte G. S. Stroganoff (18291910) dopo la scomparsa del collezionista’, in Serena Romano
(ed.), La Russie et l’Occident. Actes du colloque, Lausanne avril
2009, Études Lausannoises d’Histoire de l’Art (forthcoming)
establishes the end of 1920 for the family’s return.
16 See the discussion of Pedubast below by Marsha Hill.
17 Silvana Pettanati, ‘Le raccolte antiquariali’, in Giovanna
Castagnoli (ed.), Dagli ori antichi agli anni Venti: Le collezione di
Riccardo Gaulino (Milan, 1982), pp. 21-4 provides a brief account
of the dispersal of the Stroganoff collections with extensive
bibliography. I have been able to review the sale catalogues listed
there that might include antiquities except one – L. Ozzola,
Ogetti d’arte componenti la collezione Stroganoff, venduta per
conto degli eredi (Rome, 1925) – and find nothing relevant to the
Egyptian collection. Kalpakcian, op. cit. (note 15) reviews the
dispersals and traces many of the most famous paintings and
certain objects from the collection.
26 Toledo 67.2, published in David Grose, Early ancient glass :
core-formed, rod-formed, and cast vessels and objects from the late
Bronze Age to the early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50
(New York, 1989), p. 62 no. 11, colour p. 42 where it is noted
to be former Giorgio Sangiorgi, Collezione di Vetri Antichi
(Milan and Rome, 1914), no. 4 pl. 3 and obtained by Sangiorgi
in 1912 from Stroganoff.
18 Pettanati, op. cit. (note 17), p. 22 quotes an anonymous
critique from Dedalo, December 1925, pp. 479-80, regarding
the undervaluing and careless dispersal of the Stroganoff
collection, attributing this to the general lack of interest
27 For example, no. 363 a small limestone stela with the god
Thoth on the right and Horus on the left with foreign captives
beneath their feet and uninscribed represents a rare type of
which I am acquainted with two limestone examples: it does

rediscovering grigory stroganoff as a collector of egyptian art
not appear to be Allard Pierson 7794 based on the orientation
described, but might be Metropolitan Museum of Art 55.154,
purchased from John Ross, who at least in the late twentieth
century lived part-time in Italy. On the other hand, no. 447
a Seth in gold (rated rrr), would seem unusual enough to be
traceable, but as Georg Meurer’s researches has shown below
it remained in Aachen still in 1886, so that the two (!) examples
in the Louvre with the name Ahhotep that first suggest
themselves cannot be the same as they were obtained from
Allemand in 1883 and Pennelli in 1884.
Collector, trans Mrs. Andrew Lang (London, New York, etc.,
1898), pp. 165-9.
33 For Barracco, see also Sist, op. cit. (note 30): Barracco himself
purchased or obtained Egyptian art in Paris (for example, pp.
56, 81 via Pollak, 99) and – with the agency of Pollak – in Naples
(see p. 47). Simona Moretti, ‘Il collezionismo d’arte bizantina
a Roma tra Otto e Novecento: il caso Stroganoff’, in Antonio
Iacobini (ed.), Bixanzio, la Grecia e l’Italia (Rome, 2003), p. 92
refers to the contact between Barracco and Stroganoff.
34 M. Merkel Guldan, Die Tagebücher von Ludwig Pollak (Vienna,
1988), especially pp. 75-6, 85-91.
28 Pollak and Muñoz, op. cit. (note 12), vol. i, p. 80, pl. 48, and
presumably the panel referred to by Muñoz, op. cit. (note 5),
p. 90: ‘Questo eclettico amatore che sapeva estendere il suo
gusto dalle pitture ellenistiche del Fayum a quelle di Francisco
Goya …’ It is now Museo Gregoriano Egizio, inv. 56605,
catalogued as encaustic on wood and measuring 34 cm by 21
cm, 220-250 bc. It is pictured in Romana pictura: la pittura
romana dalle origini all’età bizantina (Milan, 1998), no. 146, p.
314, fig. on p. 238. For its acquisition by the Vatican and some
history see Lorenzo Nigro, ‘Nuove Acquisitione,’ Bollettino –
Monumenti Musei e Gallerie Pontificie 20 (2000), p. 283, and
Francesco Burnarelli, ‘Testimonianze,’ in Mina Gregori (ed.),
Venti modi di essere Zeri (Turin, 2001), pp. 69-75. The panel
has been dated to the later second century ad most recently
by Barbara Borg, Mumienporträts. Chronologie und kultureller
Kontext (Mainz am Rhein, 1996), p. 105 (in a group of panels
whose painting style she discusses as late Antonine), and had
previously been dated to the early fourth century by Klaus
Parlasca, Repertorio d’arte dell’Egitto greco-romano. Serie B:
Ritratti di mummie III (1980), no. 540, p. 33, plate 131/1. Dr
Alessia Amenta graciously provided information, and Professor
Antonio Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums, kindly
granted permission to publish the photograph of the portrait.
35 They certainly had connections with Barracco and would also
have been available to Strogranoff, Sist, op. cit. (note 30), p.
14.
36 E.g. Moretti, op. cit. (note 33), p. 92. For Stroganoff’s
involvement with this society see, for example, notes 26, 29,
30 above and Maarten Raven’s contribution below.
37 The world of collectors can be glimpsed in surveying Les
Donateurs du Louvre (Paris, 1989). Other sources of general
(since Stroganoff is not mentioned) interest about the world
of collectors and antiquaries/dealers include S. Bakhoum
and M. C. Hellman, ‘Wilhelm Froehner, le commerce et
les collections d’antiquités égyptiennes’, Journal des Savants
(1992), pp. 155-85, and Annie France Laurens and Krzysztof
Pomian (eds), L’Anticomanie. La collection d’antiquités aux
18e et 19e siècles (Paris, 1992), the latter dealing mainly with
classical antiquities.
38 I owe the information regarding Stroganoff and Hoffmann to
Dr Varduì Kalpakcian; also Pollak and Muñoz, op. cit. (note
12), vol. i, pp. 14-15, pl. 19 is a Palmyrene relief purchased from
Hoffmann. For Hoffmann’s collecting of Egyptian antiquities,
see, e.g., Georges Legrain, Collection H. Hoffmann. Catalogue
des antiquités égyptiennes (Paris, 1894).
29 Pettanati, op. cit. (note 17), p. 203 no. 1 a gold ring bezel with
the name of Amenhotep II (the cited reference to lot 886 in
the 1884 Castellani sale is an error for lot 866); p. 213 no. 18, a
greyish metal ring holding a stone with a magical device. The
first is certainly Egyptian, although the second might have a
Roman or more generally Mediterranean origin.
39 See note 13.
40 Sist, op. cit. (note 30), includes numerous large stone
sculptures and sarcophagi that are Egyptian and not the type
to have been taken to Rome anciently; even if they had been
taken to Rome in ancient times, presumably Stroganoff might
also have acquired similar material had he chosen to do so.
Stone sculpture and stelae were certainly among those handled
by Hoffmann op. cit. (note 38).
30 Pollak, op. cit. (note 15), describes the complexity and immense
richness of Roman scholarly and collecting society, mainly, of
course, in relation to Greco-Roman and Italian art: pp. 89-98
and passim for the German Archaeological Institute; pp. 21329 for sketches of some Roman collectors including Stroganoff
on pp. 221-9. Augusto Jandolo, trans. Olga Leonie Hainisch,
Bekenntnisse eines Kunsthändlers (Berlin, 1940) offers another
view of much the same society, pp. 65-76 being a sketch
devoted to Stroganoff. Loredana Sist, ‘Giovanni Barracco e
L’Egitto,’ Museo Barracco. Arte egizia (Rome, 1996), pp. 1115 gives a rich and complex picture of interest in Egypt in
nineteenth and early twentieth century Rome, with references
to other work.
41 The catalogue of the Egyptian collection in Aachen edited
by the present writer is in preparation. Michael Rief and
Dr. Adam C. Oellers of the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum,
Aachen, are gratefully acknowledged for their support and for
permission to reproduce photographs of the objects from the
museum collections.
42 While the precise opening date is as little known as the
duration of the exhibition, the opening must have taken place
before September 1880, since on 2 September the Count was
named an honorary member of the Museum Society because
of his support.
31 For Tyszkiewicz (who lived across the street from Stroganoff’s
house on its Via Sistina face) and Barracco, see Pollak, op. cit.
(note 15), pp. 189–91, 195–7, and 223-5. For these figures in
relation to Egyptology see Bierbrier, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 31
(Barracco) and 420–21 (Tyszkiewicz).
43 For Emil Brugsch see Bierbrier, op. cit (note 1), p. 66, Theodor
Brugsch, Arzt seit fünf Jahrzehnten, 9th edn (Berlin, 1973), pp.
26-31 and 88; Elisabeth David, Mariette Pacha 1821-1881
(Paris, 1994), pp. 218, 228, 264; Margaret S. Drower, Flinders
Petrie. A Life in Archaeology (London, 1985), pp. 36, 40, 45,
51; 84, 99, 124, 181-182, 241, 261-262, 329, John A. Wilson,
Signs and Wonders upon Pharaoh. A History of American
Egyptology (Chicago and London, 1964), p. 215, Warren R.
Dawson, ‘Letters from Maspero to Amelia Edwards’, Journal
32 Tyszkiewicz has been the subject of recent work based
on rediscovered records, see several articles by Witold
Dobrowolski, Aleksandra Majewska, Andrzej Niwinski,
Charles Rouit, and Aldona Snitkuviené in Joanna Aksamit
(ed.), Essays in Honour of Prof. Dr. Jadwiga Lipinska (Warsaw,
1997). His account of Stroganoff is in Memories of an Old

hill et al
statuette; no. 438 scarab of Aya (13th dyn.); no. 445 hematite
statuette of a lion goddess. Thirty-five objects were classified
as r. Altogether sixty-three objects were thus classified as
particularly remarkable, which corresponds to just under 13%
of the collection.
of Egyptian Archaeology 33 (1947), p. 70 n. 1; Harry Nehls,
‘Der große und der kleine Brugsch’, Berlinische Monatsschrift
7 (1998), pp. 45-51; Elisabeth David, Gaston Maspero 18461916. Le gentleman égyptologue (Paris, 1999), pp. 80-81,
90-91, 93-7, 105-7, 134-8, 142, 157-8, 172, 190, 232-3, 235,
269; and W. Benson Harer Jr., ‘The Drexel collection: from
Egypt to the Diaspora’, in Sue H. D’Auria (ed.), Servant
of Mut. Studies in Honor of Richard A. Fazzini (Leiden and
Boston, 2008), pp. 111-13. Brugsch’s private collection was
auctioned in Paris at Drouot-Richelieu through François de
Ricqlès on 30 September 1996 and on 29-30 September 1997.
For Brugsch’s possible involvement with the production of
forgeries, see Jean-Jacques Fiechter, Faux et faussaires en art
égyptien (Turnhout and Brussels, 2005), pp. 48-52.
51 Fritz Berndt, Führer durch das Suermondt-Museum (Aachen,
1886), pp. 23-4 and p. iv.
52 This scarab is in the Egyptian Museum, Turin, no. 17132, see
note 22, purchased in 1931 for the museum.
53 The present whereabouts are unfortunately unknown; for the
statue type in general see Marsha Hill, Royal Bronze Statuary
from Ancient Egypt, with Special Attention to the Kneeling Pose
(Leiden and Boston, 2004).
44 See David, op. cit. [Maspero] (note 43), pp. 134-5, and Harer,
op. cit. (note 43), pp. 111-13. The purpose of the sales was
to bring money into the coffers of the Service des Antiquités
and at the same time to stem the trade in stolen goods through
legalized purchases.
54 Fritz Berndt, Führer durch das Städtische Suermondt-Museum
(Aachen, 1892), pp. 23-4.
45 Gerry D. Scott III, Temple, Tomb and Dwelling. Egyptian
Antiquities from the Harer Family Trust Collection (San
Bernardino, 1992), p. ix; and Harer, op. cit. (note 43), pp. 11113. The fact that Stroganoff’s collection was essentially one of
small objects speaks also for its having been collected through
Brugsch, compare Harer, op. cit. (note 43), p. 112.
56 Anton Kisa, Führer durch das Suermondt-Museum der Stadt
Aachen (Aachen, 1902), pp. 25, 44, 95-6.
55 The piece is illustrated as artwork of the month for March in
Felix Kuetgens, Aachener Kunstblätter 3 Sonderheft (Aachen,
1936).
57 The only pieces lost are a third wooden papyrus column and
two handles with duck-heads from wooden spoons.
58 Particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century it was
fashionable among nobles and the wealthy bourgeoisie of good
breeding to undertake a trip to Egypt, as did, for example, the
Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
in 1872, the Hohenzollern Prince Friedrich-Karl in 1883, or
Duke Max of Bavaria already in 1838 (see for these trips Ina
Busch and Ina Boike (eds.), Ägypten. Forscher und Schatzjäger
(Darmstadt, 2004), pp. 6, 8. Heinrich Brugsch served both the
Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II and Prince Friedrich-Karl as
authoritative tour guide, see Renate Germer, Das Geheimnis
der Mumien. Ewiges Leben am Nil (Munich and New York,
1997), pp. 124 and 108-11, respectively, as well as Heinrich
Brugsch-Pasha, Prinz Friedrich Karl im Morgenlande.
Dargestellt von seinen Reisebegleitern (Frankfurt, 1884); on
Duke Max see Bernhard Kästle, Petrefaktensammlung Kloster
Banz. Versteinerungen und Orientalische Sammlung (Munich
and Zürich, 1992), pp. 64, 73-4. Prince Johann George von
Sachsen visited Egypt many times, first in 1910, then 1912,
1927, 1928, and finally 1930, see Birgit Schlick-Nolte in Birgit
Heide and Andreas Thiel (eds.), Sammler – Pilger – Wegbereiter.
Die Sammlung des Prinzen Johann Georg von Sachsen (Mainz,
2004), p. 22.
46 Since Brugsch also wrote a catalogue for Drexel, this picture
seems the most likely choice; compare Harer op. cit. (note 43),
p. 111, n. 2.
47 This section is further divided into nine subsections that reflect
focal points: terracotta vessels, four sections with terracotta
lamps (Greek, Graeco-Egyptian, Romano-Egyptian, and
Roman), statuettes and busts, and objects from the Greek,
Roman and Coptic periods in Egypt.
48 Maria Helena Assam, Arte egípcia. Colecção Calouste Gulbenkian
(Lisbon, 1991), pp. 64-5, cat. 16, as well as Luís Manuel de
Araújo, Egyptian Art – Calouste Gulbenkian Collection (Lisbon,
2006), pp. 98-9, cat. 16. See Marsha Hill below.
49 This object consisted of a number of parts fitted together
(in modern times?): an aegis with a piece remaining from
the menat that attached behind it, a modius encircled with
uraei, and arms holding a Horus-child. See Günther Roeder,
Ägyptische Bronzefiguren (Berlin, 1956), p. 470 § 636d ( = figs.
716-17 and pl. 89d-e), p. 487 § 659b (aegis); pp. 236-7 § 296c
( = fig. 291 and pl. 79g) and p. 249 § 305i, 3 (modius encircled
with uraei); p. 120 § 170e ( = fig. 158 and pl. 75g), p. 240 § 300e
and p. 514 § 688g (Horus child in arms).
59 Kindly indicated by Marsha Hill; cf. note 12. A mid-1870s
tour is also possible as discussed above and in note 8.
50 The objects designated with rr are the following (with the
descriptions given in the catalogue): no. 1 plaque with the
titulary of Cheops (4th dyn.); no. 8 scarab of Nub-cheper-Re
Antef V (17th dyn.); no. 14 scarab of Amenemhat III (12th
dyn.); no. 20 scarab of Rahotep (17th dyn.); no. 51 faience
bead of Amenhotep III and Tiye (18th dyn.); no. 55 scarab of
Thutmose III (18th dyn.); no. 59 cartouche of Tutankhamun
(18th dyn.); no. 60 faience ring of Tutankhamun (18th dyn.);
no. 61 yellow faience ring of the God’s Father Ay (18th dyn.);
no. 73 carnelian Horus statuette with the name of Ramesses
IV (20th dyn.); no. 77 stela of Osorkon II (22nd dyn.); no. 80
scarab of Sheshonk III (22nd dyn.); no. 84 faience fragment of
Necho (26th dyn.); no. 301 faience statuette of Khnum; no.
368 wooden bark of the Middle Kingdom; no. 370 mummy
cartonnage of the Late Period; no. 395 bronze sphinx with
human head; no. 430 bronze headdress from a composite
60 With regard to the purchase of duplicates through the Cairo
Museum, generally only such small objects were involved
(with the exception of coffins and mummies). In addition
Count Stroganoff was in contact with dealers in, among other
places, Rome, Paris, Munich, and Cologne, according to
Muñoz, op. cit. (note 5), p. 86.
61 When he was in Aachen, he appears not to have lived in a
private house but to have stayed in the Kaiserbad; see the
thank-you note from the mayor of 14 August 1891 addressed
to the Kaiserbad, Dokument Stadtarchiv Aachen, Caps. 7, Nr.
11, Bd. V (1890-93), fols 194v-195r.
62 See Jandolo, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 65, 74-5. and Kalpakcian,
op. cit. (note 4), pp. 184-95. In Rome the Count had first
purchased a house at Via Gregoriana 32, and then was able to
add to it the palazzo at Via Sistina 59 which adjoined it on the

rediscovering grigory stroganoff as a collector of egyptian art
rear; the first address served for private purposes, the second
official.
parallel to the establishment of Egyptian collections in
Germany is found in the United States, where also the bequest
of private collections represented the foundation of important
museums as well as the impetus for their building; compare
Harer, op. cit. (note 43), pp. 113-14.
63 The roll with the acts of the Museum Society before 1883
unfortunately no longer exists in the Stadtarchiv Aachen; in
all inventories since 1957 it has been marked missing (Caps. 7,
Nr. 11d, Bd. i (vor 1883)).
71 In 1833 the ‘Egyptian Gallery’ of the Glyptothek was
established; however, small antiquities, including Egyptian,
had already been exhibited in the royal Antiquarium of the
Munich Residenz since 1808; finally in 1844 the ‘Combined
Collections of King Ludwig I,’ including an ‘Egyptian
Gallery’, were opened in a gallery building at the Hofgarten.
Opposite the Glyptothek at the Königsplatz, which retained
its Egyptian objects, in 1869 there followed ‘the Royal
Antiquarium’, which united the Egyptian antiquities from the
Antiquarium of the Residenz (under the administration of the
Royal Academy) and the ‘Combined Collections’. In 1936 the
Egyptian collection was segregated again from this ‘Museum
Antiker Kleinkunst’, after having been moved already in 1935
into five rooms on the ground floor of the Residenz. Only in
1966 was it possible to merge the various individual Egyptian
collections and to present them to the public, see Grimm, op.
cit. (note 68), pp. 11-34.
64 Dokument Stadtarchiv Aachen Caps. 7, Nr. 11, Bd. iv (18851890), fol. 47.
65 Besides Aegyptiaca, and besides pieces already mentioned (see
above) the Count donated paintings (e.g., 1894 a ‘Landscape
with figures by D. Teniers’ by J. Artois and the ‘Portrait of a
nobleman’ from the School of Lucas Cranach), sculptures (e.g.
1886 two sandstone angels, 1891 a fourteenth-century stone
figure from the cathedral at Metz, or 1901 a fifteenth-century
Gothic sandstone statuette from Niederrhein), and various
other objects (e.g., 1886 three Chinese terracotta figures, an
Arab inkwell, a hazelwood crook, three porcelain figures from
the Höchst manufactory, two Sèvres biscuit-porcelain figures
and a bronze cross, and so on).
66 Compare Pollak and Muñoz, op. cit. (note 12), vol.
introduction.
i
67 See the illustrations in Anton Kisa (ed.), Denkschrift aus Anlass
des fünfundzwanzigjährigen Bestandes des Suermondt-Museums
(Aachen, 1903), p. 7.
72 Before 1766 the Hofbibliothek was established as the storage
place for the assembled noble collections. In 1875 this
was succeeded by the presentation of the ‘Grand Duke’s
collection of archaeology and ethnology’ in the newly erected
building on Friedrichsplatz, see Ulrike Grimm, Das Badische
Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe. Zur Geschichte seiner Sammlungen
(Karlsruhe, 1993), pp. 15-16, 63.
68 List of recent gifts and donations dated 15 October 1886:
Position 4, Count Stroganoff: h. bronze statuette of Isis, m.
Coptic tunic, n. mummy cartonnage (Caps. 7, Nr. 11, Bd. iv
(1885-1890), fols 210r-v) – this donation is also mentioned in
Hans Feldbusch, ‘Aus der Gründungszeit des SuermondtMuseums nach den Unterlagen des Aachener Stadtarchivs
dargestellt’, in Aachener Kunstblätter 28 (1963), p. 390;
newspaper report on the minutes of the general meeting of the
Museum Society on 30 May 1892 (for the previous business
year): ‘donation of Count Stroganoff, ancient Egyptian painted
wooden board with inscription’ (foot piece of a coffin) (Caps.
7, Nr. 11d, Bd. ii (1883-1906), fol. 68v); newspaper report
of the general meeting of the Museum Society on 30 March
1894: in the year 1893 Stroganoff donated the Fayum mummy
portrait (Caps. 7, Nr. 11d, Bd. ii (1883-1906), fol. 112).
73 This is true, for example, for Bremen, Übersee-Museum
(1891), Essen, Museum Folkwang (1906), Frankfurt,
Städtische Galerie Liebieghaus (1909), Hamm, GustavLübcke-Museum (1887), Hanover, Kestner-Museum (1889),
Heidelberg, Ägyptisches Museum (1910), and Hildesheim,
Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum (1911).
74 Wiedemann must have visited the exhibition himself, as
revealed by the commentary in Wiedemann, op. cit. (note
19), p. 63: ‘The monument [the torso of Pedubastis] is in the
handsome collection of Count Strogonoff in the Museum at
Aachen (no. 81).’ Unfortunately, the year of his visit is not
known.
69 By way of comparison, for example, in London in 1821
Giovanni Battista Belzoni opened an exhibition with more
than 200 exhibits and the reproduction of two rooms from the
Tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings in the ‘Egyptian
Hall’ in Picadilly; the exhibition ran for a year, see Ingrid
Nowel (ed.), Giovanni Belzoni. Entdeckungreisen in Ägypten
1815-1819. In den Pyramiden, Tempeln und Gräbern am Nil
(Köln, 1982), pp. 14-16. In 1842 the gold treasure of the
Kandake Amanishaketo discovered by the Italian Giuseppe
Ferlini in Meroe (Nubia) was also exhibited in London, see
Alfred Grimm, ‘Werke ausgezeichneter Schönheit will ich
erwerben. 350 Jahre Sammlungsgeschichte,’ in Sylvia Schoske
(ed.), Staatliche Sammlung Ägyptischer Kunst München
(Mainz, 1995), p. 29, and in America in about 1853-1854 the
2,000 objects in the extensive Egyptian collection of Henry
Abbott were publicly shown in the ‘Egyptian Gallery’ at the
Stuyvesant Institute in New York, see the advertisement in
John Olbrantz, ‘Innocents abroad: collectors, curators, and the
rise of Egyptian collections in the United States’, in James F.
Romano, In the Fullness of Time. Masterpices of Egyptian Art
from American Collections (Seattle and London, 2002), p. 10.
75 With the exception of Count Stroganoff and the ninth
honorary member of the Museum Society (Alexander von
Swenigorodskoi, 23 October 1894), honorary members were
named on the basis of donations and not because of loans.
The fifth honorary member (Ludwig von Weise, 8 January
1884) was named on account of his good offices on behalf of
the museum, being mayor at the same time as chairman of the
Museum Society.
76 There is no documentation indicating that in 1880 Count
Stroganoff had already made other loans to the Museum, nor
can his honouring have any relation to gifts, which were received
only later. See the corresponding passage in the ceremonial
speech of Fritz Berndt on the opening of the Museum on
October 21, 1883, in Alfons Fritz, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte des
Museums,’ in Kisa, op. cit. (note 67), p. 67.
77 The document was signed by, among others, the mayor,
Ludwig von Weise, and the director of the Museum, Fritz
Berndt.
78 The discussion is based on a recent major study of this statue:
Marsha Hill and Deborah Schorsch, ‘The Gulbenkian torso
of King Pedubaste: investigations into Egyptian large bronze
70 A study of the development of the Egyptian collections in
Germany is in preparation by the current writer. A distinct

hill et al
statuary,’ Metropolitan Museum Journal 40 (2005), pp. 16395. Further discussion and references will be found there.
See also Marsha Hill and Deborah Schorsch (eds.), Gifts for
the Gods. Images from Egyptian Temples (New York, 2007),
pp. 90-91 (entry D.S.). Dr Maria Rosa Figueiredo of the
Gulbenkian Museum kindly gave permission to reproduce this
photograph.
79 Op. cit. (note 3), p. 8, no. 81: ‘Bronze torso. Complete, inlaid
with gold and with the name of King Petsibast; specially
remarkable because of the first attested writing of the name in
this form. rrr. As noted by Georg Meurer above, rrr refers to
the most singular objects.
80 Op. cit. (note 19), pp. 63-9.
81 William Mathew Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt, vol.
iii (London, 1905), pp. 262, 324; Kenneth Kitchen, Third
Intermediate Period in Egypt, 3rd edn with preface (Warminster,
1996), para. 102, p. 129.
82 Gaston Maspero, L’archéologie égyptienne (Paris, 1887), pp.
291-2. For a discussion of the history of excavations relevant
to this point see Hill and Schorsch, op. cit. [2005] (note 78),
pp. 166-7.
83 Hill and Schorsch, op. cit. [2005] (note 78), pp. 167-8. The
most recent discussions of the historical issues may be found
in G. P. F. Broekman, R. J. Demarée and O. E. Kaper, The
Libyan Period in Egypt. Historical and Cultural Studies into
the 21st-22nd Dynasties: Proceedings of a Conference at Leiden
University 25-27 October 2007 (Leuven, 2009).
84 It is potentially relevant to recall here, as noted above, that
in the Graeco-Roman section of the Aachen catalogue where
the format suggests information directly from Stroganoff is
recorded, purchases in Alexandria, the Fayum, Upper Egypt,
and in the eastern Delta at Zagazig, not too far from Tanis, are
noted.
85 Pollak and Muñoz, op cit. (note 12), vol i, p. 32 and pl. 28.
86 Lot 612 is described on a ‘feuillet spécial’, and figures in a sale
that consists otherwise of paintings and European decorative
arts belonging to other collectors. This could imply the torso
was sold hurriedly.
87 Assam, op. cit. (note 48), pp.64-5, cat. 16; Araújo, op. cit. (note
48), pp. 98-9, cat. 16; and to the lists of exhibitions provided
there add Hill and Schorsch, op. cit. [2007] (note 78), pp. 9091, cat. 21.
88 Brugsch, op. cit. (note 3).
89 Christie’s New York, Antiquities, 9 December 1999, pp. 100-101
and frontispiece, lot no. 403. See also J. Eisenberg, ‘Auction
reports – the autumn 1999 antiquities sales’, Minerva 11/2
(2000), pp. 40-41 with fig. 8.
90 This acquisition was made possible by the generous support of
the Mondriaan Stichting and the Vereniging Rembrandt. See
M. J. Raven, ‘Twee poten van een Nubisch grafbed’, Bulletin
van de Vereniging Rembrandt 10/1 (2000), pp. 5-7; M. J. Raven,
‘Nieuw in Oudheden – Twee poten van een Nubisch grafbed’,
Nieuwsblad RoMeO 16 (2003), pp. 10-11. Since then, the objects
have been catalogued in H. Kik (ed.), 100 topstukken van het
Rijksmuseum van Oudheden / 100 Masterpieces of the National
Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (Leiden, 2009), pp. 104-5.
91 Compare A. C. T. E. Prisse d’Avennes, Histoire de l’art égyptien
d’après les monuments depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à
la domination perse (Paris, 1879), pl. 35.1; J. van Dijk, ‘De
sfinx in de Oudheid: van Egypte naar Griekenland en terug’,
Phoenix 49.2 (2003), fig. 24. This concerns a representation
from the temple of Armant, now lost, which may date to the
New Kingdom (cf. O.E. Kaper, in E. Prisse d’Avennes, Atlas
de l’art égyptien (reprint Cairo, 1991), p. 383, comments to pl.
ii.35.
92 Van Dijk, op. cit. (note 91), p. 74.
93 W. B. Emery, The Royal Tombs of Ballana and Qustul, ii (Cairo,
1938), p. 343 and pl. 86 (kohl pot); D. Dunham, El Kurru
(Cambridge MA, 1950), p. 78 and pl. 55 (Boston, Museum of
Fine Arts 24.630: faience amulet). For a very similar amulet
see L. Gamwell and R. Wells (eds.), Sigmund Freud and Art:
his Personal Collection of Antiquities (New York and London,
1989), p. 50; E. Gubel, De sfinx van Wenen. Sigmund Freud,
kunst en archeologie (Ghent, 1993), p. 104 no. 42; van Dijk, op.
cit. (note 91), fig. 25.
94 Compare D. Wildung and J. Vrieze (eds.), De zwarte farao’s
(Amsterdam, 1997), cat. 182-3 (Khartoum National Museum
inv. 1900 and Boston Museum of Fine Arts 21.2815, from elKurru), cat. 326 (from Meroe).
95 British Museum EA 24656; see S. Quirke and J. Spencer,
The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt (London 1992), fig.
162.
96 Paris, Musée du Louvre E 17333; see J.-L. De Cenival, ‘Vingt
ans d’acquisitions du départment des antiquités égyptiennes du
Musée du Louvre’, Bulletin de la Société française d’égyptologie
51 (1968), p. 8 with illustration. I want to thank A. SackhoAutissier for drawing my attention to this object.
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