The writer Amelia Edwards travelled to Egypt in autumn 1873, to escape the rain on a walking holiday in France. Instantly captivated by the Nile Valley and its ancient and modern histories, on her return she published an account of her travels, A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (London 1877), an immediate success. In the nineteenth century the protection of monuments had only recently begun, and the plight of antiquities inspired Edwards to action. She was uniquely effective in the efforts to raise funds for excavation in Egypt, leaving as her legacy two leading institutions in British Egyptology:

• the Egypt Exploration Fund (since 1914 Egypt Exploration Society), founded in 1882 with Edwards as a leading founding supporter
• the first Egyptology teaching position, with supporting library and collection, in England

The teaching position was created by bequest: Edwards died in 1892, and in January 1893 her favourite archaeologist in Egypt, William Matthew Flinders Petrie, became the first Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology, at the age of 39. The bequest was offered to University College London, in preference to Oxford and Cambridge, because at that date UCL was the only place in England where degrees were given to women.

As part of the bequest, Edwards left her collection, the core of what is today the Petrie Museum. Numerically it is overshadowed by the quantity of finds from Petrie excavations, and the collection that Petrie himself formed from his purchases in Egypt and Europe. In the history of science, Edwards predates the development of archaeological techniques of recording information at the moment of finding an object. Precisely for this reason the Edwards collection forms an instructive contrast to the later acquisitions from excavations. In addition to some remarkable highlights, it offers a guide to the general range of material in a standard collection of a mid- to late nineteenth century enthusiast for ancient Egypt.

Three objects of particular importance are known to have been in the collection of Amelia Edwards:

UC 14363 head of small statue of Amenemhat III	UC 14226 wooden stela of Neskhons	UC 15703 fragment of coffin of Amenemipet

For other items, the identification as pieces in her collection is complicated by the continued use of the term 'Edwards collection' for the objects in University College London used for teaching Egyptian archaeology and language: many of these were added from excavations and purchases after her death. In 1913 Petrie sold his own collection to the College, and the term 'Edwards Collection' seems to have fallen out of use as inappropriate for this combined resource. Much research needs still to be carried out into the years of accession of items now in the Petrie Museum, to separate its component parts:

1. The Egyptian collection of Amelia Edwards

• items collected by Amelia Edwards on her travels
• items given to Amelia Edwards by Petrie and the Egypt Exploration Fund from excavations 1882-1892
• items given to or sold to Amelia Edwards by other travellers such as Reverend Greville Chester

2. posthumous additions to the Edwards Collection in University College London

• items from Petrie excavations
• items from Petrie purchases
• donations and bequests 1892-1913

3. Other items acquired by University College London

• items from College alumni and miscellaneous other sources, mainly undocumented, such as coffin UC 14230, and the Langton Bequest
• items acquired by Petrie for the Department teaching collection at College expense, mainly 1913-192
• items assigned to University College London in the official distribution of finds from excavations, down to 1980s

4. The Egyptian collection of W M F Petrie

• items from excavations for which Petrie provided part of the funding, mainly seasons 1888-1895
• items acquired by Petrie in Egypt up to 1913

Disentangling these components is an important task for the history of this collection, within the assessment of relations between Egypt and Europe in the heyday of colonialism.

An early Petrie inventory for the collection in the 1890s or early 1900s

The Petrie Museum archive includes an undated leatherbound book of gilt-edged squared paper, with the title 'Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities Books &c.' on the front cover. Many pages are blank, but twenty have pasted sheets of paper on which Petrie himself had compiled printed summary information on objects (a duplicate of one page is also present, loose), and another five are full of handwritten entries.

Unfortunately there are few dates of acquisition, though most references on printed pages are to sites visited by collectors or to excavations in the 1880s; this suggests that the focus of the volume is the Edwards collection. Only one item in the printed pages comes from a site excavated substantially later, a blue and black frog figure said to come from Rifeh, not excavated until 1906. Clearly, then, not all items even on the printed pages were already in the collection at the time of her death in 1892. It is also not certain that most or all objects in her collection had been included in the inventory.

The printed pages were designed to be repeatable: for one page there is a loose extra copy in the book. The same block of information on an object might be cut from a duplicate page for use as a label, and when the label and mount survive with the object, it can be identified as probably from the Edwards collection. Theoretically the same block of information might be printed out for more than one object, and new acquisitions of the same form might not be distinguishable.

Despite these complications, the printed pages and briefer handwritten notes on larger items provide a general indication of the range of material ascribed to a separate part of the collection, most likely around the core of the collection of Amelia Edwards herself. Since the Rifeh frog is the only item likely to be from a post-1900 excavation, it is possible that the inventory represents a modestly expanded version of the original inventory of the Edwards collection that Petrie had begun for her during her lifetime.

Assessing the inventory - a task for research

Compare the following summary of the inventory with the vague description by Edwards herself as 'my collection of ancient Egyptian jewellery; scarabs; amulets; statuettes of Deities in porcelain, bronze, and stone; funeral tables; sculptures; pottery; writings on linen and papyrus; and other miscellaneous monuments'. Which of those categories is entirely missing in the inventory?

In Upright Case A

Sets of printed pages which provide the following group headings:

• 'Figures of Gods' bronze, faience; arranged by deity rather than material or provenance; some items from Naukratis, Kom Afrin, Lahun, Nebesheh
• 'Figures of Animals' bronze, wood, glass, faience; listed by form rather than material; some items from Hawara, Naukratis, Karnak, Zuwelen (near Tanis), Nebesheh, Defenneh, Lahun, Thebes; one blue and black frog figure is said to come from Rifeh, not excavated until 1906
• 'Amulets' stone, faience, glass; listed by form rather than material; some items from Naukratis, Thebes, Saqqara, Nebesheh, Tanis, Zuwelen (near Tanis), Defenneh
• 'Religious objects' miscellaneous items including an 'incense pan' from Tell el-Amarna - Petrie was digging at this site in 1891-1892, and it is unlikely that an object from the excavation would have reached England before Edwards died early in 1892; other items are from Hawara, Naukratis, and a limestone offering table from Lahun ('Kahun')
• 'Figures' listed by form rather than material; some items from Kom Afrin, Tell el-Barud, Naukratis, Defenneh
• 'Ushabtis' including items from Hawara, Ahnas, Lahun, Nebesheh, Sakkara

Following these are handwritten pages:

• 'Funeral cones and bricks from tomb walls' - Petrie published such material from his own travels in A Season in Egypt, 1887
• 'Fragments from Tell el Amarna' - stone fragments and brick, and the great calcite slab 'presented by H Martyn Kennard' (one of the main supporters of Petrie in his freelance excavations 1888-1892): see the note on 'Religious objects' above

In Upright Case B

Handwritten pages:

first group:

• Coffin fragments, including the Amenemipet wood coffin fragment published by Amelia Edwards herself, and cartonnage from Hawara
• four wool socks, two heads wearing headgear/hairpins, wool cap, leather slippers, sandals, basket, pierced leather strip, all from Hawara
• limestone stela of 'Teduastqebau' presented by Dr de Noe Walker
• linen hypocephalus fragment from Thebes
• miscellaneous wooden fragments
• leather tray wooden tools and models including from Lahun ('Kahun') and Ihnasya ('Ahnas')
• double duck pottery vessel

second group:

• 11 carved wood heads from mummy cases
• gilt cartonnage face
• 8 pottery bowls from Lahun ('Kahun')
• 4 'Phenician' juglets (i.e. Levantine ware) from Ihnasya ('Ahnas')
• 2 relief fragments Hawara
• figured pottery ostracon from temple of Thutmose IV, Thebes (this site was excavated after the death of Amelia Edwards)
• sherds and flint tools from Amarna

third group:

• 3 jars
• ibis mummy Thebes
• crocodile mummy Hawara
• kitten mummy with photographs revealing adult cat legs
• mummy leg with photographs showing bones
• 2 mummy hands
• bone from foundation deposit associated with Neferuatum, Lahun
• 7 jugs and bowls from Naukratis
• 1 basket from Hawara
• 1 lamp presented by Dr de Noe Walker

Against wall outside of cases

Handwritten page

Most of these items derive from Petrie excavations later than the death of Amelia Edwards

• upper part of black granite statue of official of Amenhotep III
• Neskhons stela painted wood
• plaster cornice fragment from Naukratis
• piece of pilaster from a statue Koptos (excavated after the death of Amelia Edwards)
• stepped model libation basin Koptos (excavated after the death of Amelia Edwards)
• black granite fragment with inscription, dedication to Bast
• rectangular corn grinder Koptos (excavated after the death of Amelia Edwards)
• Min altar fragment Koptos (excavated after the death of Amelia Edwards)
• 3 fragments of coloured limestone wall from Illahun temple
• fragment of cartouche of Amenhotep III from Labyrinth (i.e. Hawara)
• fossil wood fragment with name of Ramesses II, from the Ramesseum (excavated after the death of Amelia Edwards)
• relief slab with depiction of Hapy, Koptos (excavated after the death of Amelia Edwards)

Flat glass case

Handwritten heading 'Scarabs' to first of six printed pages

Some from Naukratis, Lahun ('Kahun'), Gurob, Tell el-Amarna

Source

Petrie Museum archive PMA/WFPI/16/11/1(4)

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