This catalogue presents the first comprehensive study of the Egyptian collection at the Musée d’Histoire et d’Archéologie in Vannes, originally assembled by the Société polymathique du Morbihan, a learned society founded in 1826. The collection, largely made up of donations from famous explorers and scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries, traces the development of one of the first public collections of Egyptian antiquities open to the public. One of the main contributors is the famous explorer Frédéric Cailliaud. This catalogue meticulously reconstructs his original lots, as well as artefacts from other donors, revealing their historical significance.
Notable items include 46 predynastic flint tools from Fayoum, donated by Walter Seton-Karr, a series of funerary objects such as linen strips used for the embalming of priests of Montu in Thebes, the painted and inscribed lid of a wooden anthropoid coffin of a priest from the Ptolemaic period in Akhmim, faience shabti figures from the Late Period, jewellery, amulets, a fragmentary papyrus in hieratic script, a mummified cat, two Ptolemaic royal coins and 25 Coptic textiles from Antinoe, donated by Émile Guimet.
This scholarly work, enriched with detailed descriptions and high-quality images, provides new critical perspectives on these artefacts, many of which have never been published, constituting a valuable resource for Egyptologists, historians and museum curators. It makes a significant contribution to the study of small collections of antiquities in this remote region and is the first catalogue of Pharaonic artefacts from western Brittany.
