The Egyptian Collection
The Egyptian collection contains more than 2100 items, most of them purchased in the last century from the family of the Austrian vice-marshal Franz Koller. Earlier periods of Egyptian history are represented in the collection by funerary and votive stone stelae from the Middle Kingdom (2040-1785 BC), as well as several objects from the New Kingdom (1552-1070 BC). Most of the collection is composed of material from the Late Period of ancient Egypt (1070 BC - AD 30). From this period (and particularly from that of the Saite rulers of the XXVI dynasty), come a series of stone and bronze monuments. The museum possesses a rich collection of ushapti figurines and canopic vases. The material from the Ptolemaic period primarily includes bronze statuettes of deities, and two sarcophagi are of the same date, along with several papyrus manuscripts with writings from the Book of the Dead.
The Zagreb Mummy
This famous Egyptian mummy, recently
entirely restored, was wrapped in sliced bands of the linen book of
Zagreb, the longest preserved text known in the Etruscan
language. The mummy was also accompanied, as part of the funerary
goods of the deceased woman, by a papyrus with a text of several
chapters from the Book of the Dead.
The papyrus, written in hieratic, was damaged, but from the legible sections it could be deciphered that the name of the mummified woman was Nesi-hensu, and that she was the wife of Paher-hensu, a "divine tailor" from Thebes.
In 1998, Dr. Nazzareno Gabrielli from the Institute of Scientific Research of the Vatican Museum undertook a complicated restoration, preserving the body of the mummy from further decay.
