The tomb of Bab el-Gasus was discovered in January 1891 in the necropolis of Thebes. It was found in the area of Deir el-Bahari, close to the funerary temple of Queen Hatshepsut. The tomb consisted of burial chambers and galleries filled with several dozens of coffins: based on a first summary inventory of the material recovered, the tomb contained 153 coffins, 101 of which double (an inner coffin nested inside an outer coffin) and 52 single, in addition to countless funerary statuettes (shabti) with their boxes, statues of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, funerary stelae, canopic jars and other grave goods belonging to the Priests of Amun of the 21st Dynasty. The French Egyptologist Georges Daressy compiled a first list of the entire material called A.List, in which however he assigned a number to a whole set of finds (often consisting of several coffins) belonging to just one person. Another list, called B.List, was drawn up by Eugène Grébaut and Urbain Bouriant, Director of the Archaeological Mission of the French Institute in Cairo. B.List contained many more numbers than Daressy’s A.List since all the coffins nested inside one another were considered. Furthermore, once the material arrived in Cairo, a further number was assigned to it—the number of the Journal d’Entrée of the Giza Museum—before being donated to several nations worldwide. In fact, in 1893, the Egyptian Government decided to organize a lottery among the leading representatives of foreign nations who had arrived in Egypt to celebrate the new Khedive Abbas II Hilmi. The lottery prizes were the finds discovered in Bab el-Gasus. The amount of material was indeed so huge that the storage rooms of the Cairo Museum (then in Giza) were not able to accommodate all of the finds, but only the most important and better preserved objects.

Each lot consisted of 4 or 5 coffins and other finds from the tomb of Bab el-Gasus. A total of 17 lots were awarded to France, Austria, Turkey, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, the United States, Holland, Greece, Spain, Sweden/Norway, Belgium, Denmark and the Vatican City State. Italy received Lot V and, given the excellent relations between Ernesto Schiaparelli, the (then) Director of the Egyptian Museum of Florence, and the Ministry for Public Education,¹ the finds assigned to Italy were sent to Florence.

The Historical Archive of the Museum in Florence has preserved all the correspondence² relating to the donation of Lot V: 21 documents, dated between 9 March and 4 August 1893. The first document (Fig. 1) announces the donation and was received from the Ministry for Public Education:

Roma, 9 Marzo 1893. Oggetto. Antichità egiziane offerte in dono. Al Signor Direttore del Museo Egizio Prof. Cav. E. Schiaparelli Firenze.

S.E. il Ministro degli Affari Esteri mi ha trasmesso copia di una lettera diretta al R^o Agente diplomatico italiano al Cairo, dal Ministro egiziano degli Esteri, nella quale è detto che, per aderire alle istanze di molti egittoligi^sic, il Governo Egiziano è venuto nella determinazione di donare ai principali Musei dell’Europa “sette collezioni di oggetti provenienti dalla scoperta detta Serie dei sacerdoti di Ammone, oggetti non necessari al Museo di Ghizet”.

Una di queste sette collezioni è destinata pel Governo Italiano, ed io già ho pensato di inviarla, quando sarà giunta, al Museo diretto dalla S.V.

Di questa collezione il Governo Egiziano sta ora compilando un catalogo che sarà terminato entro il corrente mese.

In cambio di questo dono, il Governo Egiziano desiderebbe^sic dal nostro Governo calchi in gesso di monumenti egizi che non trovansi nel Museo di Ghizet, ma che fanno parte delle raccolte italiane; ovvero pubblicazioni riguardanti la scienza egittologica.

Prego quindi la S.V. di volermi inviare, con la massima sollecitudine, un elenco di tutte le sue pubblicazioni, suggerendomi in pari tempo, tutti quei lavori di egittologia, pubblicati da italiani, e che Ella crede interessanti pel Governo Egiziano. Il Ministro.³

This letter speaks of seven lots, not of the 16 and then definitive 17 lots that were actually donated. Of interest is also the request to exchange the donation with moulds of Egyptian finds held in the Italian collections and with Egyptology publications.

After three days, Ernesto Schiaparelli hastily replied to the Minister’s request. In the draft letter filed in the Florentine archives, the Director of the Museum excuses himself for the delay (!!) in responding and offers to make the mould of the bust of a Pharaoh⁴ and a replica of the famous chariot⁵ brought to the Museum by Ippolito Rosellini during the Franco-Tuscan Expedition, both on display at the Egyptian Museum of Florence. However, he also informed the Minister that he did not have sufficient funds. Schiaparelli attached a list of his publications (including the first volume of the catalogue⁶ of the Egyptian Museum of Florence and several articles) and a list of Lavori di studiosi italiani di archeologia egiziana che potrebbero interessare il Governo Egiziano. He also took the opportunity to ask the Minister to inquire with the Egyptian Government about adding some campioni delle stoffe rinvenute a Deir el Bahri insieme alle Mummie dei faraoni⁷ to the lot awarded to Florence. The following day, Schiaparelli wrote another letter to the Minister informing him of the costs needed to make the mould of the bust of the Pharaoh and on 18 March 1893 he sent a copy of his publications to the Minister.

The Ministry for Public Education sent two letters dated 22 March and 24 March to Schiaparelli, thanking him for the publications and informing him that the Egyptian Government had decided not to go ahead with the moulds.

Document number 7 is a letter dated 4 July 1893 received from the Ministry for Public Education. It is addressed to the Direttore del R^o Museo Egiziano di Firenze and is the most important of the entire correspondence. It contains two attachments. The first is a letter dated 16 June from Cairo and addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Rome. It contains details about the strange procedures followed to award the lots of material to the foreign countries that had attended the lottery in Egypt with their representatives. The letter explains that the draw had been carried out by the Agente di Spagna, Decano del Corpo Diplomatico, and that Lot V had been awarded to Italy, specifically to the Museo Nazionale Egizio di Firenze. The letter also specifies that some samples of fabrics discovered at Deir el-Bahari together with the pharaoh mummies would have been added to the Lot V material, as requested by Schiaparelli. The second attachment (Fig. 2) lists the material comprising the lot, which is reported below in full:

Allegato alla lettera ministeriale del 4 Luglio 1893 N.° di prot. 8037

annessa al rapporto 16 giugno 1893 N.° 354/128

Antichità egiziane comprese nel lotto N.° 5 toccato in sorte all’Italia, secondo la descrizione fattane dalla Direzione del Museo egiziano di Ghizeh

Cinquième Lot

N.° 29691.15.16⁸

Très beau cercueil d’une chanteuse d’Ammon dont le nom est effacé partout.

La decoration du petit cercueil interieur est remarquable. Le disque entre le cornes d’une tête de taureau, qui porte au front un triangle noir; les autres taches sont disposées de manière à imiter à peu pres la forme du scarabée. La décoration extérieure du même cercueil est très interessante.

À l’interieur du grand cercueil on remarque le disque contenant le signe de l’âme et l’oeil symbolique, posté, comme précédemment entre les cornes du taureau. Un serpent roulé sur lui même enveloppe un personnage à tête de lièvre, tenant de chaque main une plume d’autruche. La décoration exterieure est aussi très remarquable.

N.° 29701.60⁹

Grand Cercueil de la dame chanteuse d’Ammon “Ankhseteninaut” Il avait appartenu à “Ankhefkhonsou” dont le nom est mal effacé. Interessant.

N.° 29676¹⁰

Cercueil de Khonsoumès, scribe de la maison d’Ammon.

N.° 29644¹¹

Cercueil

N.° 20.25¹²

Cercueil

3 boites funéraires¹³

Statuettes funeraires¹⁴

N.°	1	Ankh f 12sic khonsou	2
“	2	Nessi ta neb taoui	2
“	3	Padouarer	2 (?)
“	4	Isit in kheb	2 (?)
“	5	Hat pa menfi amun	2
“	6	Tadoumantsic	2
“	7	Ousorhatimes	2
“	8	Meritamun	2
“	9	Tetmant aus ankh	2
“	10	Amenhutep	2
“	11	Tashed khonsou	2
“	12	Isit	2 (?)
“	13	Ankh n maut	2
“	14	Meritamun	2
“	15	Heroub	2
“	16	Tent taoui	2
“	17	Dou khonsou ari	2
“	18	Bok n maut	2
“	19	Nessi ta ouza Khou	2
“	20	Padoua out ren ouit	2
“	21	Khaes	2
“	22	Pai fouzaro	2
“	23	Shedsouamun	2 (?)
“	24	Khonsoumes	2
“	25	Nespahashouti	2
“	26	Isit in kheb	2
“	27	Ankh f khonsou	2
“	28	Tabaken khonsou	2
“	29	Hent taoui	2
“	30	Teton mat ars ankh	2
“	31	Nesi amun ap.	2
“	32	Nesi mont	2
“	33	Ankh s n mat	2
“	34	Ankh n mat	2
“	35	Meritamun	2
“	36	Ta shed khonsou	2
“	37	Hori	2
“	38	Nesi amun	2
“	39	Pakhali	2
“	40	Ta nefer	2
“	41	Hatserhsi	2
“	42	Khonsou m heb	2
“	43	Nespa nefer her	2
“	44	Nesi khonsou	2
“	45	Padoua amen	2
“	46	Nesi pa hivar	2

This highly important document provides the basis for identifying the coffins and the shabtis that arrived in Florence. It may be compared with all other existing lists, including Georges Daressy’s original list (A.List), the list drawn up by Grébaut and Bouriant (B.List) and the one prepared by the Giza Museum. This list does not mention the fragments of fabric that Schiaparelli had asked for, which clearly did not belong to Lot V. It is to be noted also that a little card (Fig. 3) was found inside coffin no. 20.25 (inv. no. 8522), with the following text: 20.[25] Cercueil en mauvais état, de travail très mediocre (momie à enlever). On peut seulement remarquer la scène d’Osiris se soulevant sur le lit pour la résurrection, en présence de Thot. N^o. 5 1

Continuing the examination of the correspondence held at the Historical Archive of the Egyptian Museum of Florence related to the donation, after a letter that Schiaparelli wrote to the Minister, of interest is a letter from the Italian Embassy in Cairo (Agenzia Diplomatica di S.M. il Re d’Italia), dated 17 July 1893. The letter explains that the Lot V material had been packed by the Management of the Giza Museum¹⁵ and arranged in 8 crates for a total weight of 1,259 kg. The crates were expected to leave Alexandria on 21 July and reach Livorno on 28 July. The letter also confirms the presence of the fragments of fabric from Deir el-Bahari.

The correspondence then contains six letters regarding the journey of the crates sent via the Vapore della Navigazione Generale Italiana of Florio and Rubattino on a ship called Persia, exchanged between Ernesto Schiaparelli, the shipping agent P. Bonenfant, the Navigazione Generale Italiana and the prefect of Florence.

Documents numbers 16 (Fig. 4) and 17, dated 31 July and 4 August, consist of the invoice for transport expenses issued by the shipping agent P. Bonenfant and the declaration of entry of the crates arriving from Egypt at the Florence Customs Office, including a receipt (Fig. 5) for porterage services. The following is reported in the declaration of entry: Casse otto, lordo assieme kili milleduecentottanta, contenenti oggetti di collezione di antichità Egiziane donate dal Governo del Kedivé al R Governo Italiano e da questo destinate al R° Museo Egiziano di Firenze come da lettera Prefettizia gabinetto N° 2040 del 30 Luglio …

The last documents of the correspondence held at Florence are all dated 4 August 1893: four letters written by the director of the Egyptian Museum, Ernesto Schiaparelli, to the Royal Diplomatic Agent of His Highness the King of Italy in Egypt, to the Consul of Italy in Alexandria, to the Prefect of Florence and to the Minister for Public Education, respectively. In all four letters, which have very similar content, Schiaparelli announces that on the same day—4 August—the 8 crates from Egypt had arrived. The text of the fourth letter, addressed to the Minister, is reported below:

Firenze, 4 Agosto 1893. OGGETTO Ricevimento delle antichità donate dal Governo egiziano. A S.E. il Ministro della Pubblica Istruzione.

Mi affretto ad annunziare a V.E. che oggi stesso sono qui pervenute le antichità donate dal Governo Kediviale a quello di Sua Maestà, e dall’E.V. destinate a questo Museo egiziano.

Senza ritardo procedetti a un minuto riscontro delle medesime coll’Elenco che mi fu precedentemente convocato dall’E.V. colla sua lettera del 4 Luglio p.p. (Num. di part. 8037), e constatai che nessun oggetto mancava di quelli indicati nell’Elenco stesso. Rinvenni pure i campioni di tele e le ghirlande aggiunte ulteriormente dietro la pressione del R. Agente Diplomatico d’Italia Comm. Macciò.

Le antichità suddette erano contenute in otto grandi casse ben confezionate, e giunsero a questo Museo in perfetto stato, eccettuati alcuni gruppi di ghirlande di fiori intrecciati con foglie di persea, che di loro natura immensamente fragili, si scomposero e si frantumarono durante il viaggio. Se non per vera e propria importanza archeologica, certo per il numero e per la mole loro, le antichità inviateci dal Governo egiziano costituiscono un dono cospicuo e rappresentano per queste collezioni un notevole incremento.

Ho disposto per il pagamento di una nota di spese per sbarco, franco di porto, ecc. da Livorno a questo Museo per la somma di L.110,35: delle rimanenti spese di porto dal Cairo fino a Livorno io non ebbi finora alcuna partecipazione, per cui suppongo che, qualora non siano state fatte dallo stesso Governo egiziano, devono essere state sostenute dalla R. Agenzia Diplomatica al Cairo o dal R. Consolato di Alessandria.

Il Direttore Ernesto Schiaparelli

When referring to the material received, Schiaparelli not only talks about the samples of fabric that had been previously requested but also about garlands of flowers and leaves, of which there had been no previous mention.

Schiaparelli started to draw up the inventory of material that had arrived from Egypt immediately. In volume V of the handwritten catalogue regarding the material of the Egyptian Museum of Florence, inventory number 8521 reads as follows: Sarcofago in legno stuccato e dipinto, with provenance Deir el Bahri, tomba dei sacerdoti di Ammone a Tebe (Dono del Governo egiziano). Actually, this was not a true coffin, but a mummy-cover, yet the following inventory numbers (8522–8528) report the following description: sette sarcofaghi come sopra. Schiaparelli did not inventory the other three mummy-covers and evidently left them inside their coffins, which over time, however, were removed. It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that Giuseppe Botti, curator of the Egyptian Museum of Florence, checked the material and assigned numbers 9476, 9530 and 9534 to the three mummy-covers that had not been inventoried. Thanks to the study and research carried out by Marianna Zarli, it has been possible to locate the original provenance of some of them and to match them with their respective coffins, which even Botti had no longer been able to identify.

The table below provides an overview of the situation on the basis of the documentation available at the Florence Museum and on the basis of Zarli’s study.¹⁶

Schiaparelli also assigned inventory numbers 8529, 8530 and 8531 to the three shabti-boxes; number 8532 to the garlands of flowers and leaves; and numbers 8533, 8534 and 8535 to the three fragments of fabric without specifying that they had been taken from the Royal Cache (the one containing the mummies of the pharaohs) and not from the Bab el-Gasus. Inventory numbers 8536 to 8627 were assigned to the shabtis, for a total of 92 shabtis. However, during the checks carried out by Giuseppe Botti, numbers 8590 and 8617 were recorded as lost: actually, the two shabtis were not lost but had been mistaken for other shabtis, which were effectively lost.¹⁷

Regarding the garlands of flowers and leaves under inventory number 8532,¹⁸ it is difficult to say if they were taken from the Royal Cache or from Bab el-Gasus, since neither the correspondence nor volume V of the handwritten catalogue provide details. What appears to be certain is the provenance of the three fragments of fabric from the tomb discovered in Deir el-Bahari in 1881, the tomb of the mummies of the pharaohs. This fact is repeated several times in the letters, although the inscriptions and dating of the finds raise some doubts on this point.¹⁹

To conclude, a table is reported below with the list of documents that comprise the correspondence related to the donation, held at the Historical Archive of the Egyptian Museum of Florence.

Of the material received from the tomb of Bab el-Gasus, only the coffins under inventory numbers 8524, 8528 and 8527 and the mummy-covers under inventory numbers 8521, 9534 and 9530 are on display in Room VIII of the Egyptian Museum of Florence. The decision regarding which coffins to display was made in 2015 during the restyling of the Historical Room VIII of the Museum, during an important event in which the Museum played a leading role: the organization of the XI International Congress of Egyptologists.

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Figure 1

Donation document from the Ministry for Public Education

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Figure 2

Document number 7: list of finds donated

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Figure 3

Card found inside the coffin—inv. no. 8522

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Figure 4

Invoice for transport expenses

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Figure 5

Receipt for porterage services

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