This week I visited West Park Museum in Macclesfield on an afternoon trip with my
supervisor Campbell to see their collection of Egyptian objects. West Park's small but well formed Egyptian collection came into being because of a Miss Marianne Brocklehurst, the child of a wealthy silk manufacturer in Macclesfield and a lady with a keen interest in all things ancient Egyptian.
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| West Park Museum |
Miss Brocklehurst travelled around Egypt with her companion Mary Booth, and the pair became known as the 'MBs'. They had a keen eye for high-quality Egyptian objects and had the opportunity to acquire a personal collection when they also had the chance of making use of their contact with Luxor's infamous Abd el-Rassoul family from whom they bought a number of objects including this ring preserving the cartouche of Ramesses II.
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| Ring with the cartouche of Ramesses II |
Miss Brocklehurst was also a friend of Amelia Edwards (the founder of the Egypt Exploration Fund, now Society) and subsequently became a member and donor of the EES, forming a Macclesfield Branch of the EES with Mary Booth as secretary. As a result of her membership Miss Brocklehurst received a portion of the excavated objects with secure contexts which complemented her own personal Egyptian collection.
West Park Museum was built in 1898 at the instruction of Miss Brocklehurst but unfortunately she became ill and died before she was able to visit the museum herself. From museum records it is clear that Miss Brocklehurst's Egyptian collection was donated and exhibited at West Park from the very beginning, and now forms an integral part of West Park's modest collection of ancient objects, anthropology, natural history and fine art.
One of the most important Egyptian objects at West Park is this beautiful steatite statuette of Queen Tiye, Great Royal Wife of pharaoh Amenhotep III (1390-1352 BC) depicting the queen standing, wearing an enveloping wig and vulture headdress which may originally have been fronted with two uraei. She holds a flywhisk in her left hand and a lotus in her right, and the back pillar preserves her name: Hmt-nsw wrt Tyy (Great Royal Wife, Tiye). This object is truly a masterpiece and I was very lucky to have had the privilege of handling and examining it on my visit.
The West Park Museum may be small, and perhaps a little out of the way, but it is definitely worth a visit and you will be rewarded with a beautiful collection of Egyptian objects including several outstanding unique pieces, together with a CD ROM catalogue of the Egyptian collection which you can purchase from the museum shop. I'd like to thank Honorary Curator of West Park, Alan Hayward, for his generosity and for facilitating access to the collection.
Hi Anna,
ReplyDeleteThe thing we want to know is what happened to the papyrus of Djedptahiufankh, which Marianne purchased (with a mummy/coffin) from the Abd er Rassuls? This was briefly described in a publication by Amelia Edwards, but has since vanished. It is her most important find.
Dylan
Hi Dylan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, based on the CD ROM catalogue of West Park (written by Alan Hayward, Hon. Curator) that particular papyrus is no longer part of WP's collection, the only papyrus is a small Demotic fragment (1984.1977).
The cartonnage mummy case on display at West Park is that of Shebmut, a 22nd Dynasty of a temple singer of Amun. Alan Hayward's description of the case in the WP catalogue is as follows:
"MB bought the mummy in its case at Thebes in 1874, but a few days
later buried the body on the banks of the Nile. She must have been
often asked how she had acquired it, so she wrote an addendum to her
diary giving a colourful description. She had been offered the case in a
sarcophagus, but considered this too bulky to smuggle out of Egypt. So this sarcophagus is likely to be in some other collection. This mummy
case was the star item in MB’s collection. It was displayed in the first
exhibition held at West Park Museum in 1898".
Egyptological also discuss this object in their recent article: http://www.egyptological.com/2013/04/marianne-brocklehurst-and-the-west-park-museum-macclesfield-part-1-11073
Perhaps contacting West Park directly would be useful? Their archives may preserve something of the history of that particular papyrus (http://www.silkmacclesfield.org.uk/museums/west-park-museum).
Best wishes,
Anna