Imagining Ancient Egypt in the Age of Empire

Acquisition: Using museum archives, donor biographies, excavation distribution lists and other materials can demonstrate how objects were collected and acquired to address how the donors and sources might have affected the collection and interpretation of materials. For example, the Ancient Egyptian Collections in Scottish Museums report highlights the connections between some East India Company employees and Scottish collections and that there is more room for research to better understand how donors that were active agents of British imperialism might have affected the acquisition, interpretation, and display of the ancient Egyptian objects. Another example coming from the report would be to investigate the work of the Egyptian Research Students Account (ERSA) and Janet Buchanan in relation to the Glasgow Museums by reviewing the archival minutes and correspondence of ERSA and Buchanan that has recently been identified at the University of Glasgow.
Display and interpretation: Reviewing photographs, gallery plans, perhaps guide books or pamphlets, and museums archives, such as the extensive archives of the NMS that discuss past display and collecting practices will help reconstruct the historic displays. Gallery analysis is a popular method to critically review museums and will be used to question how the narratives, supplementary images, replicas, and other display elements were used to conjure an idea of 'ancient Egypt' amongst audiences.
Reception: Using accounts of visitors, reviews of the displays, and historic newspaper articles will help characterize the reception of the displays by the public in the 19th and 20th centuries. Understanding audiences as active meaning-makers, it is important to review the reception of the displays to illuminate how audiences related to the displays and what kind of meaning they made from the displays