About the catalogue

The present catalogue of wooden figures is the first of a series of online catalogues aimed at presenting the corpus of wooden, stone and bronze sculptures kept in the Collection of Egyptian Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Although scholarly research has been continuously carried out on the highlights of the collection since the 1940s, and results have been regularly published in the Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts, and recently in Egyptian Artefacts of the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest (2013), a comprehensive study has not yet been completed on the subject. Along with launching this online series, the Department of Egyptian Antiquities intends to create an open-access, easily searchable database of the catalogued object groups. In addition to the basic data of the objects (inv. no., photo, object name, measures, material and condition, description, classification/function, date, origin, provenance, bibliography, analogies/parallels), a short description (using keywords) and the full bibliography of the objects are also included. Furthermore, the objects are classified according to their most probable original context in which they had been used in Antiquity (Classification/Function). Each catalogue item is supplemented with a list of analogies/parallels found in printed publications or on various websites of Egyptian collections.

By the above mentioned content, we have drawn up a double purpose of this new catalogue series: (1) place the objects in their original ancient context and (2) find the most analogies possible in order to determine the most plausible date of origin and provenance (or in some cases, even to identify workshops). Therefore, to help us improve the records, any suggestion or proposal for more precise definitions and/or further analogies is mostly welcome!

Éva Liptay, the author of the catalogue would like to express her gratitude to the following colleagues for their help provided with this publication:

Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo (Centre for Ancient Cultures, Monash University, Melbourne) for correcting and supplementing the data concerning Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figures

and Erika Roboz (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) for editing the initial database of the catalogue.