The Egyptological Collections reopen: an exhibition and a new look

On  February 19, 2022 at 10.30 a.m., in the Aula Magna Nuova of La Sapienza, there will be the presentation of the exhibition Dall’Egitto a Pisa: Gaetano Rosellini e le sue collezioni, set up at the Collezioni Egittologiche “Edda Bresciani” (Sistema Museale di Ateneo (SMA), University of Pisa), whose 60th anniversary falls on the occasion of its foundation.

The Exhibition From Egypt to Pisa: Gaetano Rosellini and his Collections

Conceived one year after the death of Edda Bresciani, the world-famous Egyptologist who gave her name to the Collections, the exhibition is realised in collaboration with the Opera della Primaziale Pisana, which has lent the University three precious finds from its collection of Egyptian antiquities.

The exhibition offers the opportunity to admire a selection of the small, great masterpieces donated to the Opera della Primaziale Pisana by Gaetano Rosellini in 1830, on his return from the famous ‘Franco-Tuscan Expedition to Egypt and Nubia’ (1828-1829), led by his nephew Ippolito Rosellini together with J.F. Champollion, and in which Gaetano had participated as engineer and architect.

The unprecedented juxtaposition of these artefacts with those from the Picozzi Collection, a donation made to the University of Pisa in 1962 by the heirs of Gaetano Rosellini and permanently exhibited in the Egyptological Collections, thus makes it possible to bring together parts of a historical heritage that have long been separated.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the rooms of the small museum will have a renewed look thanks to new colours, new lighting and new display solutions, which will better frame the dialogue between the finds from the collection of the Opera della Primaziale Pisana and those from the permanent collections.