Archival Materials on the Egyptological Collection of the Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University
One of the founders and the first director of the Anthropological Museum of Moscow University Prof. Dmitry N. Anuchin assembled a small but representative collection of Ancient Egyptian artifacts, altogether about 50 items. The most note-worthy items were a wooden coffin from the so-called Gift of Khedive Abbas II Hilmi to the Russian government which was given to the Moscow University and arrived at the Anthropological Museum in 1895; a mummy presented to Anuchin by the professor of the Moscow University Alexander I. Babukhin; objects of funerary cult. In the 1930s the collection of the Anthropological Museum, as in many other museums in the USSR, suffered from the random and often undocumented movement of certain items or even entire collections. At present three ancient Egyptian mummies (one of which rests in a wooden coffin) and two mummified heads are kept in the Museum. The author presents new archival materials which record the history of the egyptological collection of the Museum.