Curator Morag Clement reveals why Kendal Museum has an Egyptology Collection . . .

KENDAL Museum has a small but important Egyptology Collection, but how did it get here?

The objects in the collection range from shabtis to make up containers, and pots to altars. Some have hieroglyphic inscriptions and some have more detailed texts carved and painted on to stone and wood.

There are 147 Egyptian objects and 40 can be linked to the excavations of John Garstang, from Liverpool University.

John Garstang was born in Blackburn in 1876, and from 1901 to 1914 excavated every year in Egypt or the Sudan, at sites including Abydos, Beni Hassan, Esna and Hierakonpolis.

At the age of 26, he was appointed honorary Reader in Egyptian Archaeology at Liverpool University. Five years later in 1907 he became John Rankin Professor of Archaeology, a post he held until his retirement in 1941.

At least six different individuals donated Egyptian objects to Kendal Museum. The most prolific donor, and the only one to donate objects from the Garstang excavations, was John Rankin, of Hill Top, Kendal.

John Rankin (1845-1928) was a wealthy Liverpool ship merchant and was also High Sheriff of Westmorland in 1910. He was a prolific philanthropist, and always gave to a worthy cause.

Importantly for Kendal, Rankin was a benefactor of John Garstang’s excavations in Egypt from 1900 onwards. Any donors to Garstang received a selection of Egyptian artefacts as thanks.

Rankin later donated his collection of Egyptian artefacts to institutions including Sedbergh School and Liverpool Museum, and we know he donated at least 40 objects to Kendal Museum in 1923.

Kendal’s Egyptian collection is made up of objects from a series of sites, and time periods. Many represent John Garstang’s excavations at the cemeteries of Abydos (1906-9), Beni Hassan (1902-4), Esna (1905-6) and the cemeteries and fort at Hierakonpolis (1905-6). These objects have been identified from pencil markings, and references to them in the archives.

We have many unique items here, including a small Statuette of Sobekhotep, son of Nehesy, which dates to around 1500BC. This is a very important and rare figurine.

The figure is somewhat crude, showing him wearing a round wig and a kilt, standing with the left foot forward. A hiero-glyphic inscription shows that Sobekhotep’s sister Kemet gave the statuette as an offering to the god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris.

Sobekhotep may have been a soldier, and so his sister may have dedicated the statue after he died in active service and was buried.

Another important object is a wooden statue depicting the god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. It is from Beni Hassan and is 2,500 years old.

Standing mummiform figures of the god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, an important funerary deity, were frequently made for burials.

Unfortunately the Kendal Museum statue does not have a papyrus inside, but the painted decoration is well preserved – and one of Garstang’s original photos shows the Kendal statue next to the coffin in the tomb.