The first of these is the papers of Jacques Jean Clère, presented by Madame Irène Clère in 1995. J. J. Clère (1906-1989), the former Directeur d'Études at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, was an outstanding Egyptologist whose interests ranged from Egyptian philology to ancient Egyptian sculpture, and from the Early Dynastic Period (shortly after 3,000 BC) to the Ptolemaic Period (332-30 BC). He was an excellent epigraphist and a keen photographer who recorded many unpublished monuments in museum and site storerooms as well as pieces seen on the art market or in the hands of dealers. This documentation often remains the only evidence we have concerning such material and will prove invaluable for the Griffith Institute's other main project, the Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Statues, Reliefs and Paintings.
The papers also contain a copy of Clère's unpublished volume on Middle-Kingdom stelae in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo which was prepared for the Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire series. There is also the documentation concerning his unfinished project on sistrophorous statues and some material intended for further fascicles devoted to the texts of the First Intermediate Period.
In sheer volume, the material represents one of the largest groups in the Griffith Institute's Archive. It has been analyzed and catalogued in a general way but detailed identification and classification will continue for some time to come.
The second group consists of a large number of drawings and sketches made by Joseph Bonomi. Joseph Bonomi (1796-1878) was a superb and versatile draughtsman who spent many years in Egypt cooperating with some of the most prominent copyists of the first half of the 19th century, such as Robert Hay, James Burton, John Gardner Wilkinson (later Sir), and Ippolito Rosellini. He travelled extensively in Egypt and the Sudan as well as in other countries of the Levant. Bonomi was a member of the famous epigraphic expedition led by Richard Lepsius in 1842-4. In the United Kingdom, he was actively involved in the production of books on ancient Egypt, the cataloguing of Egyptian collections, and the design and decoration of Egyptianizing buildings. In 1861 he was appointed Curator of Sir John Soane's Museum in London.
Bonomi's material in our Archive is of various dates and covers Egypt, Nubia, Palestine and other countries. A detailed analysis and cataloguing of these papers will begin soon.
An interesting addition to the Archive is a notebook by C. G. Jelf concerning work in various Theban tombs in 1909-10, which was financed by Robert L. Mond (later Sir). This has been presented by Dr Donald P. Ryan and it completes the other notes by Jelf already in our Archive (among the papers of Sir Alan Gardiner). The quality of our documentation of the tombs on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor, which are generally known as the Theban tombs (the Greek name of ancient Egyptian Weset was Thebes), especially those dating from the New Kingdom (1540-1069 BC), is outstanding.
The excitement surrounding the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922 is vividly recorded in correspondence addressed to Howard Carter by various non-scholarly members of the general public. A group of such letters, often charmingly naive, has been given to our Archive by Mrs Margaret Orr, the daughter of Carter's close collaborator and co-author, A. C. Mace. Some photographs and lantern slides illustrating the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb have been presented by Mrs G. E. W. Howells, Dr H. Whitehouse, Dr P. T. Nicholson, and Mr Neville Jones, and correspondence on the same topic has been the gift of Sir Noel Moynihan. All these provide further insights into the excavation of Tutankhamn's tomb. The field records by Howard Carter and his collaborators and the photographic documentation by Harry Burton are one of the most often consulted groups of archive material in the Griffith Institute.
Some additional material of Professor Jaroslav Cerný, especially correspondence, has been presented by his step-daughter, Lady Mackintosh. It completes the very extensive and much used Cerný papers already in our Archive.
Additions have also been made to another very important group of records which we already have. These are the papers of Sir Alan Gardiner and the new material, mainly correspondence, completes the section on linguistics. Sir Alan's original contribution to general linguistics has recently become the focus of renewed scholarly interest. The additional material has been presented by his daughter, Mrs Margaret Gardiner.
Original prints have enlarged our impressive collection of 19th-century "studio photographs" of Egypt. An interesting album has recently been donated by Mr T. G. H. James. Although it probably dates to the 1920s, it contains prints of 19th-century photographs which had previously not been represented in our Archive.
More recent, but nevertheless not without interest, are photographs taken by Dr G. Weiler and Mr Sieburg during trips to Egypt in the 1950s. These were given to us by the Department of History of Art and the Taylor Institution Library.
Photographs taken during a trip to the Eastern Desert in the late 1920s or early 1930s have been given to us by the daughter of Sir Laurence Kirwan, Mrs A. J. Preston, and some transparencies of Nubian sites taken in the early 1960s came from Mr D. M. Hawke.
Some additional papers of Duncan Mackenzie who worked in Sudan with the Wellcome Expedition have been presented by his nephew, Mr A. B. Mackenzie.
A copy of an unpublished manuscript of Creative Work in Palestine, by W. A. Stewart, the restorer of the furniture of Queen Hetepheres, has been given to us by Mrs P. Stewart.
(July 5, 1997)