La collezione egizia del museo provinciale di Torcello

Martino Gottardo

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Abstract

Since 1887, the Province of Venice has included within its museal patrimony the collections kept in the Torcello Museum. New artefacts have been added to the original inventory during decades. Among these, a good amount of objects clearly inspired to the Egyptian period.
The article proposes a stylistic analysis, as well as an authenticity one, of the 41 items constituting the museum’s Egyptian collection.
These items result being catalogued, but not studied yet and for those items allowing it, a dating time and a geographical origin is being proposed. The above cited artefacts are divided into two classes: bronze and ceramic objects. Among the bronze items we can find solely goddesses including 6 Osiris, 1 Amon, 1 Bastet, 1 Harpocrates, 1 isis, in addition, we can find an offering character and afragment of Sistrum.
The ceramics are exclusively of ushabti origin with the exception of a stamped terracotta head probably depicting Isis-Aphrodite. We also tried to detect the objects which were clearly false, or which could have resulted being so.