Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (42.2001)

donate them to west European museums than to send them back to Poland.
He rightly believed that the objects wotild be seąuestrated and carried away.
Other collectors preferred to collect objects of patriotic value, and very
seldom did antiąuities originating from the Mediterranean possess such
values. Amongst rarities was the collection of Greek vases and other
“curiosities”, founded in Paris by Count Jan Działyński and his wife Izabella
nee Czartoryska. After transferring the collection to Poland and establishing
a private museum in the estate of Gołuchów, the collection was available to
yisitors once a week, after obtaining written permission.

In such a situation there were just two ways to build up a comprehensive
museum collection: to purchase objects on the market, or to unearth them at
ancient sites. It was still possible to buy exhibits, but for a country which had
just emerged from non-existence and was completely lacking in funds, the
prices were prohibitive. Michałowski understood the dilemma and decided on
the second option: to excavate. As he admitted frankly in his Memories, he
chose Egypt because its antiąuity law was liberał and permitted the export of
antiąue objects. This was impossible in Greece, Italy and Turkey, and
Michałowski was not interested in just publishing his finds, without taking
them back to Poland and enriching its antiąuities collection. The potential
obstacle to this plan consisted in his lack of formal education in the field of
Egyptian Archaeology. But that turned out not to be a problem for
Michałowski: With the help of French friends he met during his time in Athens,
in 1934 he obtained the position of attache etranger at the French Institute of
Oriental Archaeology in Cairo. There he befriended many futurę prominent
scholars: Jacąues Vandier, Alexandre Varille, Clement Robichon, Georges
Posener, Michel Malinine and his life-long dear friend Jaroslay Cerny. During
his stay in Cairo together with another Polish scholar, the historian Tadeusz
Wałek-Czernecki, Michałowski took part in the excavations at Deir el-
-Medina, under the prominent French archaeologist Bernard Bruyere. In his
Memories he included a colourful description of lodging in an ancient tomb,
accompanied by the vile stench of mummies from the back room.

Michałowski^ stay in Egypt was very fruitful: he was able to obtain a promise
for joint Polish-French excavations at Tell Edfu in Upper Egypt, a site partly
explored previously by a French mission. At the same time, in Poland, he
succeeded in getting official agreement from Warsaw Uniyersity to cover part
of the costs of the excavations. From the National Museum in Warsaw,
meanwhile, and its newly nominated director, Professor Stanisław Lorentz,
Michałowski secured an agreement to accommodate the finds of the
excavations and to create a gallery of ancient art. For the new gallery, Professor
Lorentz offered halls in a part of the museum which had not yet been
completed! The excavations started in 1936 and lasted until the outbreak of the
Second World War, for three winter seasons of field work. During the first
season Bruyere was heading the joint mission, but thereafter Michałowski took
over. The young Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt was then a member of the

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