Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (42.2001)

become the pride of some private col-
lection or the centrepiece of a seance
of unwrapping the mummy. In the lat-
ter case they were carefully cut along
the side - as in this case - to extract
the mummy and examine it.

In the years 1861 and 1862, Count
Michał Tyszkiewicz (ill.4) travelled
in Egypt. He started to collect his
famous collection of antiąuities,
sometimes buying them, but mostly
conducting his own excavations at
Karnak and on the west bank of the
Nile. At Karnak, the excavations were
carried out legally, with the permission
of the vice-king - but in the valley
behind the mountains of Asasif they
were illegal - breaking a ban imposed
by the officiałs of Augustę Mariette
and conducted under the cover of the
night. The exact site of these illegal
excavations is not known; it could
have been any valley close to Asasif.

The work proved successful as early as
on its second night, as Tyszkiewicz
noted in his diary:1

“Having locked the door of the
cabin we begin to open two mummies.

One of them, enclosed in a wooden
case, very decorative, is covered with
green paintings, very protruding, and
paintings on this green are red and
rather shallow (today this case can
be seen in Paris, in the Louvre, in the
Department of Egyptian Antiąuities2).

So we started with this coffin but
to my surprise the mummy enclosed
in it had nothing except normal bands. The other mummy, although
inconspicuous, was beautifully painted on a case madę of glued linen and
rewarded us doubly, as I found in it a body of a woman adorned with many
gold jewels and idols madę of lapis lazuli. Thick golden ear-rings,

3. Cartonnage
after restoration
actual inv.no. 238435
The National Museum
Warsów

(photo Z. Doliński)

Egipt zapomniany czyli Michała hr. Tyszkiewicza Dziennik podróży do Egiptu i Nubii (1861-
1862), ed. by A. Niwiński, Warsaw 1994, pp. 245-247.

Only a wooden mummy cover is presently in the Louvre, inv. no. E.3859.

29