Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (42.2001)

2. Statuę of baboon,
after restoration.

At present it is easy to identify various objects from Deir el-Medina - they
were published or mentioned in the excavation reports, as were coffins from
Meir, or inscriptions from Kom el-Ahmar. But it is still impossible to establish
what was lost during the war. Even morę difficult is the problem of the
provenance of tmpublished exhibits, some of them being ąuite important.

In the inventory books, filed only some time after the war (probably
before 1949), several entries bear the notę: “purchased”, or “brought from
Edfu”, in some cases dated 1938, in other cases 1939. The entries were
evidently madę hastily, without even checking the objects already published
in the pre-war guidebooks. Some of them had already been exhibited in
1937, despite the inventory entry stating that they were acąuired only in
1939. So the inventory entries, normally the base of all knowledge about
the museum's objects, are not reliable. In the pre-war guide books most of
the objects discussed here are mentioned, but labelled simply: “Edfu”.

50