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"Antiquity-dealing-business on a large scale": The Business of Egyptian Archaeology and the Antiquities Trade

Daniel Potter (National Museums Scotland) presents this Liverpool Egyptology Seminar.

Thursday 4 December 2025 17:00 (UK time)
Location: Rendall Lecture Theatre 3 (ground floor)

This is a hybrid event, but we encourage in-person attendance, which facilitates discussion and fosters a sense of community among the ‘Liverpool’ Egyptologists. As always, there will be drinks and nibbles.

Abstract

Egyptological histories have often focused on the scientific heroism of archaeologists, obscuring the reality that many of these same heroes were also highly active in the antiquities market, buying and selling objects freely. Their symbiotic work in excavations and on the market supplied a vast quantity of objects to museums and collectors across the world, impacting what we see in collections today, and thus what is available for scholarly study.  

This lecture will discuss the results of research into the entanglement of archaeology and the market during the Egyptian antiquities rush, 1880-1939. It takes three archaeologists as its focus, each of whom took part in British-led excavations in Egypt and Sudan, engaged in the antiquities market and helped build the collections of National Museums Scotland. They are Canadian collector-for-hire Charles Trick Currelly, the "business-like" archaeologist John Garstang, and the so-called "father of Egyptian archaeology" Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie. It will explore some of their transactions as a way of examining the practices of these excavator-suppliers, and will discuss some of the narratives these men and their colleagues used to justify the commercial aspects of their work that may conform to 'dealing'.

Suggested readings

We strive to encourage scholarly debate around the presentation. For that purpose, the speaker has been asked to provide a range of readings that would help the student audience gain familiarity, if and where needed, with the context in which the specialised research is embedded.