"The Borgia collection of Egyptian antiquities: cataloguing as a method"

The Borgia collection of Egyptian antiquities is one of the two main groups that constitute the Egyptian Collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN). The collection, sold by Camillo Borgia to Joachim Murat in 1815, however, is mainly linked to Cardinal Stefano Borgia (Camillo ‘s uncle) and the Danish scholar Georg Zoëga, who studied and catalogued it. The scientific accuracy of Zoëga, motivated by the idea that we must present monuments for themselves and for their own contents and not according to individual taste and personal purposes, led him to develop a cataloguing system that made him a pioneer of a highly modern method for studying archaeological materials. As part of a PhD project on the Egyptian collection of MANN, among whose main objectives is also a new exhibition proposal, consultation of archival documents - and especially of the original writings by Zoëga - is providing fundamental information about the nature and origin of some materials, as well as about their history in the context of European collectors in the late 18th and 19th centuries.