Catalog Capsule

Ancient Egypt and Nubia

By Helen Whitehouse (Oxford, United Kingdom: Ashmolean Museum, 2009), xxvi + 148 pp., £16.95 (paperback)

Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum has displayed Egyptian artifacts since its inauguration in 1683—more than 120 years before Champollion announced the decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822, thereby launching Egyptology as an academic subject. The introduction to this catalog is titled “Egypt in Oxford,” but it could just as easily have been called “Oxford in Egypt,” as it recounts British travels, explorations and excavations over the centuries that have contributed to one of the finest collections of Egyptian antiquities outside of Egypt.