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Announcement for exhibition of two mummies and artefacts from Ancient Egypt at the NHSM (all now in the Redpath Museum Collection), in La Minerve, 13 octobre 1859.
Source publication
This article provides the context for the acquisition of the Egyptian Mummies collection at McGill University’s Redpath Museum through donors such as James Ferrier, Sir Thomas Roddick and the Montreal Natural History Society. Since the 19th century the Mummies have solicited a great deal of public interest and have also been the object of rigorous...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... NHSM's history can be seen as part of the effort to increase the Society's status and membership. Egyptian mummies were an acknowledged source of prestige and popularity in the mid-nineteenth century and advertising for the exhibition included mention of two mummies, as well as a presentation on Egyptian agriculture, and a display of objects ( fig. 1). 11 Activities involving the examination of mummies were a proven way to attract crowds of paying spectators and would have been envisioned as a good way to create excitement and bolster membership at this critical period of the Society's growth. A general curiosity about what was inside these wrapped bodies prevailed from ancient ...
Context 2
... no major skeletal abnormalities were noted. There is a broken ethmoid plate on the left side, indicating brain removal through the left nostril. There is severe dental attrition and periodontal abscesses. A small rounded mass embedded placed within the largest dental cavity during life may be a dental intervention intended to alleviate pain ( fig. ...
Context 3
... Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. The exhibit examined the history of x-rays using early scientific equipment, photographs, and archival documents. One of the exhibit highlights was "Red II" accompanied by the x-rays and CT scans recently taken at the Hȏpital Saint-Luc and a summary of the examination results presented by means of an interactive computer fig. 11). The Inside Story was shown at the McCord Museum from May to November 1995 and then continued on at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa between June 1996 and April ...
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... thus progressively seen not simply as an object of memory but as living memory, coming to life and meaning through the present time of observation. It is precisely as a present time observatory favouring the mobility of memory that Time Machine renews the visibility and perception of one of the most famous objects of the Redpath collection. 76 ( fig. ...
Context 5
... examinations, which took place at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) in April 2011, produced high-resolution 3D radiological images of the three human mummies and also six bird mummies from the Redpath World Cultures Collection ( fig. 13). Its aims were to determine how they were mummified, their osteobiographical details (age, sex, social status, etc.), their state of preservation, their dental and overall health, the dental filling of the male Theban mummy, the package or scroll in the female Fayum mummy, and the unidentified contents in one of the ibis mummy bundles. ...
Context 6
... male in his early twenties, whose height in life was approximately 162.6 cm (5 feet 4 inches). The dental condition is mixed, but generally poor. There is what appears to be an ancient treatment in a left molar cavity to protect the exposed nerves. The brain has been removed through the left ethmoid and the eyes remain intact in their orbits (fig. ...
Context 7
... as the head and chest are covered by a gilded cartonnage mask and separate cartonnage pectoral panel. The coiffure, with long plaits across the mid-scalp drawn back and fashioned in a chignon at the crown, dates to approximately 96 -161 CE, a style typically worn by Roman provincial women, gives this mummy a likely mid- Roman Period date ( figs. 15a & 15b). ...
Context 8
... to virtually remove all tissue and fabric and reveal the skulls of the mummies. The stripped- down CT scan data was sent to a 3D printer, 82 each skull taking approximately 10 hours to print. The printed skulls were then hardened using an epoxy resin and mounted on stands, serving as models for the work of forensic artist, Victoria Lywood ( fig. ...
Context 9
... The forensic artist also painted features and made appropriate wigs based on coiffures detected through the mummy wrappings by the physical anthropologists and confirmed by historical sources. The facial reconstructions were unveiled in January 2013 amid intensive media interest and are now on permanent in the Redpath's World Cultures gallery ( fig. 17) ...
Similar publications
The exhibition of two mummies in the Natural History cabinet in Paris aroused the interest of various scientific expeditions that made a stopover in Tenerife in the first half of the 19th century. Nicolas Baudin’s expedition in 1800 coincided with the discovery of a cave with mummies in El Sauzal and three ended up in the university museums of Mont...
Citations
... His brother, George Davies Ferrier (1828-1876) was also a member from 1867 to 1876 (NASM 1892: 91). While their father, James Ferrier, Sr., was involved in the Natural History Society of Montreal and even acquired some Egyptian antiquities for its museum during a trip to Egypt and Palestine in 1859 (Gagnon 1994: 122;Lawson 2017), there is no evidence that he took any interest at all in the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society. Further, there is no question of the elder Ferrier ever having been "junior;" his father's name was George. ...
There has been a common misconception that Hon. James Ferrier, Sr. (1800-1888), former mayor of Montreal, member of the Legislative Council of Canada East and of the Senate of Canada, was the numismatist whose collection was sold in a Cogan sale of 1871. However, there is no evidence that the elder Ferrier was a numismatist at all, and the collection's owner was actually his son, James Ferrier, Jr., a hardware merchant who was both a coin collector and an amateur naturalist whose major interest was microscopy.
En 1859, l'imminent politicien et entrepreneur montréalais James Ferrier rentra d'un voyage familial en Orient avec une imposante collection d'artéfacts, aujourd'hui conservée par le musée Redpath de l'Université McGill à Montréal. Cette collection, composée d'environ 170 pièces provenant d'Égypte, reflète toute l'admiration historico-religieuse et l'intérêt scientifique que portaient J. Ferrier et ses contemporains pour l'antique civilisation pharaonique. Cette courte étude, qui s'intéresse principalement au matériel inscrit (fragments hiéroglyphiques et statuaires), apporte des résultats de recherche préliminaires et quelques réflexions quant au trajet de J. Ferrier en Égypte et aux modalités de collecte de certaines pièces.
