The Xia Nai Index of Egyptian Beads in The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

There are some 3000 strings of beads in the Petrie Museum. These formed the subject of a dissertation in the 1940s by Xia Nai, one of China's leading archaeologists and pioneers after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. Xia Nai's dissertation was only published in 2014 and to ensure that the research that underpinned this was also available, scans of Xia Nai's 1760 index cards held in the Petrie Museum archives were made.

You can read more about the bead index in a piece from curator Kristin A. Phelps, or read curator Stephen Quirke's short biography of Xia Nai.

Shuoting Zhang and Daniel Takacs have produced a concordance of Xia Nai and UC numbers. 

We are very grateful to the staff, volunteers and students who have contributed to making the Xia Nai archive resource publically available: Sam Washington, Daniel Takacs, Kristin Phelps, Shuoting Zhang and Marwa Helmy.

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