Egyptological Museum Search

The Egyptological museum search is a PHP tool aimed to facilitate locating the descriptions and images of ancient Egyptian objects in online catalogues of major museums. Online catalogues (ranging from selections of highlights to complete digital inventories) are now offered by almost all major museums holding ancient Egyptian items and have become indispensable in research work. Yet the variety of web interfaces and of search rules may overstrain any person performing many searches in different online catalogues.

Egyptological museum search was made to provide a single search point for finding objects by their inventory numbers in major collections of Egyptian antiquities that have online catalogues. It tries to convert user input into search queries recognised by museums’ websites. (Thus, for example, stela Geneva D 50 is searched as “D 0050,” statue Vienna ÄS 5046 is searched as “AE_INV_5046,” and coffin Turin Suppl. 5217 is searched as “S. 05217.”) The following online catalogues are supported:

Short name	Full name
Berkeley	Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
Bibliotheca Alexandrina	Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum
BM	British Museum
Bologna	The Archaeological Civic Museum of Bologna
Bolton	Bolton Museum
Boston	Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Brooklyn	Brooklyn Museum
Bruxelles	Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels
Budapest	Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Cleveland	The Cleveland Museum of Art
Durham	Oriental Museum, Durham University
Fitzwilliam	The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
Genève	The Museum of Art and History of the City of Geneva
Glasgow Hunterian	Hunterian Museum Archaeology & Ethnography Collections, Glasgow
Leiden	National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (Egyptological museum search can search by both inventory and Leemans numbers)
Liverpool WM	World Museum, National Museums Liverpool
Los Angeles County Museum	Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Louvre	The Louvre, Paris
Manchester	The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester
MMA	The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Philadelphia	The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia
Stockholm	Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm
Swansea	The Egypt Centre Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Swansea University
Torino	Egyptian Museum, Turin
UC	The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London
Walters	The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Washington	National Museum of Natural History, The Smithsonian, Washington
Wien	The Museum of Art History, Vienna

The tool can be used in two ways. First, one may use the online search interface. One may select the museum, enter the searched inventory number in the box, and press “Search.” Then the browser is redirected either to the object desription in the online museum catalogue or to a search results page on the museum website. Second, one may send HTTP GET queries to the Egyptological museum search in order to connect it to a one’s own online or offline application by creating query URLs of the following form:

http://static.egyptology.ru/varia/mus.php?museum=(Museum)&no=(Inventory number) 

In order to provide compatibility with other databases, which may use different designations of the museums, Egyptological museum search supports a number of aliases. Examples of query URLs:

http://static.egyptology.ru/varia/mus.php?museum=Leyden&no=D 127

http://static.egyptology.ru/varia/mus.php?museum=New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art&no=56.136

http://static.egyptology.ru/varia/mus.php?museum=Turin&no=Suppl. 1287