Major departmental research topics and projects centre around the following periods of ancient Egyptian history: the Middle Kingdom, the Third Intermediate and Late Periods, as well as Graeco-Roman Egypt.

Some of the research done by the staff is connected to the publication of catalogues of groups of artefacts. The Twenty-First Dynasty coffins have been studied by Éva Liptay (publication of the catalogue is in progress). István Nagy is completing work on the Late Period shabtis, Péter Gaboda on the scarabs of the collection, while research has been commenced on the finds from the Ptolemaic cemetery of Gamhud by Katalin Kóthay and on the fertility figurines of the collection by Zoltán Horváth. The curatorial staff is helped by other scholars in the publication of the collection’s material: the amulets are being prepared for publication by Hedvig Győry (Department of Education, Museum of Fine Arts), the ceramics by Gábor Schreiber (Department of Egyptology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest), and the Near Eastern material by Zoltán Niederreiter (Department of Assyriology and Hebrew, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest).

The results of studies of individual objects and of research undertaken in the history of collecting (Péter Gaboda) are published in separate articles.

The Department and its staff are also engaged in fieldwork in Egypt and the Near East. In 2008, the Department has commenced an archaeological survey project at the Middle Kingdom site, El-Lahun, while Éva Galambos is member of the Syro-Hungarian Archaeological Mission working at Al-Marqab Citadel.

The Department maintains contacts and collaborative relationships with University institutes/departments. Some of the staff are involved in academic teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels, and the Department also offers opportunity for students in Egyptology and Museology to complete their museum experience courses at the Department.

Current research projects

El-Lahun Survey Project
The El-Lahun Survey Project is funded by the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest and the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA)

Staff: Zoltán Horváth (director), Máté Petrik
Collaborators: Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt;
Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME);
Szent István University, Department of Public Utility and Civil Engineering;
Research Institute for Visualization, Architecture and Archaeology, Budapest;
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London.

The El-Lahun Survey Project is a multidisciplinary geoarchaeological fieldwork project applying geodesic, GIS, archaeological and remote sensing methods to study the architectural landscape of the ancient site neighbouring the modern village of el-Lahun, Fayum. The primary aim of the project is to assess and record the current state of the site as a whole, and through the utilization of data from both former and recent archaeological fieldworks to achieve a deeper understanding of the architectural landscape during different periods. Furthermore, the project is committed to carrying out a risk analysis for the archaeological remains open to deterioration, and to preparing site management plans to promote their longer-term preservation.

Report on season 2008.
For further information, visit the project’s blog.

Gamhud Project
Staff: Katalin Kóthay, Éva Galambos, Zoltán Martinovics

The scope of the project is the material analysis, cleaning, restoration, research and full publication of the collection’s coffins originating from the Ptolemaic cemetery of Gamhud excavated by an Austro-Hungarian team sponsored by Hungarian merchant Fülöp Back and led by Polish Egyptologist Tadeusz Smoleński in 1907. In addition to making the mostly still unpublished material available both to the scholarly community and to the public, the research is aimed at putting the Gamhud finds into a larger socio-cultural framework: a prosopographical study is carried out in order to establish familial relationships between the coffin owners, whose social composition is also investigated, while the comparative study of the material with other similar artefacts from contemporaneous sites will allow to place a local workshop, together with its craftsmen and customers, within the broader context of coffin-making and funerary behaviour during the Ptolemaic Period.