Published on the opening of a dazzling exhibition at the Barber Institute, this volume displays a treasure trove of ancient Egyptian artefacts from the rarely-seen Myers Collection. Sacred and Profane: Treasures of Ancient Egypt from the Myers Collection highlights over 80 objects, tracing two and a half millennia of life and death in ancient Egypt. The Myers Eton College collection of Egyptian antiquities is not only one of the finest assemblages of ancient Egyptian decorative art worldwide but also a window into the distant world of travellers in 19th-century Egypt and the Middle East. Educated at Eton College and Sandhurst, Major William Joseph Myers (1858-99) started collecting in Egypt in the 1880s. On Myers's untimely death in 1899 Eton College became the beneficiary of his collection, diaries and library. Sacred and Profane celebrates this extraordinary bequest discussing statuettes of mortals and gods, mummy masks, jewellery, pottery and papyri in a thematic way alongside Roman and Byzantine coins from the rich Barber Institute of Fine Arts collections.
The volume features five essays on travel, archaeology and collecting attitudes in the 19th and early 20th centuries, on travels to the beyond in ancient Egypt, on personal approaches to the sacred in Egyptian art, on papyri in Greco-Roman Egypt, and on the economy and art in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab conquest. Special focus is given to the stunning yet little known and under-researched Eton-Myers blue faience objects. It also contains a bibliography, a map, a timeline and an index.