The Egyptian Collection at the
National Museum of Slovenia is one of the oldest collections created shortly
after the establishment of the Provincial Museum of Carniola in 1821. It was
created primarily through the donations of wealthy patriots: merchants,
travellers, missionaries, high state officials and diplomats. In 1846, Knight
Anton von Laurin, the Austrian Consul General in Egypt, donated the Egyptian
mummy in the painted wooden anthropomorphic coffin to what was then the
Provincial Museum in Ljubljana, whereas most of the small sculptures were left
to the museum in 1912 by Jožef Svegel in his bequest.
The hieroglyphs were already
translated in 1866 by Albert Kosmač, the first Slovenian Orientalist, from
which it is evident that the mummified A-keswy-te was a priest in the Temple of
Amun in Karnak and had lived in the turbulent late period of the 25th Dynasty (cca. 680 BC). The coffin and mummy were carefully conserved and
restored in 2000–2002. A number of studies were also performed.
The coffin and mummy are now
presented in a space that resembles a tomb, on the ground floor corridor of the
museum building, together with the findings of mostly non-destructive
investigations.
Today, this remains the only Ancient
Egyptian anthropomorphic coffin with a human mummy in Slovenia.