Do Kemet para o Novo Mundo : o colecionismo de antiguidades egípcias no Brasil Imperial (1822-1889)

Abstract

This Master’s dissertation aims to analyze the formation process of two Egyptian collections during the Imperial Brazil period (1822-1889): the first collection, belonging to the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro National Museum and the second one, to the Mariano Procópio Museum, in State of Minas Gerais. The proposal of this investigation is to comprehend the narratives that motivated the acquisition of these millenarian sets and their connections with the movement, initiated by the European museums, of collecting Egyptian antiques. Beyond that, this project aims to approach the interpretations and perceptions of these objects made by intellectuals, travelers, the general public and the imperial elite. Also studied are the connections established between these pieces and the written past of the nation in the eighteen-hundreds, moment in which the erudite of the Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute and the National Museum observed the need of finding marks of the constructions of imaginary notions about the origins of the nation and its possible ties with the ancient so-called “civilized” societies, such as the Egyptian. Emphasized, still, in this investigation, is the fundamental role that the practices of private collecting had in the emergence of similar collections that would be donated to public institutions with the objective of helping in the instructions of Brazilian citizens. In this process, we will analyze the differences between three processes of perception surrounding the material culture of the ancient Egyptians that had projections on forming philosophies about the past in the nineteenth century as a way to know Egyptology Science and the Egyptomania and Egyptophilia cultures.