Mesa'eed, one of the sites excavated by George Reisner and his associates. Mohammedani Ibrahim Ibrahim (expedition photographer), Mesaid, Cemetery from West, April 1, 1913, Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition photograph A886_NS
The Peabody Museum curates a collection of human skeletal remains from the Nile Valley in Egypt, most of which are from the joint Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts Boston expeditions led by George Reisner in the early 20th century. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA) holds the documentation for these expeditions, as well as the majority of the artifacts, while most of the human skeletal remains, dating from the Predynastic to the Ptolemaic period, are stewarded at the Peabody.
Last year, before museums closed due to the pandemic, we spent a few days at the MFA looking through the records for the expedition, both for our own documentation and so in the future we will be able to tell researchers at the Peabody more about the expedition records that are available at the MFA to help them decide if they want to visit. Many thanks to the staff at the MFA who helped us!
The expedition documentation at the MFA includes diaries written by Reisner and his associates, packing lists, individual tomb cards with illustrations and notes, and photographs of the sites and tombs. Over the past few months we have been cross-referencing the numbers in the diaries, tomb cards, and images with Peabody Museum records to improve documentation. We are now working to input this information into our database so that it’s easily accessible in the future.
Authors: Loring Burgess, Associate Osteologist, and Kora Welsh, Collections Assistant