Thread by @MichaelDPress

Fascinated by this late 1850s ad for Dr. Henry Abbott's collection of Egyptian antiquities on Broadway. There's a story here, or several . . .
(Reproduced in the New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin, April 1920)

(First, my pointer to this ad was the catalogue for the 1995-96 exhibition "The American Discovery of Ancient Egypt" at the LA County Museum of Art)
amazon.com/American-Disco…

Henry Abbott was a British doctor living in Cairo for 2 decades (1830s-1850s) and, naturally, amassed a collection of over 1,000 antiquities.

(portrait of Abbott painted by Thomas Hicks c. 1861, after Abbott's 1859 death, in Brooklyn Museum of Art)
brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection…

After failing to sell his collection to the British Museum, Abbott brought it to New York and charged admission at the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway. It was one of the first large Egyptian collections in the U.S.

(excerpt from Jason Thompson, Wonderful Things v. 2)

Multiple editions of a catalogue were published, based on an earlier catalogue made c. 1843 in Cairo by English artist/Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi (the Younger)

Note the drawing of the statuette (an ushabti) on the cover of the catalogue and from the ad -- as the NYHS Quarterly Bulletin article points out, this actually wasn't taken from Abbott's collection!

But in America as in London Abbott failed to find a buyer. And apparently the collection wasn't a popular attraction:
"He [Abbott] has undoubtedly been disappointed. America cares as little for Egypt as Egypt thought of America." (Harper's, June 1854)

Thompson in Wonderful Things (volume 2) reproduces some interesting comments from the visitor book to the exhibition.
"Bring a scent bottle next time."

Decades later, Walt Whitman remembered frequenting the exhibition -- "sometimes I had it all to myself" -- & commented that "the whole enterprise was a fearful disappointment, in the pay & commercial part"

("Old Actors, Singers, Shows, &c, in NY", from Good-bye My Fancy, 1891)

The collection was purchased c. 1860 by the New York Historical Society, which lent it to the Brooklyn Museum in 1937. The museum ultimately purchased the collection in 1948.

One of the things that interests me about the Abbott collection and that original ad is the network of people involved.

The Egyptian Magician Holding a Seance with Members of the European Community in Cairo [including Abbott and Bonomi], J.F. Lewis, 1846
collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O146226/t…

From an anonymous introduction to the 1850s catalogue ("by a gentleman of this city", that is, New York), we read that experts like Gardner Wilkinson and Richard Lepsius have commented on the collection and its "genuineness".

We also get a glimpse of Henry Abbott, tomb raider

The ad gives more illustrious names who have attested to the collection's "value and importance": Émile Prisse d'Avennes, Gustav Seyffarth, "Stewart Poole" (Reginald Stuart-Poole, brother of Stanley Lane-Poole and nephew of Edward William Lane) . . .

There is also a reference to Harvard classicist C. C. (Cornelius Conway) Felton's recent paper at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, "Menander in New York" (referring to a wax tablet with a fragment of a comedy by Menander)

Note also: "Dr. Abbott, residing for many years as a physician in Egypt, had excellent opportunities for securing the most rare and precious antiquities, from the natives who discovered them"

The irony of seeing all of these scholarly attestations to the collection and its authenticity is that I'm primarily familiar with this collection for this statue of the Dynasty 18 scribe Djehuti
brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection…

I saw this statue when I reviewed the Pulitzer Arts Foundation's recent exhibition "Striking Power", organized w/the Brooklyn Museum
hyperallergic.com/511565/strikin…
Here's John D. Cooney on provenance in "A Reexamination of Some Egyptian Antiquities", Brooklyn Museum Bulletin 11, 1950

In that article, Cooney describes how the museum tested the statue in 1949 and determined that its head was actually a modern addition -- originally from another statue and recut to fit Djehuti!

This hints at the problematic ways in which Abbott formed his collection (here, from an antiquities dealer), and we see other hints in the references above . . .

We get more from Jerome Van Crowninsfield Smith ("Prof. J. V. C. Smith" in the ad), a physician -- and mayor of Boston -- who wrote an account of his early 1850s trip to Egypt.
He saw Abbott's collection in Cairo in December, 1850.

Smith spends over 10 pages quoting almost word for word the catalogue of Abbott's collection originally written by Bonomi (without credit here).
This is apparently the entry for the statue of Djehuti

Note the engraving of a mummified Apis bull -- and especially the description above of restrictions on exporting antiquities, and how Abbott tried to avoid having the bull mummy confiscated by the authorities in sending it to the U.S.

In other words, it appears that Abbott smuggled at least part of his collection out of the country, violating then-existing antiquities law.
(That law was enacted in 1835...but Smith's text is the only reference I've found to it in contemporary discussions of this collection.)

One more name from the 1850s ad draws my attention: "W. C. Prime, Esq." is William Cowper Prime, a lawyer and journalist who was popular at the time as a travel writer.

While Prime was popular at the time, to the extent he's remembered at all today it's as the butt of Mark Twain's jokes -- Twain mocked him for the constant melodrama in his travel writing.
(Here, letter to Daily Alta California, published March 1, 1868)
cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC1868…

When Twain turned his letters and notes into The Innocents Abroad (1869), he changed Prime's name to "Grimes".
He suggested it might be "in better taste" . . . but it ended up robbing Prime of his chance at being immortalized!