Dr. Ilona Regulski

Then they went to the Society of Antiquaries for a very short moment, for a few months only, before they came to

the British Museum.

And the British Museum was a small place at the time.

It was only basically consisted of the Montague House, which was too small to host all these objects.

And so the arrival of these objects also encouraged the museum to expand and to build extra galleries and to then replace the Montague House with the building that you see nowadays.

No worries.

Well, they were also objects that were discovered.

Basically, as I mentioned, they were collected by the French.

A lot of them were heavy objects, very heavy objects, because they were also meant to keep the boat still at sea.

So we have two, for example, we have two huge sarcophagi, stone sarcophagi, and one of them is in the exhibition.

Both of them are really interesting in terms of the history of early engagement with Hieroglyphs, because the one that is in the exhibition was considered to be the enchanted basement or enchanted basement.

The Enchanted Basin, because if you touch the water within it, you could be cured of love sickness.

This was a legend that developed around this particular sarcophagus.

The other one that is not in the exhibition was long believed to be the tomb of Alexander.

Yes.

So I decided to use the other one in the exhibition because I thought the stories that developed around the other one as less, less well known.

The fact that the other one was considered the tomb of Alexandria is better known.

So I focus on the other one.

Yes, it's spectacular to suddenly have so many large objects arriving at the museum and in England.

As everywhere in Europe and in the rest of the world, there weren't that many big objects.