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Being a brief history and loose inventory of various items of interest in the Turin Egyptian Museum Collections, from a Mythos Perspective.
| In 1536 Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy, moved the capital of his kingdom from Chambery to Turin. In 1537, during the works on the Turin Citadel, a statue basement was uncovered, with a dedication to Egyptian Goddess Isis. |
The
first nucleus of the Turin collection dates back
to the year 1753, when botanist Vitaliano Donati first brought in Italy the
statues (300 pieces) recoveder from Karnak and Coptos.
In 1824, King Carlo
Felice acquired
the material from the Drovetti collection (3007 pieces), that the Freench
General Consul,
Bernardino Drovetti, had built during his stay in Egypt.
In the same year,
Jean Francois Champollion used the huge Turin collection of papyruses to
test his breakthroughs in deciphering the hyerogliphic writing.
The time
Champollion spent in Turin studying the texts is also at the origin of a
legend about the mysterious disappearence of the "Papiro Regio", that was
only later found and of which some portions are still unavailable. In 1950
a parapsichologist was contacted to pinpoint them, to no avail.
Incidentally,
the budding collection in Turin forced other institutions
around the world to improve their Egyptian wings.
In 1833 the collection of Piedmontese Giuseppe Sossio (over 1200 pieces) was added to the Egyptian Museum.
Finally, the collection was complemented and completed by the finds of Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli, during his escavation campaigns between 1900 and 1920.
Through all these years, the Egyptian collection has always been in Turin, in the building projected for the purpose of housing it, in Via Accademia delle Scienze 6. Only during the Second World War was some of the material moved to the town of Aglié.
B o o k s
Curiously, none of the following books, with the only exception of the List of Kings. is mentioned in the otherwhise incredibly detailed "The Mummy" by E.A. Wallis-Budge, in his secon edition (1925). We can therefore imagine that the riches of the Turin collection were unknown or scarcely frequented by researchers.
Note - reading any Egyptian text from the Museo Egizio grants checks in Archaeology, History, Occult plus the obvious check for "Reading Ancient Egypian" (or equivalents)
| Title | Support | Copies available | Reading data | Notes |
| LIBRO DI THOTH (The Book of Thoth) | Papyrus | 7 | -1d3/-1d6 sanity; +5 Cthulhu Mythos; x5 spell; 40 weeks. | |
| LIBRO DI ISIDE (The Book of Isis) | Papyrus | 2 | -1d4/-2d4 sanity; +8 Cthulhu Mythos; spell x2; 30 weeks. | |
| LIBRO DEI MORTI (The Book of Dead) | Papyrus | 3 | -1d6/2d6 sanity; +8 Cthulhu Mythos; spell x5; 50 weeks Grants another Occult Check. | 1 |
| DECRETI ORACOLARI AMULETICI (Oracular Amulet Decrees) | Papyrus | 3 | 0/-1d2 sanity; +2 Cthulhu Mythos; no spells; 15 weeks | |
| LA LISTA DEI RE (The List of Kings) | Papyrus | 1 | No Mythos value, no SAN loss | 2 |
| 1 | The Egyptian Museum owns three different versions
of the Book of
Dead . most ancient copy known . integral illustrated version - exposed to the public . personal copy of the First Royal Architect Kha, found by Schiaparelli in 1906 - exposed to the public In more than one occasion the direction of the Museum was asked to remove the two copies of the book on display and stock them in a deep and dark basement, always for strictly esotheric reasons (as the papyrus emanates 'negative energy'). At the time of writing, none of these requests appears to have been put into practice. Extended informations about the Book of Dead can be found in Chaosium's "Cairo Guidebook", and the reader is invited to look up this book for further reference. |
| 2 | Contains incomplete data about the Pharaos from the Vth to the VIIIth Dinasty. |
O t h e r
I t e m s
Quite afew of the objects in the Turin Museum (the second in the world after the Cairo Museum) have through the years gathered an aura of legend that often surfaces in strange tales.
From the legendary origins of Turin as a settlement sacred to Isis, to the stories of ghosts roaming the halls of the Museum, the legends have been an integral part of the collections, and have sometimes made the news, for the delight of the paranormal enthusiasts and the amusement of the skeptics.
Here are some of the most noteworthy pieces, together with some of their history and legend.
| Item | Notes |
| Statue of Tutankhamon as a young boy, by the side of the god Amon | According to tradition, the statue is cursed an a series of accidents and damages have followed the statue through its various display positions in the museum |
| Statue of the god Seth, exposed in the seventh room, representing the god in animal form. | Seth is an evil deity. The statue in question is, among the many present in the museum, the one reputedly more charged with negative energy. |
| The Eye of Kha | A terracotta vase with the classical image of an Egyptian eye. In
Egyptian language, Kha means "soul", and the eye is traditionally "the mirror
of the soul". The contents of the vase are unknown. |
| Statue of the Bull Api | Generally considered by occultists as a positive energy pole in Turin), and somehow connected with the postulated Egyptian origin of the town (that has a Bull as symbol). |
"Assemblea dei Re" (Kings Assembly) a term originally indicating a collection of statues representing all the kings of the New Kingdom.
Temple of Tuthmosi III
Sarcophagi, mummies and books of the dead originally belonging to the Drovetti collection.
A painting on canvas dated at about 3500 b.C. (found in 1931)
Funerary paraphernalia from the "Tomba di Ignoti" (Tomb of Unknown) from the Old Kingdom
Tomb of Kha e di Mirit, found intact by Schiaparelli and transfered in toto in the museum
Papirus collection room, originally collected by Drovetti and later used by Champollion during his studies for the decoding of the gerogliphics.
Mensa Isiaca (The Table of Isis)
Tomba Dipinta (The Painted Tomb) usually closed to the public.
[this document is (C) by Davide Mana, 1998. Send your
comments to
docotr.dee@libero.it]
