An Account of the Description of the Tinne-Heuglin Collections Notes Catalogue

Summary

For the description of the provenance of each item or object in the catalogue, the following research has been made.

With the brief description Heuglin himself provided in 1863, 1865 and 1869, he occasionally indicated the provenance of his collection. Information could be retrieved regarding the ethnic or cultural group concerned. In the catalogue, Heuglin's ‘attributions’ as well as those made by other authors (e.g. Schweinfurth) have been mentioned as points of reference (Reference Literature). In particular, Schweinfurth's attributions (1874, 1875) and sometimes those by Ratzel (1888-89) were crucial in providing additional information regarding the provenance of the items.

Concerning the nineteenth-century Sudanese heritage which entered European museums in that era in some cases a more or less extensive survey has been published in the previous century.

In 1923-24, a description was published by E.S. Thomas on behalf of the Société Royale de Géographie d’Égypte on the collections of the Museum of the Royal Society in Cairo (founded in 1875 by Isma’il Pasha). The museum closed its doors in the second quarter of the twentieth century. The provenance of some objects out of the Tinne-Heuglin collections could be identified by tracing down similar items in the 1923-24 catalogue.

While drawing up an identification of the provenance of similar objects in the Tinne-Heuglin collections, I was grateful to be able to consult research conducted in Italy. This included Ezio Bassani's 1979 publication concerning the Piaggia collection in Florence, and Enrico Castelli's 1984 book concerning the other parts of Piaggia's collection and that of Antinori in Perugia and Venice. Furthermore, the Pitt Rivers Museum published an important study on its Petherick collection, providing ample descriptions and identifications on the internet (Sparks, 2005, http://southernsudan. prm.ox.ac.uk).