The Egyptological museum search is a PHP tool aimed to facilitate locating the descriptions and images of ancient Egyptian objects in online catalogues of major museums.
Online catalogues (ranging from selections of highlights to complete digital inventories) are now offered by almost all major museums holding ancient Egyptian items and have become indispensable in research work.
Yet the variety of web interfaces and of search rules may overstrain any person performing many searches in different online catalogues.
Egyptological museum search was made to provide a single search point for finding objects by their inventory numbers in major collections of Egyptian antiquities that have online catalogues.
It tries to convert user input into search queries recognised by museums’ websites. (Thus on museum websites, stela Geneva D 50 should be searched as “D 0050,” statue Vienna ÄS 5046 as “AE_INV_5046,” and coffin Turin Suppl. 5217 as “S. 05217.” Egyptological museum search aims to allow searching for inventory numbers in the form, in which they are cited in scholarly literature.) The following online catalogues are supported:
| Short name | Full name | Free license |
| Aberdeen | University Museums, The University of Aberdeen | — |
| Allard Pierson | Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam | — |
| Ashmolean | Ashmolean Museum, Oxford | free for non-commercial educational purposes |
| Berkeley | Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley | — |
| Berlin | The Berlin Egyptian Museum | CC BY-NC-SA |
| Bibliotheca Alexandrina | Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum | — |
| BM | British Museum | CC BY-NC-SA |
| Bologna | The Archaeological Civic Museum of Bologna | — |
| Bolton | Bolton Museum | — |
| Boston | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | — |
| Bristol | Bristol Museum & Art Gallery | — |
| Brooklyn | Brooklyn Museum | CC BY (low-resolution images) |
| Bruxelles | Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels | — |
| Budapest | Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest | — |
| Chicago ISAC | Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum, The University of Chicago | — |
| Cleveland | The Cleveland Museum of Art | CC 0 |
| Durham | Oriental Museum, Durham University | — |
| Edinburgh | National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh | — |
| Field Museum | Field Museum, Chicago | — |
| Fitzwilliam | The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge | CC BY-NC-ND (low-resolution images) |
| Genève | The Museum of Art and History of the City of Geneva | royalty-free use acknowledging the copyright |
| Glasgow Burrell | The Burrell Collection, Glasgow | — |
| Glasgow Hunterian | Hunterian Museum Archaeology & Ethnography Collections, Glasgow | — |
| Glasgow Kelvingrove | Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow | — |
| Jerusalem | Israel Museum, Jerusalem | — |
| København | National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen | — |
| Leiden | National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (Egyptological museum search can search by both inventory and Leemans numbers) | CC BY |
| Liverpool WM | World Museum, National Museums Liverpool | — |
| Los Angeles County Museum | Los Angeles County Museum of Art | — |
| Louvre | The Louvre, Paris | — |
| Lyon | Museum of Fine Arts, Lyon | — |
| Madrid | National Archaeological Museum, Madrid | — |
| Manchester | The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester | — |
| MMA | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | CC 0 |
| Moscow | The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow | — |
| München | The State Museum of Egyptian Art, Munich | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
| Ny Carlsberg | Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen | — |
| Philadelphia | The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia | — |
| San Jose | The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, San Jose | — |
| Stockholm | Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm | — |
| Swansea | The Egypt Centre Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Swansea University | — |
| Sydney | Nicholson Museum, The University of Sydney | — |
| Torino | Egyptian Museum, Turin | CC BY |
| Toronto | Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto | — |
| UC | The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London | CC BY-NC-SA (low-resolution images) |
| Walters | The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore | CC 0 |
| Warszawa | The National Museum in Warsaw | CC 0 |
| Washington | National Museum of Natural History, The Smithsonian, Washington | — |
| Wien | The Museum of Art History, Vienna | CC BY-NC-SA |
The tool can be used in two ways. First, one may use the online search interface. One may select the museum, enter the searched inventory number in the box, and press “Search.” Then the browser is redirected either to the object desription in the online museum catalogue or to a search results page on the museum website.
Second, one may send HTTP GET queries to the Egyptological museum search in order to connect it to a one’s own online or offline application by creating query URLs of the following form:
http://static.egyptology.ru/varia/mus.php?museum=(Museum)&no=(Inventory number)
In order to provide compatibility with other databases, which may use different designations of the museums, Egyptological museum search supports a number of aliases. Examples of query URLs:
http://static.egyptology.ru/varia/mus.php?museum=Leyden&no=D 127
http://static.egyptology.ru/varia/mus.php?museum=New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art&no=56.136
http://static.egyptology.ru/varia/mus.php?museum=Turin&no=Cat. 1374
In case you wish to adapt Egyptological museum search for the needs of a different discipline, you may make use of its source code published on Github.
Egyptological museum search | Impressum