The Vyne Ramesses: 'Egyptian Monstrosities' in British country house collections

One of the strangest curiosities of The Vyne in Hampshire (Fig. 1) was once a fragmentary Egyptian statue of the Pharaoh Ramesses IV (twentieth Dynasty, c. 1161-1155 BC) (Figs. 3-4). Sadly, in 1958, following the death of Sir Charles Chute, 1st Baronet (1879-1956), it was expelled from the house. Carved out of dark grey-green schist, the sculpture depicts a kneeling figure of a man wearing the traditional nemes head-dress. The entire front part of the figure, including the hands and knees, has sheared off, but otherwise it is in excellent condition and is a rare example of royal sculpture of the later Twentieth Dynasty. (1) While it might seem unusual to encounter such an important, and relatively large-scale piece of ancient Egyptian sculpture in an English country house, more surprising is the fact that 'The Vyne Ramesses' is recorded as having been in the house since the mid-eighteenth century, appearing in the 1754 Inventory as the 'Egyptian figure'. (2) The Chutes evidently knew exactly what it was, with the result that it was prominently displayed and valued, being first shown in the Staircase Hall, and then in the Stone Gallery. (3) Later, it was moved upstairs to the Oak Gallery, where it can be dimly discerned in a photograph of c. 1880 (Fig. 5). (4) Here it was displayed with the best furniture in the house, alongside sculptural treasures acquired by Wiggett Chute, who inherited The Vyne in 1827, including marble busts of Roman emperors, said to have belonged to the infamous Manuel de Godoy, known as the 'Prince of Peace'. (5) It was even provided with a specially adapted plinth to match the others in the room.

The circumstances of the acquisition of 'the Egyptian Statue' are obscure, but it must have arrived in the house during the time of Anthony Chute (1691-1754), on whose death the 1754 Inventory was taken. Anthony made many improvements at The Vyne and bought some important pieces of furniture, but he is not otherwise known to have been a collector of antiquities. (6) It is more probable that it was among the works of art acquired in Italy by his younger brother, John (1701-76), a friend of Horace Walpole (1717-97), who lived abroad, mainly in Italy, between 1738 and 1746 (Fig. 2). (7) After his return, as heir apparent, John Chute acted as an artistic adviser to his brother. In 1753, he was urging him to buy eleven plaster busts in London 'as good as any we could have got by sending them on purpose from Italy', (8) and he may well have recommended other acquisitions. (9) No antiquities are recorded as being sent, but the Roman inscriptions set into the walls of the Stone Gallery were a gift to John from Horace Walpole's elder brother, Edward (1706-84), in about 1760. (10) It is regrettable, therefore, that, after more then two hundred years, the 'Egyptian figure' was allowed to leave The Vyne, at least in part because its venerable association with the house was not fully appreciated at the time. From the surviving correspondence, it appears that it was not thought a happy complement to the other fittings and furnishings of the house. Sir Charles Chute's executors were, therefore, encouraged to sell it to the British Museum in 1958, as part of a settlement following the bequest, two years previously, of the house and its contents to the National Trust. (11) The statue remains in the collections of the British Museum, scarcely recognisable, its lower parts having been comprehensively 'restored' in plaster--of Paris in about 1959. (12) However, at least the statue remains in a public collection in this country and the Trust has recently obtained a remarkably convincing cast of it--minus the restorations--so as to return, in some form, Ramesses to his old home (Fig. 6). (13)

Egyptian antiquities are not unknown in British country houses, but the great majority of the mummies, statues and smaller objects which remain in houses today are nineteenth-century imports, dating from an era when the phenomenon of the country-house curiosity museum was at its height, and the Victorian Grand Tour encompassed Egypt as well as France and Italy. Some of these collections were large and important, like the group of objects collected between 1815 and 1819 by William Bankes (d. 1855) at Kingston Lacy, Dorset, but most Egyptian objects were isolated curios. (14) Nor were they always accorded the respect their antiquity might have been expected to inspire: at Penrhyn Castle in Gwynedd, for example, a fine basalt statue of Osiris served as a useful doorstop in the Dining Room, (15) while at Kingston Lacy the granite sarcophagus of Amenope was found abandoned in a garden rockery. (16) But it is the presence of Egyptian objects, particularly large-scale sculpture and mummies, in country house collections in Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which concerns us here. The following article attempts to put 'The Vyne Ramesses' back in its country-house context.

Almost all the early Egyptian relics in England were brought back by travellers. George Sandys (1578-1644) (17) who was in Egypt in 1610, described how 'mummes' could 'be bought for dollars apeece at the Citie'. He failed to buy one, but speaks of 'little models of stone or metall; some of the shape of men ... with the heads of sheepe, haulkes, dogs, &c. others of cats, beetles monkies and such like. Of these I brought away divers with me. (18) Sandys, the son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, shared the same name as the family who had owned The Vyne since the early fourteenth century, and who sold it to the Chutes in 1653. It is tempting to associate 'The Vyne Ramesses' with this early visitor to Egypt, particularly since we know that Sandys gave some of the little bronzes he collected to John Tradescant's Museum at Lambeth. (19) However, Sandys' family came from Hawkshead in Lancashire, and any connexion with their Hampshire namesakes at The Vyne seems distant. (20) More significant is the fact there is no evidence to suggest that George Sandys did bestow this heavy and distinctive sculpture upon The Vyne, where its presence is unlikely to have gone unremarked for long. (21) Then as now, Egyptian artefacts were sufficiently unusual as to be valuable gifts. Charles I's queen, Henrietta Maria (1609-69) gave a mummy, esteemed 'a great raritie', to Thomas Bushell (1594-1674) in 1635, and he proudly displayed it in the grotto he created at Enstone, near Woodstock in Oxfordshire. (22) John Aubrey saw it many years later, but noted that 'the dampness of the place has spoiled it with mouldinesse'. (23)

By far the most important early country house collection of Egyptian sculptures was that assembled by Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke (1656-1733), at Wilton House, Wiltshire between 1690 and 1730, where it formed but part of a much greater collection of Greek and Roman antiquities. Pembroke's Greco-Roman sculpture was mainly bought in Italy, but in the early 1700s he also acquired items in Paris from the famous collection of Cardinal Mazarin. These included Egyptian pieces, amongst them 'Two Statues in black Marble, out of the ruins of the Palace in Egypt, in which the Viceroys of Persia lived many years after Cambyses returned to Persia, from the conquest of Egypt', set in niches outside the house. (24) Inside, the 'White Marble Table Room' contained a statue of Isis with 'Osiris, her husband, in a Coffin open ... with a great Multitude of Hieroglyphicks quite round the bottom and behind the statue'. (25) Elsewhere in the house were displayed, alongside many Roman pieces, 'Cleopatra with Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar, sucking on her lap', and a 'Sesostris, the head is of red Egyptian Granite; the bust part is of the White Egyptian Granite; the head is adorned with a tiara, after the Egyptian form, and has a peculiar liveliness; it was found amongst the pyramids'. (26)

But the Egyptian sculptures at Wilton were unusual, and most contemporary collectors of Greco-Roman marbles would have considered such works barbarous and unpleasing. John Woodward, in his 'Of the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians', which was written at some time before his death in 1728, summed up the prevailing view of Egyptian sculpture: 'They really aimed at something that was hideous, deformed and monstrous; a beast, or a fowl, with the head or face of a man; the head of a dog, or some other brute, of an hawk, or the like, upon a human figure ... They seem to have affected what was ugly and irregular, as much as the Greeks, the Romans, and others, who had something of spirit and genteel fancy, did what was handsome, well-proportioned, beautiful, and like nature'. (27) Mummies were even more revolting: Woodward warned 'I myself saw here a mummy, brought formerly out of Egypt, that, after it had been for some time in our more humid air, began to corrupt and grow mouldy, emitted a foetid and cadaverous scent, and in conclusion putrified and fell to pieces.' (28)

Despite these dangers, an Egyptian mummy became 'the highest form of currency amongst collectors' of curiosities--if not among aesthetes. (29) One of the most famous was that in the possession of Colonel William Lethieullier, who obtained it in Egypt in 1721. It is known from an engraving by George Vertue, (30) and from others by Alexander Gordon (?1692-?1754), the author of a two-part treatise, An Essay towards explaining the Hieroglyphical Figures on the Coffin of the Ancient Mummy belonging to Capt. William Lethieullier ... (London, 1737). He annexed to this work engravings of other Egyptian works of art owned by English collectors--mummy cases, ushabti, scarabs, statuettes and other antiquities--which provides an interesting checklist of who owned what at this time. They include a mummy that had been given to Oxford University in 1683, and another that had been sent from Egypt by Dr. Richard Pococke (1704-65) (31) to the famous Museum of Dr. Richard Mead, the Royal Physician. Sir Edward Coke, Lord Foley and Smart Lethieullier all owned large Egyptian sculptures.

Another owner of Egyptian antiquities listed in Gordon's treatise was Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Most of his pieces were small bronzes, scarabs, and ushabti, but he also acquired, with 'the Museum of Mr. J. Kemp' near Hay Market, two complete 'ancient mummies in their Wooden Coffins, the heads of a Man and a Woman carved on the Outside of the Coffins'. (32) From 1742, at least one of these was kept at Sloane's country house in Chelsea, where Per Kalm saw it in 1748. (33) On Sloane's death in 1753, some one hundred and sixty Egyptian antiquities--the majority bought from earlier collections--came with his bequest to found the British Museum. (34)

Most of the owners of Egyptian material appear to have been inquisitive antiquaries rather than aristocratic virtuosi seeking works of art for their country houses. An exception was Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Bt., of West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire, who travelled extensively in Egypt and Asia Minor in the late 1730s, penetrating as far as the ancient cities of Baalbec and Palmyra. (35) He is said to have brought back a mummy that, in an inventory made after his death in 1781, is recorded as being displayed on a 'gilt bracket' in the Library at West Wycombe. (36) Another aristocratic traveller was Dashwood's friend, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who journeyed to Egypt in 1739, in the company of Dr. Charles Perry. He must have collected there the 'many small egyptian idols' seen by Horace Walpole when he visited his seat, Hinchingbrooke in Huntingdonshire, in 1763. (37) In 1741, Sandwich was a founder member of an 'Egyptian Society', which in 1742 staged the unwrapping of a mummy belonging to the 2nd Duke of Richmond. (38) The Duke owned two mummies, probably brought back from Egypt by Dr. Pococke in 1738, which he kept, together with other antiquities, in the Gallery of his house in Whitehall. (39) After the Richmond House fire in 1791, one found its way into the possession of Sir John Soane, while the other was sent to Goodwood, where it is recorded in the Old Dining Room in 1822:

In a corner of the room stands in a glass case an Egyptian Mummy, in a high state of preservation, the Body is five feet high, and is that of a female, the colours of the hieroglyphicks with which it is adorned, are quite vivid and perfect; it was sent to England from Egypt, as a present to the third Duke of Richmond, in a stone case or coffin, the lid, on which the Donor had placed an inscription, being unfortunately broken or lost, it is uncertain from whence the Body was taken, or what rank it is supposed once to have held in Society. (40)

By the end of the century it was displayed, rather unappetisingly considering it had no lid, in the State Dining Room (with its astonishing Neo-Egyptian decor), but it was ejected in 1906 by the 8th Duchess and given to Brighton Museum. (41)

In view of the fact that Egyptian antiquities were clearly the exception rather than the rule in British country house collections in the 1750s, it remains to be established under what circumstances John Chute acquired his 'Egyptian monstrosity'? We can be sure that Chute, 'distinguished by his fan and eyeglass' and 'enfeebled by a melancholy diet of milk and turnips which he adopted to avert the dreadful attacks of gout to which he was a lifelong victim', did not visit Egypt himself. (42) It might, however, be worth speculating how he may have been persuaded to acquire it during his seven-year sojourn in Italy. John Chute arrived in Italy from France in 1740 and by October he had got as far as Siena. (43) He settled in Florence in August 1741 and stayed there four years with his cousin, Francis Whithed (1719-51). They were guests of Sir Horace Mann (1701-86), remarking that other English travellers were 'amazed what can keep us so long here, they think it the dullest place.' (44) It was only the death of his other brother Francis in 1745 that made them proceed on to Rome, where Mann said 'they propose to stay most part of the summer, and then hasten to England.' (45) Mann gave them a letter of introduction to Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who 'introduced them to everybody'. (46) I suspect that it was through Albani that Chute acquired his Egyptian figure, for the Cardinal was not only one of the greatest collectors of Greco-Roman sculpture of his day, but also a pioneer connoisseur of Egyptian works of art. We know that Chute was buying in Rome that summer: on the recommendation of Albani, he purchased--on behalf of his friend Horace Walpole--a magnificent marble eagle, recently unearthed in the Boccapadugli gardens. (47) He also made more modest acquisitions on his own account, presumably on the strength of, as he expressed it, 'being one horrid step nearer to a mouldering estate'. (48) If he did acquire it in Rome, Chute's statue of Ramesses was by far his most ambitious purchase there on his own account.

In all, Cardinal Albani formed three collections of antiquities, each containing substantial numbers of Egyptian sculptures. The first he sold to Augustus the Strong of Poland in 1728; the second was bought by Clement XII for the Vatican in 1734; and the third collection, which had the greatest number of Egyptian works, was in the process of being assembled at the very time of Chute's visit in 1745-46. (49) Albani was well known not only as a collector but also as a vendor, selling antiquities directly to foreign visitors (particularly the English with whom he had a particular rapport), as well as using his influence to annul export restrictions. Moreover, contemporaries complained that 'Cardinal Albani is the restorer-in-chief of Antiquity. The most mutilated, disfigured, incurable pieces are, through him, given back the flower of youth'. (50)

Among Albani's chief sources of antiquities were the excavations then taking place on the site of the Villa of the Emperor Hadrian (76-138 AD) at Tivoli, some fifteen miles outside Rome. It was from there that the Cardinal obtained a famous full-length statue of Antinous, and an even more celebrated bas-relief of Hadrian's favourite (who had drowned in the Nile) followed in 1735. Hadrian had collected real Egyptian statuary, itself ancient in his day, and quantities of Egyptian antiquities were unearthed at the Villa site, most of which were snapped up by the Cardinal. (51) It is possible that 'The Vyne Ramesses' came from the excavations at Tivoli, but, being damaged, was deemed of insufficient quality for the Cardinal and was passed on, at a price, to Chute. Albani's own collection of heavily restored Egyptian antiquities was eventually displayed in a suite of Egyptian-style rooms, the 'Bath Apartment', at the Villa Albani, his magnificent house on the Via Salaria, which was completed in 1763 (Fig. 7). (52) Although the ensemble cannot have been seen by Chute, he probably knew many of the pieces that were eventually displayed there. Moreover, Egyptian statuary found elsewhere in Rome could already be seen in the Capitoline Palace, the Barberini Palace (whence Walpole obtained a basalt head of Serapis) and the Villa Borghese. (53) But Albani's collection was the most important, and the Cardinal's new villa was to become a place of pilgrimage for all cultivated visitors to Rome, exerting a profound influence on the development of the Egyptian Revival.

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

John Chute returned to England in 1746, and began to advise his brother Anthony on matters of taste and household decoration. Relations between the two were not always good, but in 1752 a spectacular casket, mounted in ormolu with pietra dura plaques, is first recorded at The Vyne. It had doubtless been ordered by John Chute during his sojourn in Florence in 1741-45, although it was Anthony who, in May 1752, paid the cabinetmaker William Vile for repairing the casket. He may also have supplied its elaborate giltwood stand and glass shade at the same time. Anthony also placed an extensive order for furnishings with Vile and Cobb, including beds, seat furniture, curtains, and a series of giltwood-framed mirrors. The 'Egyptian statue' probably arrived at The Vyne in 1751 or 1752--it is in the Inventory that was made on Anthony Chute's death in 1754 that it makes its first appearance. Given that it took over six years for the pietra dura cabinet to arrive at The Vyne, antiquities acquired in Rome in 1745-46 might well take a similar length of time to reach England. Assuming that John Chute did indeed acquire the Egyptian statue, we know nothing of the role it played, if any, in the picturesque improvements he made to the house in subsequent years. It certainly performed no part in the embellishment of his principal projects--the suite of rooms hung with crimson Genoese brocatelle in 1761-62, the Gothic Chapel with trompe l'oeil decorations of 1768-72, the 'Grecian theatric staircase', begun in 1770, or the ancestral mausoleum or 'Tomb Chamber', begun in 1771, but still incomplete on Chute's death in 1776. (54) The 1754 inventory says that it stood in 'The Stone Hall and Staircase'.

The closest comparison with The Vyne Egyptian statue could, until its sale in 1995, be found at Castle Howard in Yorkshire (Fig. 8). The statue--an 'Egyptian deity in black marble'--a more intact, but much older, kneeling figure of Amenophis II (eighteenth Dynasty, c. 1426-1400 BC), is remarkably similar to 'The Vyne Ramesses'. Carved of black granite and about an inch taller in height, the statue was probably acquired by the 4th Earl of Carlisle (1694-1758) via Roman dealers in the mid-1740s--at precisely the same time it is thought Chute acquired his statue. (55) It is first described at Castle Howard in an inventory of 1759, making it the nearest comparable example of a large Egyptian statue in an English country house collection.

[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]

In the second half of the eighteenth century, thanks to increasing the wealth and mobility of Englishmen, and the all-pervasive influence of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78), Egyptian objects were more and more commonly encountered in English collections. (56) Indeed, by now it was almost as if no self-respecting collection of Greco-Roman antiquities could be considered complete without some examples of Egyptian art. Despite such exalted company, Egyptian relics were still chiefly preserved as barbarous oddities, freakish objects for curiosity or for the purpose of, usually unfavourable, comparison--as Ralph Willett wrote in 1776 'in that country: Sculpture was employed to delineate Monsters, not Men; and the Objects of their religious Worship seem to have acquired consideration only in proportion to their horrid Ugliness, and the Terrors they impressed.' (57) Charles Townley kept Egyptian and Indian idols with his Roman marbles at Park Street, to illustrate his elaborate theories about the 'Line of Art', (58) but the 'two Egyptian Mummies brought from the tomb of Thebes' owned by Miss Harcourt in 1766 were evidently classed as natural curiosities, being housed in 'a spacious concavity in the cliffs' at her 'Richmondshire' home, surrounded by 'the most beautiful shells and fossils'. (59) More typical is the way Thomas Worsley displayed the two statues, said to represent Isis and Osiris, that he was given by George III, who had been presented with them by Sir James Porter, Ambassador to Constantinople from 1742 to 1762. By 1778, they were displayed in the Hall at Hovingham Hall in Yorkshire, alongside Giambologna's Samson and a Philistine, plaster casts of antique statuary, large busts of philosophers and emperors, part of an ancient Roman monument, some terracottas after the sculptor Francois Duquesnoy (1579-1643), and a Doric book press (60)--not so different from the motley company the Egyptian statue kept amidst the gothick gloom of The Vyne. It may be significant in this context that when in 1762, the 4th Viscount Charlemont (1728-99) asked Johann Heinrich Muntz (1727-98) (who also worked at The Vyne) to design an 'Egiptian Room' for Marino, his house near Dublin, to house a collection of antiquities collected in Egypt in 1749--the design was in the gothick taste (Fig. 9). (61)

It was only in 1799 that Thomas Hope (?1770-1831), who had sat at the feet of old Cardinal Albani and had been in Egypt two years before, set about creating in this country the first wholly Egyptian setting for such antiquities in his Duchess Street home. (62) As he put it,

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

Happening to possess several Egyptian antiquities, wrought in variously coloured materials, such as granite, serpentine, porphyry, and basalt, of which neither the hue nor the workmanship would have well accorded with my Greek statues, chiefly executed in white marble alone, I thought it best to segregate these former, and to place them in a separate room, of which the decoration should, in its character, bear some analogy to that of its contents. (63)

By the time the room was completed in 1804, Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile had precipitated a torrent of Egyptian antiquities into Britain, notably the important items confiscated from the French that were presented to the British Museum in 1802. (64) The subsequent mania for all things Egyptian, and the scholarly attention to which these artefacts were subjected, is epitomised by Thomas Rowlandson's amusing caricature, The antiquarians of 1805. (65)

This article derives from a paper given at the National Trust study day, Aspects of The Vyne, 16 October 2000. Thanks are due to Rosemary Baird, Joanna Bennett, Morris Bierbrier, Helen Dorey, Alastair Laing, Cathal Moore, Charles O'Brien, and Giles Worsley, for their help, information and suggestions. Kevin Rogers has been especially helpful with details of his researches amongst the Chute papers.

(1) T.G.H. James 'A Schist Statuette of Ramesses IV', British Museum Quarterly, vol. XXII, 1960, pp. 75-77. The statue is no. BM EA1816.

(2) Basingstoke, Hampshire Record Office (hereafter HRO), Chute papers, 31 M57/645.

(3) It is recorded in the 1776 inventory as in the 'lobby staircase' (Staircase Hall), and in 1842 inventory as in the Stone Hall (Stone Gallery). HRO, Chute papers, 31 M57/657 and 31 M57/649.

(4) The photograph is in the Chute Collection at The Vyne, and is reproduced in C.W. Chute, A History of The Vyne in Hampshire, Winchester, 1888, p. 160.

(5) "Wiggett Chute (1800-78) added many treasures to the collections at The Vyne. These include four mid-eighteenth-century Italian marble busts of Roman emperors, which reputedly once belonged to Manuel de Godoy, Chief Minister of Charles IV of Spain. The statue is described in ibid., p. 160, as 'Rameses IV., an ancient Egyptian statue in basalt'.

(6) The Vyne, National Trust guidebook, London, 1998, p. 54. Alastair Laing has, however, observed that the vicar of nearby Bramley was the Reverend Thomas Shaw (1694-1751), the noted Algerine, Levantine and Egyptian traveller. Since he died three years before its appearance in the 1754 Inventory, it is tempting to wonder if the statue have come from his collection. However, Shaw's collection of naturalia and artificialia was bequeathed to Oxford University, so it seems unlikely that a large and valuable Egyptian statue would have been excepted.

(7) Ibid., pp. 53-59.

(8) Ibid., p. 54 (HRO, 31 M57/652).

(9) See undated letter from F. Whithed to Mr Puckridge, HRO, 5M48, which relates that 'things sent from Venice in September last, were directed to a Merchant of Mr Chute's Acquaintance in London, and we have very Great reason to fear that they are taken by The Spaniards.'

(10) Ibid., p. 141.

(11) The National Trust, Southern Region Archive Room, Polesden Lacy. Letter: R. Fedden (NT) to K.E. Cousens (HM Treasury) 12 May 1958; Letter: J Barker (Executors) to Sir D. Bates (HM Treasury), 9 June 1958; Letter: I. Edwards (British Museum) to J. Barker, 12 June 1958; Letter: R. Fedden to J. Barker, 11 July 1958: Letter: J. Barker to Sir D. Bates, 10 November 1958; Letter: R. Fedden to J. Barker, 24 November 1958.

(12) James, op. cit., pp. 75-77, plates XXIV-XXV. The author was the first to remark on how long the sculpture had been in England, and suggested 1753 as the most likely date of import. See ibid., p. 77.

(13) The cast was made by the British Museum Cast Service in 1997. The replica now stands on the landing of the main staircase.

(14) For an account of William Bankes' collection and his exploits in Egypt see Kingston Lacy, National Trust guidebook, London, 1994, pp. 24-27 and 81-82.

(15) Penrhyn Castle, National Trust guidebook, London, 2001, p. 65.

(16) Kingston Lacy, op. cit., pp. 86-87.

(17) Sir Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (eds.), Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter DNB), London, 1897, vol. L, pp. 290-93 (entry by Sidney Lee).

(18) George Sandys A Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610 ..., London, 1615, p. 133.

(19) John Tradescant, Museaeum Tradescantianum, London, 1656, p. 42, records Sandys as the donor of 'The Idol Osiris. Anubis, the Sheep, the Beetle, the Dog, which the Aegyptians worshipped'.

(20) DNB, op. cit., vol. L, p. 283, states that any connection is 'doubtful'.

(21) Between 1610 and its sale in 1653, the proprietors of The Vyne were increasingly impoverished. The 3rd Baron Sandys was fined and imprisoned in 1601 for his part in the Essex Plot of that year. His son, the 4th Baron, reigned briefly between 1623 and 1629, after which it passed to his half-sister, Baroness Sandys. Her son, Colonel Henry Sandys fought for Charles I during the Civil War, dying of his wounds in 1644. The house was occupied by Parliamentary soldiery in 1643 during the siege of nearby Basing House. Henry's son, William, was forced to sell the house to Chaloner Chute in 1653.

(22) Robert Plot, Natural History of Oxford-shire: Being an Essay toward the Natural History of England, Oxford, 1677, p. 240, plate 12.

(23) A. Clark (ed.), John Aubrey, Brief Lives ..., Oxford, 1898, vol. I, pp. 132-33.

(24) Thomas Martyn, The English Connoisseur: Containing an Account of Whatever is Curious in Painting, Sculpture, &c, in the Palaces and Seats of the Nobility and Principal Gentry of England both in Town and Country, Dublin, 1767, vol. II p. 119.

(25) Ibid., pp. 143-44.

(26) Ibid., p. 185, in the 'Basso-Relievo Room', and p. 192, in the 'Stone Room'.

(27) John Woodward, 'Of the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians', Archaeologia, vol. IV, 1786, pp. 231-32.

(28) Ibid., p. 235.

(29) Arthur MacGregor, 'Egyptian Antiquities', in idem (ed.), Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary, Founding Father of the British Museum, London, 1994, p. 176.

(30) The engraving shows the mummy case from four angles and is inscribed '... Ex Vetustis Aegypti Sepulchretis Sublatum Londinium attulit D. Guil: Lethieullier A.o D.o 1722/Societati Antiquariae Londinensi Georgius Vertue D.D.D. et Execudit 1724'. See M.L. Bierbrier, 'The Lethieullier Family and the British Museum', in I.E.S. Edwards and John Baines (ed.), Pyramid Studies and other Essays Presented to I.E.S. Edwards, London, 1988, pp. 220-28.

(31) Dr. Pococke's expedition had taken the form of a journey up the Nile in 1737-38, where he met Norden. Pococke's account of his travels, Observations on Egypt, contained in vol. I of A Description of the East, was published in 1743. Norden's Travels to Egypt and Nubia was first published--in Danish and posthumously--in 1743, although some of the engraved plates were already known to British readers from his 1741 folio volume Drawings of some Ruins and Colossal statues at Thebes in Egypt ... These works, together with Bernard de Montfaucon's L'Antiquite expliquee et representee en figures ..., Paris, 1719-24, became the standard works on Egypt, her customs and antiquities, before the appearance of Baron Dominique Vivant Denon, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte pendant les campagnes du general Bonaparte, Paris, 1802.

(32) 'A description of the Museum of Mr. J. Kemp near the Hay-Market', Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious, vol. n, 1707-1708, p. 259.

(33) MacGregor, op. cit., pp. 31-34.

(34) Ibid., p. 177. Most of Sloane's Egyptian antiquities derived from the Museum of Cardinal Filippo Antonio Gualtieri, who died in 1728. See also M.I. Bierbrier, 'The Sloane Collection of Egyptian Antiquities' in L. Limme and J. Strybol (eds.), Aegyptus Museis Rediviva: Miscellanea in Honorem Hermanni de Meulenaere, Brussels, 1993, pp. 15-33.

(35) Betty Kemp, Sir Francis Dashwood, London, 1967, pp. 99-101.

(36) West Wycombe Park, Dashwood papers; 1782 Inventory, No. 22. It was later banished to the stables and was given to Tottenham Museum in 1912. Francis Dashwood, The Dashwoods of West Wycombe, London, 1987, p. 22.

(37) A.P. Oppe (ed.), 'Horace Walpole's Journals of Visits to Country Seats', Walpole Society, vol. XVI, 1927-28, p. 7.

(38) Warren R. Dawson, 'The First Egyptian Society', Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. XXIII, 1937, pp. 259-60.

(39) One was sold to the architect John White (1747-1813), who presented it to Sir John Soane (1753-1837); it is described in the 1835 Description of his Museum as 'formerly in the gallery, of the Duke of Richmond at Whitehall'. It dates from the nineteenth or twentieth Dynasty, and appears to bear scorch marks from the Richmond House fire of 1791.

(40) D. Jacques, A Visit to Goodwood, Chichester, 1822, pp. 66-67.

(41) See n. 32 above.

(42) R.W. Ketton-Cremer, Horace Walpole, London, 1964, p. 68; John Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800, New Haven and London, 1997, pp. 205-206.

(43) Ibid., pp. 205-206.

(44) W.S. Lewis (ed.), The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, 48 vols., New Haven, 1937-83, vol. XXXV, p. 52.

(45) Ibid., vol. XIX, pp. 48-49.

(46) Ibid., vol. XIX, p. 59.

(47) Ibid., The Correspondence with madame du Deffand, vol. I, no. 405, note 4; and Sir Horace Mann to H.W., 13 July 1745. See also ibid., vol. XIX, pp. 65-66. The eagle is now at Gosford House, Lothian.

(48) Lewis, op. cit., vol. XX, p. 433.

(49) For Cardinal Albani, see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven and London, 1981, pp. 62-68; Michael Pantazzi, 'Italy and the Grand Tour', in Jean-Marcel Humbert, Michael Pantazzi and Christiane Ziegler (eds.), Egyptomania, exh. cat., Musee du Louvre, Paris; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna, 1994-95, pp. 38-45.

(52) Pierre Jean Grosley, Observations sur l'Italie ... en 1764, London, 1770, vol. II, pp. 294-95.

(53) Agnes Allroggen-Bedel, 'Die Antiksammlung in der Villa Albani zur Zeit Winkelmanns', in Herbert Beck and Peter C. Bols (eds.), Forschungen zur Villa Albani: Antike Kunst und die Epoche der Aufklarung, Berlin, 1982, pp. 301-80.

(54) See ibid., pp. 301-80, with bibliography.

(55) Including five celebrated Egyptian statues excavated in the Verospi vineyard in 1710, displayed on the Capitol until they were moved to the Vatican in 1838. An Antinous was among the statues to be seen in the Barberini Palace, while Egyptian sphinxes were to be found in the gardens of the Villa Borghese. See Humbert, Pantazzi and Ziegler, op. cit., pp. 87 89.

(56) The Vyne, op. cit., pp. 55-59; Roger Bowdler, 'The Speaker's Sepulchre: Chaloner Chute's Tomb at The Vyne', APOLLO, vol. CLV, no. 482 (April 2002), pp. 46-50.

(57) Sotheby's, Ancient Sculpture from Castle Howard, 14 December 1995, lot 58.

(58) Piranesi's extravagant Egyptianising murals for the Caffe degli Inglesi, 1765-67, were published in Diverse maniere di adornare i cammini, Rome, 1769, together with fantastic designs for chimneypieces in the same taste. See Humbert, Pantazzi and Ziegler, op. cit., pp. 69-74, and James Stevens Curl, The Egyptian Revival, London, 1982, pp. 76-106.

(59) Ralph Willett, A Description of the Library at Merly in the County of Dorset, London, 1785.

(60) B.E. Cook, The Townley Marbles, London, 1985, pp. 47-48, and I. Jenkins, Archaeologists and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum, London, 1992, pp. 56-70.

(61) T. Amory, Memoirs containing the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain, London, 1776, pp. 216-17. 'Two Egyptian mummies brought from the tomb of Thebes, "as the seller avowed" ... one of them was called the body of a princess, the daughter of Pharoah Asychis, and the other a priestess of the Oracle of Thebes.'

(62) Hovingham Hall Archive, Thomas Worsley MS, A Catalogue of Pictures &c at Hovingham 1778, p. 3. I am grateful to Giles Worsley for this information (letter of 28 September 2000).

(63) Muntz's drawings are now in the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut. See John Harris, A Catalogue of British Drawings for Architecture ... in North America, Upper Saddle River, 1971, p. 143, plate 105. For Musntz's career, see Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects: 1600-1840, New Haven and London, 3rd edition, 1995, pp. 673-74.

(64) David Watkin, Thomas Hope, 1769-1831, and the Neoclassical Idea, London, 1968, pp. 48-49 and 115-18.

(65) Thomas Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration: Executed from Designs by Thomas Hope, London, 1807, pp. 26-27, plate VIII.

(66) M.L. Bierbrier, 'The Acquisition by the British Museum of Antiquities Discovered During the French Invasion of Egypt', in W.V. Davies (ed.), Studies in Egyptian Antiquities: A Tribute to T.G.H. James, British Museum Occasional Paper, no. 123, pp. 111-13.

(67) Thomas Rowlandson, The antiquarians, hand-coloured etching, 35 x 25.4 cm, 1805.

Tim Knox is Head Curator at the National Trust. He is a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art, and was formerly Assistant Curator of the Royal Institute of British Architects Drawing Collection in London.

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