สถานที่ห้องจัดแสดงอียิปต์ พิพิธภัณฑ์ศิลปะเมโทรโพลิแทนThe Egyptian galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's Egyptian collection was not mostly bought. The department's own page says the museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt began in 1906, and the encyclopedia account puts almost half the present collection down to the excavation seasons of 1906 to 1941. That is why a Met amulet more often carries a find-spot than a dealer's name: a small gold amulet in Gallery 109, accession 22.1.58, is credited to MMA excavations, 1920–22, from the Memphite Region.

The size of the collection is published two ways and this record prints both. The Wikipedia account gives more than 26,000 pieces across forty galleries, almost all on display; the department's own page, read on 17 September 2026, says "approximately 30,000 objects". Neither is wrong on its own terms and this project has not read a reconciliation.

Walk it and the amulets sort themselves by gallery. Gallery 120 holds a run of faience wedjat eyes from about 1386–1347 BCE, entered in 1911 on the Rogers Fund. Gallery 127 holds one cut in gold, 332–30 BCE, and one in obsidian. Gallery 130 holds a long faience-and-aragonite wedjat, 6.5 centimetres, bought in 1926 on the Edward S. Harkness Gift. Gallery 128 holds the Metternich Stela, catalogued as Magical Stela with Horus the Child, 360–343 BCE, and Gallery 134 a shelf of smaller cippi in steatite, soapstone and faience — the same design shrunk from 83.5 centimetres to under 5.

How the objects got here is still being worked out in public, and not always by the museum first. In September 2022 New York law enforcement seized 27 objects on three warrants for return to Italy and Egypt. The museum has since published a statement on collecting practices and hired a provenance-research manager with a team of three. Inference — an excavation credit line is a stronger provenance than a purchase, and the 1906–1941 seasons are the reason this room reads differently from a room filled by a dealer; it is not the same thing as saying every object here arrived cleanly.

The licence is the other half of why this atlas keeps pointing here. Since 2017 every Met image of a public-domain work carries a Creative Commons Zero dedication, which is on Wikimedia Commons' accepted list. A photograph of a Met wedjat can be reproduced, cropped and altered with no permission asked. The dedication covers the museum's photographs. It says nothing about who the objects belong to.

Open six days a week; closed Wednesdays. General admission on 17 September 2026 is US$30 for adults, US$22 for seniors and for visitors with a disability, US$17 for students and free for children 12 and under, with pay-what-you-wish admission for New York State residents and for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut students. The museum lists the Ancient West Asia and Ancient Cyprus galleries as closed for renovation as of that date; the Egyptian galleries are not on that list. This project has not stood in them.