Guides and databases: Egyptology: Specialist databases and resources

Object and art databases

There are many databases of Egyptian objects and art available online of varying sophistication. A cross-section of these, mainly produced by universities, societies, and funded projects, is given below.

Griffith Institute Archive Online Resources
The Griffith Institute Archive houses a diverse and significant collection which explores the wealth of Ancient Egypt, including Tutankhamun resources, Petrie journals, squeezes, excavation diaries etc.
The Narmer Catalogue
A comprehensive database, gathering in one convenient location all available information about archaeological objects with inscriptions related to Narmer, the first king of Ancient Egypt, and his regional predecessors from Dynasty 0.
Nubian Textiles Database
Results of the research project “Nubian textiles: craft, trade, costume and identity in the medieval kingdom of Makuria”, conducted at the Institute of Oriental and Mediterranean Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences from 2016 to 2018.
Osirisnet: tombs of Ancient Egypt
The richly illustrated descriptions on this site can serve as a guidebook for any tombs you might visit that are open to the public. They will also enable you to discover the many others to which you will never have access otherwise.
Predynastic Online Database
Database of painted Predynastic pottery.
Predynastic Palette Database
A custom built database to catalogue various details of palettes in global museum collections.
World of Funerary Cones
Website dedicated to the study of ancient Egyptian funerary cones.

Art/scene databases:

Meketre Scene Repository
Online repository for Middle Kingdom scenes.
Oxford Expedition to Egypt: Scence-details database
The OEE Database covers all of known Old Kingdom cemeteries simultaneously, and its primary focus is the occurrence of scene types and their relevant scene details in tombs.
Beni Hassan@Macquarie
This website provides a visual dictionary for the inscribed tombs in the upper cemetery at Beni Hassan, a burial site in Middle Egypt.

Text, Inscription, and language databases

AGÉA: Anthroponymes et Généalogies de l’Égypte Ancienne
The project aims to create a systematic hieroglyphic directory of personal names attested from the protodynastic period to the Greco-Roman period inclusive.
Amarna Letters
Searchable database of the Amarna letters, an archive written on clay tablets of mainly diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru during the New Kingdom, c. 1360–1332 BC.
Database of Early Dynastic inscriptions
The current database assembles all available Early Dynastic inscriptions, covering the first attestations of writing discovered in tomb U-j (Naqada IIIA1, ca. 3250 BC) until the earliest known continuous written text in the reign of Djoser (ca. 2700 BC).
Database of Medieval Nubian Texts
This database contains c. 3,000 administrative inscriptions and documents, literary and liturgical manuscripts, private correspondence, epitaphs and tombstones and graffiti etc.
Deir el-Medina Database
The Deir el-Medina Database is meant to be an intermediate presentation of the ongoing research project A Survey of the New Kingdom Non-literary Texts from Deir el-Medina of Leiden University.
Hieratisch AKUell
An essential tool for working with texts written in Hieratic and cursive hieroglyphs.
PAThs: An Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature
Designed to provide an in-depth diachronic understanding and effective representation of the geography of Coptic literary production and in particular of the corpus of literary writings, almost exclusively of religious contents, produced in Egypt between the 3rd and the 13th centuries in the Coptic language.
Persons and Names of the Middle Kingdom
A prosopography database for the Middle Kingdom. It contains Egyptian Middle Kingdom personal names, people, written sources, titles, and dossiers of persons attested in various sources.
POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online
A guide and online database for the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
SITH: Projet Karnak
Aims at a systematic publication of the texts of the Karnak Temple in the form of a database.
Totenbuch Projekt (Book of the Dead)
Project to study surviving manuscripts of the Book of the Dead, both its vignettes and the design of the manuscripts as a whole.

Museum Resources

Global Egyptian Museum
This website aims to collect the 2 million objects from ancient Egypt kept in 850 public collections into a global virtual museum.
The Egyptian Museum Cairo
The Egyptian Museum is the oldest archaeological museum in the Middle East, and houses the largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities in the world. The museum displays an extensive collection spanning from the Predynastic Period to the Greco-Roman Era.
AWOL's Egyptological Museum Search
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.
Art Institute of Chicago
Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
British Museum Collection Online
Brooklyn Museum
Cachette de Karnak
Cleveland Museum of Art
Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME)
Fitzwilliam Museum Collections Explorer (Cambridge)
Louvre
Medelhavsmuseet Collection
Metropolitan Museum Collection
Museo Egizio Turin Collection
Oriental Institute Chicago Museum Collection
Rijksmuseum van Oudheden Collection (Leiden)
Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto)
Scotland's Ancient Egyptian Collections
Swansea Egypt Centre
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz

How to Search Online Museum Collections

Useful online blog and video providing advice on how to search online museum collections effectively from the Alexandria Archive Institute.

How to Search Online Museum Catalogues

UCL Egyptology Resources

Petrie Museum

UCL's Petrie Museum houses over 80,000 objects and includes an online catalogue with over 90,000 images of the collections.

3D Petrie Museum

Interact with objects from the Petrie Museum in 3D.

Digital Egypt for Universities

A learning and teaching resource for Higher Education, developed at the Petrie Museum.

Friends of the Petrie Museum

A welcoming learning community, supporting the Petrie Museum in partnership with its staff, management and researchers to enhance the physical, social and intellectual space of this world-class collection.

Tour of the Petrie Museum for Staff and Students

Tour of the Petrie Museum for Staff and Students