Certificate of Completion
At the end of this course you will be able to download a personalised certificate of completion from the classroom. A great way to keep track of your learning and celebrate your Egyptological journey.
Italian Explorations & Excavations in Egypt 'The road to Memphis and Thebes passes through Turin' The Italian contribution to the re-discovery and study of ancient Egypt
With Dr Massimiliano Nuzzolo
4 lectures delivered over 2 afternoons. Sunday 15th & 22nd February 2026 2pm UK time
We love to see you for the live lectures, but if you have to miss one, don't worry, you can of course catch up (or watch again) at your leisure via the recordings. You will have access to the recorded lectures for a whole month after the last live lecture. Recordings will be available until 22nd March.
One of the main outcomes of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt at the end of the 1700s was to stimulate new awareness and rising interest in the history of ancient Egypt and in the collecting of antiquities coming from this country. Although the main competition in this regard was played by France and England, the two primary political actors of that time in both Europe and the Middle East, Italy was also in the center of the game, with important scholars and travelers that significantly contributed to the issue. Among them people like Ippolito Rosellini and Giovan Battista Belzoni are of course quite well known.
In fact, however, the contribution of the Italian academia to the re-discovery of ancient Egyptian civilization was much wider, including not only people but, first and foremost, institutions, such as the Egyptian Museum in Turin. This institution was, and still is, so crucial to the study of the Egyptological discipline that Jean-Francois Champollion coined for it the famous sentence “La strada per Menfi e Tebe passa da Torino” (The road to Memphis and Thebes passes through Turin).
By tracking the main stages of the rediscovery of ancient Egypt in Italy throughout the Nineteenth century and up to the aftermath of WWII, this course intends to provide the main coordinates of the Italian contribution to the study and understanding of ancient Egypt, with a specific focus on the unparalleled collection of Egyptian antiquities kept in the Turin Egyptian Museum, the widest and most important Egyptological collection worldwide, after Cairo Museum, for the study of the pharaonic civilization.
Sunday 15th February
Lecture 1: The re-discovery of Egypt in Italy. Part 1: 1600s to the end of 1800s
Lecture 2: The re-discovery of Egypt in Italy. Part 2: from the end of 1800s to WWII.
Sunday 25th February
Lecture 3: The Egyptian Museum of Turin. Part 1: collection history and main highlights
Lecture 4: The Egyptian Museum of Turin. Part 2: UNESCO rescue campaign in Nubia and the Italian contribution
Dr Massimiliano Nuzzolo
Massimiliano Nuzzolo is Associate Professor in Egyptology at the University of Turin, Italy. His PhD thesis on the sun temples of the fifth dynasty and the royal ideology of the Old Kingdom. Later he became Scientific Member of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) where he conducted a research project on the spatial distribution of Old Kingdom tombs in the Memphite area. In 2016 he became Research Associate at the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Charles University Prague, where he was the director of the research project “Rise and development of the solar cult in ancient Egypt”. In 2020 He is director of the “Sun Temples Project”, an interdisciplinary research project on the evolution of the sacred landscape in the Fifth Dynasty site of Abu Ghurab. In this site he is conducting field-works and excavations since 2010. His research interests include all subjects related to Third Millennium BC Egypt, in particular the solar cult and religion and its relationship with the development of royal ideology. Recently he has focused his attention on the study and re-evaluation of the Old Kingdom royal annals, the so-called “Palermo Stone”, the most important written source for the knowledge of ancient Egyptian history.
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