The first teaching of Egyptology in Florence took place in the 1882-83 academic year, when interest was finally renewed in Tuscany in this ‘young’ discipline that had seen the first ever professorship in Italy, Europe and the world in this very region: as known, it is the University of Pisa that owes this primacy, with the chair assigned to Ippolito Rosellini, a pupil of Jean-François Champollion - the decipherer of hieroglyphic writing, in 1822 - who held it from 1826 until his death in 1843.
The Royal Institute of Advanced Studies in Florence was certainly the most important centre for Orientalist studies in Italy, ever since its inauguration in 1860. Even in that year, lectures on the history and art of ancient Egypt were held there as part of the Archaeology course by Arcangelo Michele Migliarini, who had devoted so many years to the organisation of our Archaeological Museum and who was Champollion's assistant when he visited Florence in 1825.
The first real teaching of Egyptology, or rather precisely of ‘Egyptian Antiquities’, was held continuously until 1900 by Ernesto Schiaparelli, the great Biella-born archaeologist and author of wonderful discoveries in Egypt, such as the intact tomb of the architect Kha (c. 1400 BC), and the tomb of Queen Nefertari, wife of Ramesses II (c. 1230 BC). He was responsible for the organisation of the Egyptian Museum in Florence in those same years, but continued to hold his courses at the Institute even when, in 1894, he became director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin.
The name ‘Egyptology’ was introduced by his successor, Astorre Pellegrini, who taught from 1901 to 1907. A native of Livorno, a renowned linguist, he is a researcher figure who should be valorised in the field of Egyptology: to him are due numerous publications of categories of objects from the Florentine collections that are still of reference today.
After a brief interruption, Egyptology was taught in 1921-22 by Giulio Farina, from Frascati, who had shown an early interest in ancient Egypt, clearly oriented towards language and philology. Appointed inspector in the Egyptian section of the Archaeological Museum from 1914 to 1928, it was in Florence that he produced some of his best-known and most fundamental research, such as that on the functions of the vizir during the 18th dynasty, conducted on the text in the tomb of Rekhmira, or the study of the offering ritual, or on the myth of Osiris in the Pyramid Texts. He then went on to teach in Rome, and in 1928 he was Ernesto Schiaparelli's successor in the direction of the Egyptian Museum in Turin and in charge of teaching in that city.
With the foundation of the University of Florence in 1924, we had to wait until 1942 for a new beginning of Egyptology, but that was also a regular one. Once again there was an exceptional lecturer, in the person of Giuseppe Botti, a great scholar of documents written in hieratic and demotic, and the first in Italy for this speciality. Since 1932, he had been appointed to the Museum of Florence, where he began the complex operation of cataloguing the objects, and of course immediately began working with the ‘G. Vitelli’ Papyrological Institute, when the numerous papyri from excavations in Egypt arrived there. Botti was still in Florence until 1952, then moved to ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome in 1956.
At the University of Florence, his teaching was continued from 1958 by Sergio Bosticco, first as a private lecturer, while he was on duty at the Archaeological Museum, then as Full Professor from 1969 until 1996. The author of the publication of the Egyptian stelae in the Museum of Florence, he then showed a clear predilection for archaeological commitment ‘in the field’, both by participating in enterprises that are now in the legend of Egyptology, such as the documentation of the monuments in Nubia that could not be saved from the waters of Lake Nasser, and by confirming his collaboration with the ‘Vitelli’ Papyrological Institute in the excavations in Antinoupolis, and with the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ in the necropolis of Thebes and in Sudan, at Gebel Barkal. During the five-year period in which Sergio Bosticco retired (1991-1996), the deputation was taken over by Guido Bastianini. Subsequently, the teaching was held by Gloria Rosati until 2020.
Last update
11.10.2024