Kyoto, Kyoto University
A museum for the Division of Letters at Kyoto University was planned from the foundation of Kyoto Imperial University and acquisitions began under the direction of its first chancellor, Kinoshita Hirotsugu. The first museum building was completed in 1914, with three additional enlargements before it reached its final form in 1929. The Museum of Faculty of Letters changed to the Kyoto University Museum on April 1 1997. The Department of Archaeology was established in 1916 under Kosaku Hamada, who had studied with Flinders Petrie at University College London.
In 1911 the Egypt Exploration Fund sent to Kyoto a greater number of antiquities than usual: "consisting of a representative series of antiquities of all periods from various sites which have been excavated by the Egyptian Exploration Fund during past years". This included Palaeolithic flints from Thebes and flint flakes from the Sinai, a Predynastic palette from Mahasna, black and red pottery from Gebelein, Middle Kingdom objects from Deir el-Bahri (including wooden figures and model boat), a Cyprian vase from Tell Defennah, objects from Naukratis and Roman objects from Tanis and Oxyrhynchus."
On a visit to Kyoto University Museum in February 2016, Alice Stevenson examined the collections, including the Predynastic pottery said to be from Gebelein. It was clear that at least one of these had an object mark indicating it had come from el-Amrah. There is no mention of Predynastic pottery being recovered in the 1893 EEF explorations and it is likely that objects had become confused in London in the lag between excavation and distribution. It is doubtful that the other objects are from Gebelein.
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