The first artefacts for the Egyptian collection were acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art prior to its foundation in 1913, made possible by funding from The Huntington Trust. $25,000 was allocated for the purchase of Egyptian art, undertaken by Lucy Olcott Perkins and continued by museum director Frederic Whiting upon her death. For a brief period from 1917, British Egyptologist Howard Carter acted as an agent for the Egyptian collection. Today, the collection holds more than 1,000 objects spanning across all eras of Egyptian art.