With nearly 45,000 objects, the museum’s comprehensive collection of Egyptian art spans the period from the Predynastic through early Byzantine eras (about 4000 B.C. – A.D. 500). It is particularly significant that the majority of the collection derives from excavations, making it an invaluable source of information for students and scholars as well as the public. Thirty-seven years of excavation at Giza by the Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard University provided the museum with best collection outside Egypt of art from the Old Kingdom, the age of the great pyramids (about 2599–2150 B.C.), including some of the few surviving masterworks of royal sculpture from the period. Among the highlights of the Middle Kingdom (about 2061–1640 B.C.) are several masterpieces of non-royal sculpture and the finest painted coffin of the era. Monumental royal sculpture and architectural elements, as well as unique finds from the Valley of the Kings, characterize the New Kingdom and Late Period collections (about 1550–760 B.C.). Nearly 5,000 objects collected by the 19th century traveler Robert Hay form the basis of the superb collection of coffins and funerary arts of the New Kingdom through Greco-Roman periods.
