The Georges Ricard Foundation Senusret Collection

Named after the workmen’s village Hetep-Senusret in Fayum, Egypt, home to workmen on the pyramid of pharaoh Senusret II, the Senusret Collection is composed of more than 1,500 objects from the ancient world. Highlights, some of which are included here, include Late Period coffins with mummies, gilded funerary masks, finely crafted bronze statuettes of deities, exquisite New Kingdom relief stele, Iranian Luristan bronzes, ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals, Attic Greek pottery, ancient gold jewelry, and an encyclopedic collection of ancient glass.

The Senusret Collection was assembled by French industrialist Georges Ricard (at left) in the 1970s. Ricard bought from well-known French auction houses and dealers as a way to share his interest in and love for the ancient world. On June 2, 1975, the Senusret Collection opened to great fanfare as the Museum of Egypt and the Ancient World in Monaco. Within a few years, however, the museum closed out of conservation concerns for the collection. The Ricard family brought the collection with them when they moved to California in the 1980s. While searching for a permanent home for the collection, the Ricards began sharing it online in 1997 as the Virtual Egyptian Museum, which is now static. In 2018, the Georges Ricard Foundation selected the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University as the collection’s permanent home, where it will serve as a resource not only for university faculty and students but also for schoolchildren in the greater Atlanta community.
 
The Carlos Museum is currently researching the collection, a process likely to take several years. The majority of the collection has clear provenance, and for those objects that do not, the Michael C. Carlos Museum is in communication with Egyptian antiquities authorities to ensure that everything in the collection museum is legally acquired.