Croatia is in possession of approximately 4500 artifacts of the Egyptian provenance dating to the Arab conquest of Egypt in 642. They are stored mostly in the large museum but also in private collections. The holdings comprise mostly of smaller artifacts, scarabaei, amulets, shuabtis, small tablets made of different materials, necklaces, rings, the eye, heart, and fertility symbols, statuettes of deities, etc. Beside these, there are footwear, varios vessels, animal images, and male and female statues. In this vast number of artifacts, it is possible to identify a larger collection of the statues of gods (primarily Osiris and Isis) made of different materials. Very valuable are various wooden and stone slabs (stelae) with the inscriptions and paintings of mostly sepulchral character, then the varios inscriptions on papyrus and linen, the books of dead, canopic jars and their lids. The sarcophagi for the burial of animal and human remains made of different material, the mummies and the mummy wrappings form a special group. Thirteen completely or fragmentary preserved sphinges from the Diocletian's palace in Split are also to be mentioned. It is evident that smaller artifacts are predominant in the Croatian area and that they make a majority in institutional and private collections.

The Egyptian antiquities in various Croatian collections can be divided into two basic groups:

• material of the Egyptian provenance acquired from abroad through intermediates or donation,



• material from the Croatian area which is to be associated with presence of the Egyptian cult, but also the population from the East. It is acquired through archaeological excavations, and it was brought to the Croatian territory mostly in the Roman antiquity. The material is very rich which indicates the good connections with Egypt in the Roman period.

Furthermore, it is imperative to present the material kept in various institutions in Croatia. As it is almost impossible to include all the large and small collections due to a great amount of the artifacts owned by private persons, I relied on the most important ones. So we can single out the collections of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, the Archaeological Museum in Split, the Archaeological Museum in Zadar, the Archaeological Museum of Istria in Pula, the Dubrovnik Museum, the Museum of Slavonia in Osijek, and the Ante Topić Mimara Collection in Zagreb, the Museum for Contemporary Art in Zagreb, and series of minor collections in the regional and town museums (such as the Museum of the town of Varaždin, the Franciscan monastery in Sinj, the St. Euphemia monastery in Kampor on the island of Rab, etc.). It is possible to single out a part of the private collections that were published in periodicals. The collections of the institutions and regional museums containing probably valuable material but their presumable value is not known to the scientific public constitute a special problem.

Regarding the publication of the material, there are two basic groups of the artifacts found in the Croatian area:

1. The institutional collections systematically presented and published through exhibition catalogs, and analyzed and published in scientific periodicals. These are the collections of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb and the Archaeological Museum in Split. There is a corresponding catalog of the antiquities for the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb published in Paris in 1970, and many specialized exhibition catalogs. The exhibits of the Archaeological Museum in Split were presented and published mostly through specialized periodicals. The Egyptian antiquities included in the Ante Topić Mimara Collection are indicated in the specialized catalogs of the Mimara Museum in Zagreb. The large collections of the Archaeological Museums in Dubrovnik and Pula have been analyzed and published systematically only recently (in 2001). The minor collections of the museums in Osijek and Zadar have not been examined systematically, and single artifacts were occasionally published in the periodicals. Very valuable Egyptian collection of the Museum of the Town of Varaždin has been analyzed and published systematically just recently (in 2002 and 2004).

The important place Croatia has in the world of Egyptology is due mostly to the large and valuable collection of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb that includes a world rarity, the so-called Zagreb Egyptian Mummy with the Linen Book (Liber linteus Zagrabiensis).

2. The collections of the institutions and private persons not presentedn and published systematically. It is necessary to establish in the future how many artifacts are kept in regional museums, and then to determine the origin of the artifacts, their authenticity, the time when they were made, and their cultural and historical value. It is hard to say how the artifacts found their way to these institutions. The collections of private persons form a special group. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine the value, amount, way of acquiring, and authenticity of these collections, because they are almost completely unknown to the scientific public.

M.T.