Egypt: Past and Present

A project connecting Egyptian communities in Scotland with Egyptian collections and creating space for dialogue around the display and interpretation of Egyptian heritage.

Last updated: 23 June 2026

About the project

Unequal power dynamics between UK museums and Egyptian communities are rooted in colonial histories that enabled foreign collectors and institutions to acquire, interpret, and display Egyptian heritage with little to no Egyptian input. 

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, museums collected ancient Egyptian objects that appealed to European audiences, but these collections do not accurately reflect the relationship between Egypt past and present. Furthermore, the disconnection of ‘ancient Egypt’ from the rest of Egyptian history and the commodification of Egyptian antiquities have often served to alienate Egyptians from their own ancient heritage. 

Today, National Museums Scotland, home to the largest Egyptian collection in Scotland, is working to address these legacies by creating opportunities for dialogue, collaboration, and shared understanding with the communities whose heritage is represented in our collections.

This project forms part of our ongoing efforts to foster meaningful conversation around the Egyptian collections, to research and communicate their colonial histories and legacies, and to provide space for consultation and co-creation with Egyptian communities in Scotland. 

A series of community workshops were designed in collaboration with: 

•  Lama Said, Egyptian PhD candidate at University of Edinburgh
• Mohamed Tonsy, Edinburgh-based Egyptian writer and ceramicist.

The project aimed to ensure that the voices and perspectives of Egyptians are represented in our understanding of Egyptian heritage. 

اعرف أكتر عن مشروع مصر: الماضي والحاضر بالمصري

Reconnecting Egyptian heritage and communities  

Historically little attention has been paid to the impact of colonial legacies on modern Egyptian communities. Nevertheless, National Museums Scotland has been researching these histories and exploring ways to share more information about its collections with Egyptian community members.

In 2019-2022, National Museums Scotland partnered with the AHRC-funded project Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: views from Egypt, which sought to share the history of the dispersal of Egyptian artefacts and to foster dialogue with Egyptian communities.  

We continue to explore ways in which Egyptian perspectives, frequently underrepresented in traditional museum displays, might be more effectively incorporated into the interpretation and presentation of Egyptian heritage and collections.

This project aligns with the National Museums Scotland Approach to Participatory Practice; as such, participants are recognised as experts based on their lived experience and are remunerated for their time. Participants were provided with Participant Information Sheets in advance to ensure that they fully understood the project and their rights, as well as completing Consent forms at each of the workshops, in which they could choose to consent to their contributions being used or not, either credited or anonymised, as well as being free to withdraw their consent at any time.

Workshops

As the museum’s first direct collaboration with the Egyptian community in Scotland, the 'Egypt: Past and Present' community workshops aimed to foster connections, share collections and learn about community perceptions of Egyptian heritage. 

At all three workshops, participants engaged directly with our collections outside of glass display cases. This included not only antiquities, but also historic and contemporary objects, reflecting the breadth of collections at National Museums Scotland and highlighting continuities in Egyptian culture and identity. 

Sharing leadership and co-design of the project with Lama Said and Mohamed Tonsy was essential to ensuring that Egyptian perspectives were represented in its conception and delivery. To avoid being extractive, participants were able to input into the workshop planning across the series through feedback forms, and each session included enjoyable creative activities.

Fifteen participants from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen visited the Ancient Egypt Rediscovered gallery and shared their perspectives on how Egyptian heritage is represented. A ‘found writing’ activity led by Mohamed Tonsy provided an opportunity for creative responses to the museum collections.

For Hala Eladany, visiting the gallery stirred different emotions in her:

Another participant, noting that the final case in the gallery focuses on the Roman and Late Antique periods (30 BC – AD 641), felt that the displays made it seem that Egyptian history just ended with the pharaonic era, disregarding everything that came afterwards. Abeer Eladany added, ‘We are the same people - there was no population displacement’.  

While it is typical for Egyptian galleries to display only the pharaonic era, this can suggest a complete separation between Egypt’s past and present. Ancient Egypt did not just suddenly end; rather Egyptian culture transformed over time, and many ancient traditions still endure. The final display in the 'Ancient Egypt Rediscovered' gallery is currently under review and participants’ contributions will be considered as part of this work. 

The participants’ responses revealed the enduring significance of these collections, not as relics of a distant past, but as items that continue to hold meaning for Egyptians today.

Objects of daily life from antiquity in particular sparked emotional connections, for example one stated of the kohl jars: ‘now I know from where I got my love for it 💗 My ancestors’. 

Participants identified an ancient Egyptian comb as similar to those that are still used today to remove lice: a detail not widely recognised in museum collections.

Historic and contemporary objects and artworks featuring calligraphy were especially engaging, as were those related to popular culture.

The workshop also featured a creative writing exercise led by Mohamed Tonsy, in which participants crafted creative and personal labels for objects that they had viewed, in English or Arabic.

Soha El Hindawi wrote about a protective Eye of Horus amulet that had been excavated in Fife, probably collected by the Balgonie family who visited Egypt in 1856. Soha said that she felt a strong connection to the object and its journey from Egypt to Scotland. She addressed her label to her late grandfather, an orthopedic surgeon who had traveled to the UK:

The workshop included a zine-making activity led by Mohamed Tonsy which offered a space for participants to express their own perceptions and understanding of Egyptian heritage. Participants created individual zines (homemade magazines) for themselves, as well as contributing to two collective zines.  

The collaged zines drew on a combination of objects from the museum’s collection as well as images, places and objects chosen by the participants themselves. They brought together the different voices and perspectives of the group and reflected the journey across all three workshops.

Finally, as a conclusion to the project, participants were invited to reflect on Egyptian heritage and write sentences to summarise their thoughts on the connections between Egypt past and present. For example, one participant submitted a relevant verse from the Holy Quran:  

ادْخُلُوا مِصْرَ إِن شَاءَ اللَّهُ آمِنِينَ 

سورة يوسف، آية ٩٩ 

‘Enter Egypt, God willing, safe and secure.’ 

— Quran 12:99 

Participants then voted on their favourite sentences, with the most popular statement speaking to the diversity of Egypt's history and culture. 

Key outcomes

Relevant insights gathered throughout the project will be added to the museum’s collections database, subject to participants’ consent. 

Furthermore, National Museums Scotland has commissioned Mohamed Tonsy to make a ceramic vessel inscribed in both Egyptian Arabic and English, materialising the community responses as a tangible output of the project. 

Participants’ contributions will also help inform the interpretation and display of Egyptian collections in the future, as well as planned contemporary collecting.

Feedback from participants was positive, highlighting how they valued being able to reconnect with their identity and home, and to be creative, as well as having the opportunity to connect with the museum, its Egyptian collections, and with each other.

The relationships we have built with the Egyptian community in Scotland and the insights that they have provided have shifted how Egyptian collections are understood within the museum, providing a new appreciation from more personal perspectives. 

The participants brought ancient Egyptian collections to life again by revealing their relevance to today, and expanded what is valued as ‘Egyptian’ in the museum context to incorporate the contemporary and the personal. Across all three workshops, the discussions and creative activities reaffirmed both the diversity of Egyptian culture and heritage and the continuity that exists between past and present.