Professor Alois Musil, Orientalist, Arabist, theologist, traveller, and writer of popular novels, is well known as an explorer of the Middle East, discoverer of Amra castle, and as a founding father of the Oriental Institute in Prague. According to the recent research of his correspondence, an…

The present article surveys Karl Richard Lepsius’ (1810–1884) love for producing modern compositions of Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, and in particular, for writing modern names in Egyptian hieroglyphs. The survey is carried out in the context of new discoveries of such texts on objects kept in the…

The Osiris statuette P 6169 of the Prague Náprstek Museum has a very unusual appearance: In addition to a striking surface corrosion, its crooked shape in comparison to its fine surface details are not corresponding to the ancient Egyptian artistic ideal. Through consideration of comparative pieces…

The topic of this study is a description and analysis of stone clubs made in New Guinea during pre-colonial era and following first decades of colonialism. The study describes a typology of stone clubs and talks about the areas of their origin. Paper reveals eight types of clubs, differentiating…

This article gives an overview of material from Burma/Myanmar in the collections of the Náprstek Museum, with a focus on three types: lacquerware, silverware, and embroidery. Examples from the collection are linked by their use of narrative scenes as devices to embellish the surfaces, especially…

Embroidered bands on the edges of the sleeves of women’s garments were fashionable in China during the late 19th century. They adorned Manchu and Han ladies’ garments with colourful landscapes, flowers and birds, figural scenes and auspicious symbols that expressed wishes for long life, many male…

Petr Skalník is a renowned Czech social anthropologist and Africanist. During his studies in the former Soviet Union, he visited Tuva where he assembled a collection of material culture that represents various everyday occupations of cattle herders, as well as ritual and leisure activities. After…

In accordance with the research plan of the Material Culture Unit within the framework of the project entitled ‘Sinophone Borderlands – Interaction at the Edge’, a study of the chemical composition and surface features of metal parts of the Afghan Ersari Tribe headdress was performed. The headdress…

During the sixteenth–eighteenth excavation seasons, cemetery WBN C260 at the archaeological site of Wad Ben Naga (Sudan) yielded the remains of fourteen individuals, both adult and non-adult. The burials, tentatively dated as post-Meroitic/Christian, were oriented to the north or north-west, with…