An ancient Egyptian object buried in the grounds of a historic house near Monimail in Fife was found by chance in 1952 and acquired at the time by the then Royal Scottish Museum (now National Museums Scotland).
A second object from the same location appeared by chance in 1966 and was shown to the Museum but not accessioned.
The revelation of a third object in 1984 prompted an investigation that produced clear evidence there had once been a larger collection of Egyptian antiquities at Melville House.
This paper offers the first published account of how these events unfolded and discusses the possible origins of the collection through a visit to Egypt by members of the Leslie-Melville family in 1856–7.
One possible explanation is that they were acquired by Alexander, Lord Balgonie, heir to the property, who visited Egypt in 1856 with his two sisters to improve his poor health after falling ill during service in the Crimean war.
But he returned to Britain weaker, and died in 1857, aged only 24, from TB.
It is possible that grief and the sad association of the antiquities with his early death prompted someone to dispose of them. It also could be that stories of “the mummy’s curse”, dating to the 1860s, linked such antiquities with ill fortune, prompting someone to bury them.
