M. A. Mansoor

Egyptian antiquarian

M. A. Mansoor (1881–1968) was an antiquarian who compiled a collection of Amarna Period sculptures.

He was born to Coptic Orthodox Egyptian parents in Cairo in 1881. After having graduated from high school with knowledge of Arabic, English and French, he taught Arabic for some years to foreign officials who occupied principal positions in the Egyptian government. As early as his sixteenth year, the discipline of Egyptology began to interest him: he studied much about Egyptian art & Coptic, beginning to decipher hieroglyphics. Following this, he gained an interest in the study of the art of Mesopotamia, Greece, Persia, and the early Christian and Islamic worlds.

In October 1904, he approached the Swiss manager of Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, who was one of his students of Arabic. He asked to rent two showcases in the hotel lobby to display and sell to collectors the small collection of ancient Egyptian sculptures, bronzes, amulets, faience figurines and jewelry that he had acquired during the last few years. The manager allowed him the showcases on a trial basis for a few months. A year and a half later, the two showcases became a small shop in the main hall of the famous hotel. At that time, Mansoor's business was established. In later years, he opened two more shops in the Semiramis and Continental Hotels and a large gallery across the street from the Cairo Museum. The purchase and sale of Egyptian and other antiquities was at the time legal, though the Egyptian Department of Antiquities retained the right to inspect all shops and galleries that bought and sold these artifacts. If an important object was found, of which there was no known example in the Cairo Museum, the Department of Antiquities exercised its right to purchase it at a reasonable price. This, however, seldom happened as the Department rarely had the funds to acquire major antiquities. During his many years in the antique business, M. A. Mansoor met and befriended several of the Egyptologists, antiquarians and collectors of the time. Mansoor sold many important ancient works of art for collections or museums. Hundreds of these masterpieces of Egyptian art are today in the world's leading museums: the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Louvre, the Vatican Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit Museum and the Chicago Oriental Institute, etc., and in many private collections. In 1924 M. A. Mansoor started a collection of rare Amarna artifacts with two small Amarna heads. This grew into a collection that claims to be the world's largest private collection of Amarna artifacts. The collection was acquired by Mansoor over 20 years from a single, unnamed source.

Mansoor carefully studied every object he possessed and consulted with many experts and connoisseurs he knew. Every object was dated to the best of his knowledge. Until the late 1930s, only a few scientific tests to study ancient works of art had been developed. The experts and antiquarians had to rely on their own knowledge of the styles of the many periods of Egyptian art. The microscope, and even the simple magnifying glass, often showed the careful observer the patination, erosion, or dendritic formations (the passing of time action, and the effect of burial in wet soil or sand on the surface of the object under study).

Mansoor is well known for the controversial use of rock varnish as a means of authenticating his collection of limestone sculptures from Amarna. The collection consists of portrait busts of the Amarna royal family and are in excellent condition. However the majority of art historians, conservators, and archaeologists consider the Mansoor collection to be suspect based on style, inconsistencies with the Amarna style known from archaeological record, and the quality of the collection's make.

After Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamon's tomb in 1922, tourists and art lovers from all over the world began to visit Egypt in ever increasing numbers. Mansoor's business flourished; there was a constant demand for antiquities. The stories he told of these years were fabulous. These were the years when he made the acquaintance of eminent persons in the field of Egyptology who were to become his teachers, advisers, friends and customers. But above all, he was serving the better interest of Egyptology.