Milano e l’Egitto dai primi contatti agli entusiasmi ottocenteschi: la nascita di un museo diffuso

The contacts between Egypt and Milan go back to the Fifteenth century, and have ben par- ticularly intense in the Nineteenth century, when scholars, travellers, and political refugees visited the country or lived in Cairo or in Alexandria. Many of them, as Acerbi or Vassalli, sent back to Milan their findings, that ended up in local collections and museums. The arti- cle presents, in an historical perspective, the intellectual milieu in which these contacts developed, and the formation of the Milanese collections. New data have been discovered on the provenance and the ways of arrival in town of specific items, as the Old Kingdom false-door of Nebi or the Busca papyrus.