Acknowledgements
Research visits in 2021 and finishing of the manuscript in 2022 was partially supported by the European Regional Development Fund Project, “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/16 019/0000734), by the Cooperatio programme Archaeology at the Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Prague, and within the non-investment subsidy MSMT-1-VEG 2021, no. 227/2021-8 and MSMT-1-VEG 2022, no. 4671/2022-8. Throughout my studies, my research has been supported by several projects running at the Czech Institute of Egyptology. Most of the projects were funded by Charles University and I was their principal investigator: Grant No. 526112 “Ancient Egyptian copper objects up to the end of the Middle Kingdom” (2012–2014); Grant No. 38715 “Early copper metallurgy in Ancient Egypt—a case study of the material from Ägyptisches Museum der Universität Leipzig” (2015–2016; both Grant Agency of Charles University), and Internal Student Project of Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Grant No. FF_VG_2015_016 “Early copper metallurgy in Ancient Egypt—a case study of the material from Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien” (2015–2016). The first two projects benefited greatly from (ongoing) cooperation with Jiří Kmošek (Institute of Science and Technology in Art, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Nuclear Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Řež). Other researchers instrumental in these projects were Ján Dupej (Institute of Anthropology, Faculty of Science, Charles University), Marek Fikrle (Nuclear Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic), Yulia V. Erban Kochergina (Czech Geological Survey), and, last but not least, our colleagues from Leipzig: Dietrich Raue and Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel (Ägyptisches Museum—Georg Steindorff—der Universität Leipzig). The last project would be incomplete without the expertise of Katharina Uhlir and the cooperation of Marie Jentsch and Martina Griesser (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Conservation Science Department), together with Egyptological support from Regina Hölzl and conservator’s support from Irene Engelhardt, and now from Karoline Halbwachs (Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection at KHM). More recently, our efforts in Egypt were supported by the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) in Cairo and its funding of the “action spécifique no. 19643”. I am also thankful to Vera Müller (OREA, Academy of Sciences in Vienna) for the invitation to participate in an exciting new FWF project aiming for the new publication of the objects excavated by Hermann Junker at Tura.
Research in Egypt on the excavations at Abusir and some of the research visits were funded within the project Progress Q11 “Complexity and resilience. Ancient Egyptian civilisation in multidisciplinary and multicultural perspective” and, before 2017, within the Programme for the Development of Fields of Study at Charles University, No. P14 “Archaeology of non-European regions, sub-programme Research of ancient Egyptian civilisation: Cultural and political adaptation of the North African civilisations in ancient history (5000 BC–1000 AD)”.
I would like to thank the following colleagues from the Czech Institute of Egyptology throughout the initial stages of the project: Katarína Arias Kytnarová, Ladislav Bareš, Martina Bardoňová, Vladimír Brůna, Filip Coppens, Veronika Dulíková, Jiří Janák, Lucie Jirásková, Jaromír Krejčí, Mohamed Megahed, Jana Mynářová, Marie Peterková Hlouchová, Břetislav Vachala, Lenka Varadzinová, Miroslav Verner, Ivana Vlková and Hana Vymazalová; Luděk Markvart and Alexandra Hejduková for their assistance and help. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Mgr. Miroslav Bárta, Dr., for providing me with the initial impetus to study ancient Egyptian copper and then for the opportunity to not only study but also excavate and document new metal finds at the Czech concession at Abusir.
I would like to thank the following museums and their curators (omitting those already mentioned) for the opportunity to work on the published and unpublished material in their collections: the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (Liam McNamara); the British Museum (Neal Spencer, John Taylor, Quanyu Wang); the Louvre (Vincent Rondot, Geneviève Pierrat-Bonnefois, Nathalie Couton-Perche); the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Denise Doxey, Rita E. Freed); the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures in Prague (Eva Dittertová, Pavel Onderka); the National Museum in Warsaw (Monika Dolińska); the Neues Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Robert Kuhn, Friederike Seyfried, Anke Weber, Olivia Zorn, Iris Hertel); Manchester Museum (Campbell Price); Museo Egizio, Torino (Christian Greco, Federica Facchetti, Alice Salvador); the Petrie Museum, University College London (Alice Stevenson, Stephen Quirke, Anna Garnett); the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim (Regine Schulz, Antje Spiekermann, Dorothea Lindemann), the Sammlung des Ägyptologischen Instituts der Universität Heidelberg (Dina Faltings).
Throughout the years, I was also able to see and sometimes study the material from other missions working in Egypt, and I would like to thank their directors and staff: the AERA mission at Giza (Mark Lehner, Claire Malleson, Sarah Hitchens); the Swiss-French mission at Saqqara (Philippe Collombert, Noémi Monbaron); the IFAO mission at Abu Rawash (Yann Tristant); the IFAO laboratory (Anita Quiles, Nadine Mounir, Eman Zidan and the directors of IFAO, Laurent Bavay, Laurent Coulon); the Polish-Slovak mission at Tell el-Retaba (Sławomir Rzepka, Jozef Hudec, Veronika Verešová, Lucia Hulková), the German-Swiss mission at the Elephantine Island of the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo Department (Martin Sählhof, Johanna Sigl, Marie-Kristin Schröder, Fernanda Lozada).
Colleagues from other institutions have provided indispensable help in discussing various issues and questions and/or provided access to the inaccessible literature: Nils Anfinset; Bettina Bader; Edward Brovarski; Richard Bussmann; Susan Cohen; Marcin Czarnowicz; Andrés Diego Espinel; Biri Fay; Andreas Hauptmann; Ole Herslund; Ľubica Hudáková; Alexander Ilin-Tomich; Douglas Inglis; Johannes Jüngling; Andrea Kilian; Sabine Kubisch; Maksim Lebedev; Manuela Lehmann; Kate Liszka; Ellen Morris; Daria Montanari; Miriam Müller; Frederik Rademakers; Maren Schentuleit; Eva Stopková; Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli; Pierre Tallet; Veronika Verešová; Georges Verly; Federico Zangani; Monika Zöller-Engelhardt.
I would like to thank the following institutions and colleagues for the permission to use images in this work: Hartwig Altenmüller; Australian Centre for Egyptology, Macquarie University, Sydney (Naguib Kanawati); Belgian Archaeological Mission to Elkab of the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels, Belgium (Wouter Claes); Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire; Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Kairo (Mustafa Tupev); The Egypt Exploration Society, London (Stephanie Boonstra); E. Christiana Köhler; Elsevier; the Manchester Museum (Campbell Price); Heather M.-L. Miller; Massimiliano Nuzzolo; Richard B. Parkinson; Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Wien (Ernst Czerny); Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Tine Bagh, Ole Haupt); Ägyptisches Museum—Georg Steindorff—of Leipzig Universität (Dietrich Raue); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Denise Doxey, Carolyn Cruthirds); The Trustees of the British Museum.
I would like to thank Milan Rydvan for the meticulous copy-editing of the text; to Markéta Kobierská for help with preparing some of the figures; and to Dietrich Raue, Johannes Auenmüller, Julien Cooper, Jiří Kmošek, and Leslie Anne Warden for reading and commenting on parts of the manuscript. Any mistakes and omissions that remain are my sole responsibility.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Ivana Smulikova for tolerating endless hours of my staring at the computer screen rather than spending time mindfully together; and my family for their manifold support over the years. Ďakujem vám z celého srdca. Any mistakes or omissions are the sole responsibility of the author.