The Nicholson Epigraphic Collection at the Chau Chak Wing Museum of the University of Sydney.

Abstract

The research focuses on the study of the collection of 71 Greek and Latin inscriptions kept at the Chau Chak Wing Museum of the University of Sydney (New South Wales, Australia), the most important of the southern hemisphere. The inscriptions were almost all collected by Sir Charles Nicholson, one of the founders of the first Australian University, the University of Sydney, during two travels he made through Italy (Rome and Naples) in 1857 and 1858, with the declared intention to acquire a collection of antiquities which would be donated in 1860 to the newborn University in order to institute an academic Museum: the Nicholson Museum. The main aim of this research is to analyse, according to the parameters of contemporary Epigraphy, the entire collection and to update its last published catalogue, which dates back to 1948. At the same time, it focuses on the reconstruction of the collection's history, from the study of the inscriptions' context of provenance to the analysis of their life cycle in the Nicholson Museum, today transferred into the new Chau Chak Wing Museum. This dissertation is the result of a year of preparatory study and 3 months of on-field research at Sydney in Spring 2022, as part of an Erasmus+ ICM mobility.