How it all began

"The story of how the Glyptotek’s Egyptian Collection came into being is now told in the book How It All Began: The Story of Carl Jacobsen’s Egyptian Collection, written by the museum’s egyptologist for 42 years, Mogens Jørgensen. Against the background of Carl Jacobsen’s innumerable exchanges of letters, together with an impressive body of archive material Mogens Jørgensen has clearly mapped out, how, in a race with other major collectors, and in dialogue with the Egyptian authorities, the Glyptotek managed to build up an Egyptian collection which, in breadth and substance, matched those of the great museums in other countries. The book also gives a rare insight into the art trade of those days with everything it involved of risks, luck and canny business practice. Last, but not least Mogens Jørgensen maps out the contours of the brewing magnate’s monumental Glyptotek-aspiration: to bring together art from across the cultures of the millennia under the same roof. But credit for the Glyptotek’s collection of Egyptian art does not belong to Carl Jacobsen alone. Early on he allied himself with Denmark’s first egyptologist, Valdemar Schmidt, who became the industrialist’s confidential emissary and buyer when it came to acquiring ancient Egyptian treasures. Focusing on the most important purchases and the correspondence between Schmidt and Jacobsen, How It All Began explains how, in the best sense, this dynamic duo complemented each other, such that both the brewer’s own, near-pharaonic predilection for magnificent, popular monuments and the egyptologist’s delight over the rare curiosities were united in one and the same collection."--