George Washington was in his first term as president when a group of curious minds in Albany started what would become New York’s oldest museum.
That was 1791. Some 235 years later, the Albany Institute of History & Art is still going strong, and it’s hiding one of the best plot twists in Upstate NY.
It involves a steamship, a coffee and spice businessman, and a 3,000-year-old mummy who spent about a century being mistaken for someone else.
How two Egyptian mummies ended up in Albany
Back in 1909, museum trustee Samuel W. Brown, who worked for Albany’s Bacon, Stickney Coffee and Spice company, bought two mummies from the Cairo Museum and had them shipped across the Atlantic to Albany.
Brown even had one partially unwrapped to prove it was the real deal, according to WAMC.
They’ve been on display ever since, which means generations of Capital Region kids have pressed their faces against the glass to get a look.
The mummy mix-up that lasted a century
For most of that time, one of the two mummies was presented as a woman. Then, scans at Albany Medical Center told a very different story.
The skeleton had a male jaw, eye sockets and brow ridges, plus a narrower pelvis.
Even better, the right shoulder blade was overdeveloped, the kind of wear that comes from years of repetitive work, the Times Union reported. That matched the hieroglyphs on the bottom of the coffin, which identified the occupant as Ankhefenmut, a priest and sculptor from Egypt’s 21st Dynasty.
In other words, “she” was a he, and a hardworking artist at that. Museum officials announced the discovery in 2013, alongside a whole exhibit built around the mystery.
Here’s a fun bonus fact: Ankhefenmut’s coffin is scattered across three countries. Albany has the bottom, while other pieces ended up at the British Museum in London and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
What else you’ll find inside
The mummies are just the start.
The museum’s Ancient Egypt exhibit also includes coffin pieces, canopic jars, a statue of an ibis and a mummified cat.
Then there’s the art too, of course.
The Albany Institute has a seriously impressive collection of Hudson River School landscapes, including works by Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, the painters who made Upstate NY’s mountains and valleys famous.
On top of that, there are tens of thousands of objects and roughly a million documents covering everything from Dutch colonial history to early American furniture.
How to visit from NYC
The museum is at 125 Washington Avenue in downtown Albany, about three hours from the city by car or train.
Here’s what to know before you go, per the museum’s website:
- Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday, noon to 5 pm (closed Monday and Tuesday)
- Admission: $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students, $8 for kids ages 6 to 12, and free for kids under 6
- Free entry: Bank of America cardholders get in free the first full weekend of each month, and there are free evenings on select First Fridays
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