Phoebe A Hearst Museum of Anthropology

The Museum was founded in 1901 by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who also funded George Reisner’s exhibitions. Today, the Hearst houses the oldest and largest anthropological collection in the Western US, preserving and interpreting a global record of material culture as represented by more than 3.8 million catalogued objects, the largest of which are the California collections.

The Hearst Museum has an extensive collection of approximately 20,000 ancient Egyptian artifacts, with a special emphasis on predynastic Egypt. The core of this collection comes from excavations carried out by George Reisner between 1899 and 1905.