The objects found during the excavations conducted from 1937 to 1939 at Edfu in Upper Egypt by the Polish archeological mission in cooperation with the French Institute of Oriental Archeology in Cairo, played a crucial role in forming the Collection of Egyptian Art. Handing them over as a loan of the Warsaw University, added splendour to the ceremony of opening the new edifice of the Warsaw National Museum in 1938.

The most precious object among the rich archeological material coming from Edfu, characterized by great artistic and historic value, is the so-called false door from the tomb of Izi, a dignitary from the 6th Dynasty. Amongst the objects found at the necropolis of Old and Middle Kingdoms most noteworthy are the funerary and votive stelae as well as the group of stone, bronze and pottery vessels of high artistic and technological value. In the Ptolemaic and Roman urban district of Edfu, besides various architectonic fragments were found some relief models from a sculptor’s workshop and a rich selection of terracotta figurines, as well as Greek papyri and ostraca with economic texts. Included in the collection were also rectangular and anthropoid coffins from Meir and Deir el-Medina respectively, presented as a gift form the French Institute of Oriental Archeology in Cairo.

Anthropoid coffins from the 19th century collection of antiquities of the Warsaw University, the papyrus with the Book of the Dead of (Ba)Kai from the Tyszkiewicz collection from Łohojsk, as well as a purchased precious portrait of a Fayum boy, are amongst the most valued objects of the pre-war Egyptian collection.

After the WWII the Egyptian collection was supplemented with, among others, antiquities from old German collections taken over on the Western Territories. Stone and pottery vessels, a stone palette from the Predynastic Period, and fragments of reliefs from the Old Kingdom necropolis in Abusir deserve special attention.

In 1956 Professor Kazimierz Michałowski resumed excavations in Egypt and new objects, from the town Tell Atrib in the Delta, started to arrive. They represented ceramic repertory and terracottas of the Ptolemaic and Roman Epoch. At that time the collection was enriched also by an important group of reliefs and architectural elements coming from the temple of Tuthmose III and from Meroitic buildings discovered during the excavations at Faras (a site in Sudan).

Alongside historic private collections incorporated into the Museum, the Egyptian Collection obtained some valuable small pieces of statuary, as well as some minor art related to the tomb equipment. The unique artistic value is represented by the head of a stone statuette of Osiris from the Late Period, coming from the Wilanów Branicki collection (the loan of the Palace Museum in Wilanów). One of the more important objects from the Czartoryski Goluchow collection is a cartonnage mask of a boy and a wooden sculpture of Anubis from the New Kingdom, as well as gold rings from the Late Period.

The loan of the Louvre Museum is another important addition, thanks to which the collection of Egyptian art was enriched, in 1960, by two monumental statues from the New Kingdom temple in Karnak: one of a lion headed goddess Sekhmet and the other one of the god Amun.