The museum inventory of Oswald Pictet’s donation contains
no information on how his Egyptian pieces were acquired, with the exception of a few weapons accompanied by an appalling comment: “Six months afterwards [after the Battle of Toski, Egypt, 1889], the ground was still strewn with the dried corpses of
the dervishes killed; these lances were taken from the hands of these corpses.” Elsewhere in the MEG’s inventory, it can be read that Zulu weapons were “picked up” after the Battle of Ulundi in 1879, during the colonization of Natal by British troops
F. Morin/MEG