Russian State Library Moscow's first public museum, and housed the Art collection of count Nikolai Petrovich Rumyantsev, which had been given to the Russian people and transferred from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Its donation covered above all books and manuscripts as well as an extensive numismatic and an ethnographic collection. These, as well as approximately 200 paintings and more than 20,000 prints, which had been selected from the collection of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, could be seen in the so-called Pashkov House (a palace, established between 1784 and 1787, in the proximity of the Kremlin). Tsar Alexander II of Russia donated the
Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum The Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum dates back to 1852 and includes items from the Predynastic Period to the 12th century AD. It belongs to the Oriental Art section of the museum. The Egyptian exposition is hosted in a single large hall on the ground floor on the eastern side of the Winter Palace. The hall serves as a passage to the exhibition of Classical Antiquities in other Hermitage buildings and is situated right under St. George's Hall. It was redesigned for the exhibition by Alexander Sivkov in 1940 and earlier served as