It is a curious feature of Crowley's accounts of events that he persisted, throughout his life, in calling the museum in which Rose led him to the stélé "the Boulak museum"; or even as the "museum at Bulaq" ( in "The Equinox of the Gods"). The new museum was then, as it still is, known as the Egyptian Museum or as the Cairo Museum. However, he wrote of it, what very little he did write of it, as if there was no potential for confusion. The usual view, of the few students who have realised that there was a problem, is that the museum was generally known by that name since the days of the famous museum of Boulaq. This might have been the case: though, in much reading of the contemporary literature, I have not seen one single instance of that term in reference to the new museum. Another suggestion has been that as the new museum was itself in the Boulaq district the title was again appropriate. However it was not in Boulaq. Though it was not far from the location of the original Boulaq museum, there was the clear geographical boundary of the Ismailiyeh Canal (filled in around 1908), albeit only a few hundred yards to the north, separating it from the suburb of Boulaq.

Nevertheless, there is some contemporary evidence for the origin of this anomaly. In the Egyptian Gazette of Thursday, March 17th, 1904, in an article about Mariette on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue of the great man in the grounds of the museum, there is this: "The founding of the old Boulac museum, which was transferred to Ghizeh, and retransferred but a short time ago to Boulac, was due to the marvellous energy and perseverance of F. Auguste Ferdinand Mariette." It being the only English-language daily newspaper in Egypt at that time, it is quite possible that Crowley read that and it is quite possible he continued for the rest of his life with the impression that the museum was in Boulaq. Alternatively, it is possible that he was not even aware that there had been earlier museums or, if he had been, that he was not aware that the old Boulaq museum had been on a different site - and that that was all there was to it. Certainly his account of the museum tallies, by and large, with the actual museum. He wrote that he had dinner with a "Brugsch-Bey" of the museum, to talk about the stélé, and there was an Emile Brugsch who was actually a conservator at the museum ("Bey" being a title; one lower than that of "Pasha" which he was later awarded). Brugsch had been responsible for the recovery of the famous Deir el Bahari cache, that of the royal mummies. Also Crowley's description of the museum as having two floors fits. However, he was always very vague with the physical description; which is surprising for a writer of his experience writing about something which had been so important to him. Again, this may have been because it never occurred to him that there was any mystery to it and he thought that anyone who was interested could simply investigate it for themselves.

by Colin S. McLeod