Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 27 April 2026
rutschowscaya, marie-hélène (1947– ),
coptologist, archaeologist, and art historian
Dominique Bénazeth Keywords: Rutschowscaya, Marie-Hélène (1947– ); Art history; Bawit (Egypt); Byzantine art; Coptic archaeology; Coptic art; Coptic civilization; Coptic Encyclopedia; Coptic painting; Coptic textiles; Coptic woodwork; Coptology; Early Christian art; École du Louvre; International Association for Coptic Studies; Louvre Museum; Museum curators; Museum exhibits; Tud; Weaving.
Figure 1. Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya giving her acceptance speech at the ceremony where she was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur on 3 October 2012. Photo courtesy Louvre Museum. Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya (born Marie-Hélène de Rudder, in Taza, Morocco, on 22 July, 1947) is a French Coptologist who was a museum curator beginning in 1973. She entered the Egyptian Antiquities Department of the louvre museum in 1974. Rutschowscaya worked in the Louvre’s Coptic section, first under the direction of pierre du bourguet, S.J., and from 1979 until 2012, she was the head of this section, which she significantly expanded through recruitment and publicity (Bénazeth 2015). After being promoted to the ranks of Curator-in-Chief in 1991 and General Curator in 2005, she was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur by the French government in 2012 (fig. 1).
After secondary school in Sedan (France), Rutschowscaya attended the Sorbonne University in Paris, where she graduated in Art and Archaeology, History and Geography, and Egyptology under the direction of Professor Jean Leclant. Upon entering the Louvre, she approached Early Christian antiquities with Noël Duval, chief of the museum’s Greco-Roman Department, and Coptic art under the guidance of du Bourguet. She educated herself about Coptic weaving techniques through the technical courses of the cieta (Centre International d’Étude des Textiles Anciens) in Lyon.
© Claremont Graduate University 1 Bénazeth, Dominique: Rutschowscaya, Marie-Hélène 27 April 2026 Her work on the Coptic collection has been diverse. She participated in the museum’s “Grand-Louvre” transformation, with the opening of new rooms for its Coptic antiquities in 1997. Rutschowscaya also participated in interviews on Coptic masterpieces for a new kind of audio guide for the Louvre: “Apa Ména icon” (2007), “Helladia’s ivory comb” (2008), and “Introduction to the New Exhibition” (2010), for the project entitled “Orient Méditerranéen dans l’Empire Romain.” The Grand-Louvre transformation was a rotating presentation of artefacts from the Louvre’s three antique departments (Oriental, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman). She supervised this presentation (Rutschowscaya et al. 2012: 20–23) in connection with the Coptic rooms, which were inaugurated in 2012. Together with General Curator Jannic Durand, she undertook the Scientific and Cultural Project for a future Department of Byzantine Art. This project was ultimately deferred (Bénazeth 2015: 14), but a “Département des arts de Byzance et des chrétientés en Orient” was finally created in 2022, including the Coptic antiquities.
Throughout these years, Rutschowscaya took care of the Louvre’s collection of 10,000 Coptic items, reorganizing its storerooms (Rutschowscaya and Dal-Prà 1988), checking objects and having them analyzed (inks, pigments, wood species, textile staples, and dyes) and conserved if necessary. For example, in 1998, she obtained spectacular treatment of the famous “Antinoé veil” by the renowned Abegg Stiftung’s textile conservation studio. She agreed to deposit some pieces in other museums (including the Musée Dobrée in Nantes; the Musée des Tissus in Lyon; the Muséum d’Histoire naturelle in Colmar; and the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris).
The Coptic section at the Louvre received ceramics from museum excavations carried out at Tōd (see tud), in which Rutschowscaya participated from 1981 to 1984; they were the final partition of Coptic archeological finds between Egypt and France (Rutschowscaya 1985). Other important acquisitions made by Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya were 299 Coptic items from the Raymond Weill legacy (Rutschowscaya 1998b); a large textile decorated with grape-harvesting cupids (Rutschowscaya 1980); a wooden church door (Rutschowscaya 2000); two wooden arcades with inlaid Coptic inscriptions (Rutschowscaya 2004a); and Jean Clédat’s archives, a legacy from the archaeologist’s daughter, Mrs. Jean Mallet, including 73 papyri from bawiṭ (Gaillard 1999; Clackson and Delattre 2014). The publication from the archives of the first works on this site (Clédat 1999), and important research conducted on the antiquities once they were given to the Louvre, led to the reopening of excavations at Bawiṭ in 2002, as a collaboration between the Louvre and the ifao (Institut français d’archéologie orientale) in Cairo.
Rutschowscaya’s fieldwork, from 2003 through 2012, focused on structures in the northern part of the kôm, including a large room decorated with paintings representing the Nativity, the Prophets, and probably the monastery’s founders: Apa Apollō, sitting with phib and Anoup (Rutschowscaya 2010); on the eastern wall, a niche was surrounded by two wooden consoles with the archangels michael and gabriel sculptured and painted (Rutschowscaya 2013).
In Egypt, Rutschowscaya studied the wooden artefacts from the ifao excavations of Roland-Pierre Gayraud in Fustat/Istabl’Antar. She presented the results in Cairo, in a 2008 seminar, followed by the first symposium on these excavations (6–8 December 2009), but it remains unfortunately unpublished.
Outside the Louvre, Rutschowscaya served as a commissioner on diverse museum committees. She studied some pharaonic and Coptic collections in French museums, in Auch, Périgueux, Bordeaux, Lille, Marseille, Nantes, Le Puy-en-Velay, Orléans, Die, and Montpellier. She agreed to loans for many exhibitions on Coptic art and civilization in France and abroad (Paris 1981, 1982, 1992, and 1995; Guiry-en-Vexin 1986; Marseille 1987; Colmar 1990; Périgueux 1991; Hamm 1996; Rome 1997; Florence 1998; and Athens 2000) and gave scientific contributions, sometimes required by the academic committee (Paris 1979; Roubaix Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 2 Bénazeth, Dominique: Rutschowscaya, Marie-Hélène 27 April 2026 1992; Agen 1998; Lattes 1999; Paris and Agde 2000–2001; Nantes 2001; Rouen, Roanne, and Paris 2002–2004; Montbéliard 2004; Périgueux 2009; Le Mans, Millau, and Sarrebourg 2009–2010; Colmar 2011; Catalonia 2011–2012; and Paris 2017). The catalogues of these exhibitions owe a great deal to her participation.
She supervised the exhibition “L’art copte en Égypte,” with loans not only from the Louvre but from the coptic museum in Cairo and major collections from Egypt, Europe, Russia, and the United States (Rutschowscaya and Bénazeth 2000–2001). She lent for the exhibitions in Catalonia an icon in her personal collection, The Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt, painted in the Coptic contemporaneous style in 2006 by Dalia Sobhi Ibrahim (Catalonia 2011–2012: 146, 265, no140). See fig. 2.
In addition to her collections work, Rutschowscaya undertook scientific activities linked to museums and to Coptic civilization.
She visited a number of institutions, mostly for study, evaluation, or advice. In 1993, she traveled to Saint Petersburg and Moscow in Russia to study Coptic collections at the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums; she then invited the Hermitage’s curator, Alexander Kakovkin, to give a lecture in Paris to show the Louvre’s appreciation for Coptic collections in Russian museums and for those responsible for them.
Rutschowscaya was an associate editor of The Coptic Encyclopedia in the areas of art and archaeology after Pierre du Bourguet’s death in 1988.
She has also served as a member of the board of the International Association for Coptic Studies (iacs) and the board of cieta; was president of the Association Francophone de Coptologie; and was a co-organizer of the Eighth iacs Congress in Paris (2004).
Figure 2. Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya at the entrance Rutschowscaya has continually of the exhibition in Palma, Catalonia, 26 February expanded interactions with 2011. Photo courtesy Dominique Bénazeth.
researchers and worked to promote Coptic studies through publications, as a member of editorial boards, and as presenter of various communications in about 50 academic congresses. She has participated in scientific conferences as well as those for the general public, totaling about 60 events in Paris and in a number of other places in France. She also granted radio and television interviews to French outlets about the exhibition “L’art copte en Égypte,” the publication of “Les arts de la couleur” (Rutschowscaya 1999), and the reopening of the Louvre’s Coptic rooms in 2012. Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 3 Bénazeth, Dominique: Rutschowscaya, Marie-Hélène 27 April 2026 Her contributions to teaching are also exemplary. Rutschowscaya created a weaving workshop for children visiting the Louvre, in keeping with her interest in supporting students and young researchers. She taught Egyptology, and Late Antique and Christian archaeology, at the École du Louvre, Paris University, the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and the Institut National du Patrimoine. Rutschowscaya opened the Louvre’s collections to students in a Coptic language seminar led by Anne Boud’hors (Paris, Institut Catholique) and facilitated the publication of Coptic ostraca. Through this intense activity, Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya contributed to the vitality of Coptic studies in France (Boud’hors and Bénazeth 1991).