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On The Trail Of The Ancient Egyptians In UK Museums
By Narelle Doe
11/12/2007
Image: A photograph of a replica of Tutankhamun's famous golden mask.
A replica of Tutankhamun's famous golden mask. The Tutankhamun Exhibition, Dorchester.
With the return of Tutankhamun’s treasures to London in 2007, Britain is gripped by a new wave of mummy mania.
But if you can't make it to the 02 Arena and short of visiting the Land of the Pharaohs itself, a visit to a local museum will open up a wealth of ancient Egyptian treasures. Venues all across the country are not only chock full of mummies but also have enough scarabs, amulets, canopic jars, jewellery, pottery, and textiles to make even the Queen of the Nile happy.
So slip on your sandals, kohl your eyes and walk like an Egyptian to some of the best permanent collections and exhibitions the country has to offer.
Image: A photograph of an Egyptian sacred cat statue with a ring through its nose.
This statue of a sacred cat is one of the most popular Egyptian exhibits at the British Museum. Article front picture also British Museum.
First stop for any serious Egyptology lover, inevitably, should be the British Museum, which, after the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, has the largest and most diverse collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts in the world.
Highlights include a stunning selection of mummies, coffins and canopic jars, and colossal statues like the bust of Ramesses II and head of Amenhotep III, plus, of course, the Rosetta Stone, which paved the way for understanding hieroglyphs.
Remote visitors can take the online tour of the Egyptology collection at www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/egypt.aspx
Image: A photograph of a four and half thousand year old linen tunic
This linen tunic is over 4,000 years old. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London
Although it’s perhaps not so well known as some other museums, the Petrie Museum houses one of the world’s largest Egyptology collections, with some 80,000 objects, ranking only behind Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, the British Museum and Berlin’s Agyptisches Museum.
It covers artefacts from prehistory, through the times of the Pharaohs, to Egypt’s later Ptolemaic, Roman and Coptic periods. It has lots of ancient Egyptian costumes and textiles, including the ‘oldest dress’, colourful tiles, carvings and frescoes, plus the world’s largest collection of Roman-period mummy portraits.
The collection is full of 'firsts': among its treasures are one of the earliest pieces of linen from Egypt; a fragment from the first kinglist or calendar; the earliest example of metal and the first worked iron beads; the earliest example of glazing; the oldest wills on papyrus paper, and the only veterinary papyrus from Ancient Egypt. www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk
Image: A photograph of three Egyptian mummy coffins and one child's mummy coffin
Courtesy The National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
The Royal Museum, currently being transformed in the National Museum of Scotland, has coffins and mummies galore but a wealth of other treasures too, including statues, poems, toys and a 4,000-year-old gold fish pendant - a ‘magical’ charm to protect a child from drowning.
Every object in the collection tells a story or opens a mystery. For example, who were the young woman and child buried with magnificent gold and luxurious finery about 1550 BC? Evidence suggests the woman may have been a queen, if so this is the only complete Ancient Egyptian royal burial to be seen anywhere outside Cairo.
Buried with beautiful jewellery and pottery, even their ancient bread and fruit for their journey to the afterlife has survived over the ages in the dust of the desert. www.nms.ac.uk/ancientegypt.aspx
Image: A photograph of a mummy mask with a golden face
Courtesy The Egypt Centre, University of Wales, Swansea.
Egypt Centre, University of Wales, Swansea
The Egypt Centre has more than 4,500 items, most donated by the Wellcome Trust, covering all aspects of ancient Egyptian life and ritual, from pages of books of the dead to coffins and even ancient earplugs – metal discs with grooved edges worn in a hole in the earlobe.
www.swan.ac.uk/egypt/
Image: a photo of a coffin lid with a portrait of young man with curly hair
A coffin from the Ashmolean Museum. © Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean houses one of the most extensive Ancient Egyptian collections in Britain, including several mummies, a fine double-sided mummy portrait, a hippopotamus statuette and the mysterious ‘Scorpion King’ mace head.
Did a ‘King Scorpion’ ever exist? It is a mystery that has confounded experts for years and recent tomb excavations unearthing jars and packages labelled with the scorpion sign have only added to the debate. www.ashmolean.org
Image: A photograph of two standing mummy cases with painted decorations
Courtesy Manchester Museum.
Budding Egyptologists should not miss the Manchester Museum, which, with 20,000-odd items has one of the country’s largest and most important collections from Ancient Egypt.
Monumental stone sculptures from the temples of Bubastis in the Nile Delta greet the visitor in the museum’s entrance hall, and there are further daily life and funerary galleries and an atmospheric mummy room in a collection that boasts artefacts from prehistoric times (around 10,000 BC) to the Byzantine period (c600 AD). www.museum.manchester.ac.uk
A reconstruction of the antechamber in Tutankhamun's tomb. The Tutankhamun Exhibition, Dorchester
The Tutankhamun Exhibition, Dorchester
The Tutankhamun Exhibition has attracted worldwide acclaim since it opened in 1987, as the then successor to the Treasures of Tutankhamun Exhibition at the British Museum in London.
Fantastic handcrafted replicas of the original treasures mean that this is the only exhibition this side of Egypt where it is possible to see Tutankhamun’s magnificent Gold Mask, the Golden Throne and an exact anatomical recreation of Tutankhamun’s mummy.
Children will particularly enjoy the atmospheric replica of the infamous Boy-King’s tomb, where the dramatised audio presentation and recreated oil smells of the tomb transport visitors back to 1922 to join the English archaeologist Howard Carter when he first entered the tomb in the Valley of the Kings. www.tutankhamun-exhibition.co.uk
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Information published here was believed to be correct at the time it was prepared. Welsh language pages developed with CYMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales, funded by the Welsh Assembly Government.