Ancient Egypt: A beginner's guide
Places to visit
The Egyptian Museum
Midan el-Tahrir
Cairo
Open daily 9am-5pm
Contains over 120,000 objects, not least the 3,500 artefacts from
the tomb of Tutankhamun.
British Museum
Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DG
Tel: 020 7323 8000
E-mail: information@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
Open: Sat-Wed 10am-5.30pm, Thurs-Fri 10am-8.30pm
The Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan houses an important collection
of objects that illustrate every aspect of the cultures of the Nile valley.
Room 61 at the museum contains an interim display on understanding ancient
Egyptian culture while new permanent galleries about social and religious
practices in ancient Egypt are being prepared to open in 2005. The interim
display includes some of the artefacts and themes which will feature in
the new galleries, spanning a period from 2500 BC to the 7th century AD.
There are four main themes: hieroglyphs and the written record; developing
the collection; illuminating the collection; living in ancient Egypt.
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
University College London
Malet Place
London WC1E 6BT
Tel: 020 7679 2884
Fax: 020 7679 2886
E-mail: petrie.museum@ucl.ac.uk
Website: www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk
Open Tues-Fri 1-5pm, Sat 10am-1pm
The museum houses an estimated 80,000 objects, making it one of the
greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world.
The collection grew to its international stature thanks mainly to William
Flinders Petrie (1853-1942). He excavated dozens of major sites in the
course of his career, including: the Roman period cemeteries at Hawara,
famous for the beautiful mummy portraits in classical Roman style; Amarna,
the city of the pharaoh Akhenaten; and the first true pyramid, at Meydum,
where he uncovered some of the earliest evidence for mummification. You
can also view the collection online at Digital
Egypt for Universities.
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Trumpington Street
Cambridge CB2 1RB
Tel: 01223 332900
Fax: 01223 332933
E-mail: fitzmuseum-enquiries@lists.cam.ac.uk
Website: www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
Open Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 2.15-5pm
Has an internationally significant collection, including the lid of
Rameses III's sarcophagus.
National Museums Scotland
Chambers Street
Edinburgh EH1 1JF
Tel: 0131 247 4422
Fax: 0131 220 4819
E-mail: info@nms.ac.uk
Website: www.nms.ac.uk/ancientegypt.aspx
Open: Mon, Wed-Sat 10am-5pm, Tues 10am-8pm, Sun 12 noon-5pm
The Ancient Egypt gallery on the first floor contains mummies, jewellery,
ancient bread and fruit, royal sculpture, writing instruments, children's
toys and much more, all building a vivid picture of life and death in
that society. Highlights include the head of a shawabti-figure of the
heretic king Akhenaten and a beautiful goldfish pendant made as a charm
to protect a child from drowning. At the heart of the gallery, a special
section – 'The Underworld of the Tomb' – explores death and the afterlife.
Manchester Museum
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
Tel: 0161 275 2634
Fax: 0161 275 2676
Website: www.museum.manchester.ac.uk/collection/ancientegypt/
Open: Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 11am-4pm
The nucleus of the museum's collection is a series of outstanding
objects of everyday use from the town sites of Kahun and Gurob. You can
view many of the items on the Virtual
Kahun website. The museum also sponsors an Egyptian mummy project,
a key element of which is the development of virtually non-destructive
methods of obtaining tissue samples from mummies for further study. Its
tissue bank stores samples from mummies held in collections worldwide,
outside Egypt, acting as a resource for studying schistosomiasis and other
diseases.
