Another day, another museum… Today it was the turn of the Petrie Museum, UCL’s Egyptian archaeology teaching collection. It was compiled by some dude called Flinders (I know crazy name!) Petrie who galavanted around Egypt in the late 1800s collecting everything from beads, a man in a pot (seriously, a real life skeleton packed in a pot), the world’s oldest Ancient Egyptian garment, stelae, mummy cases, soul houses and pottery shreds. It is a veritable treasure trove of stuff.
But the absolute best bit is not the stuff, but the museum itself. It is the archetypical dusty, fusty, olde worlde museum. It looks like it’s just stepped off a Hollywood film set.
If I was old enough to know who Buffy was I would expect the Nescafé man to walk round the corner.
They have made a real effort for kids too, with bumper activity packs including word searches, dot to dots, colouring in and learning hieroglyphs. I’ll come back in a few years time, once I can use a felt tip!
They’ve also got artefacts you can handle. Here I am holding an ankh, the symbol of life, which was a really important thing in Egypt.
Personally I’d leave the buggy at home as it is quite small, but they are more than happy to let you park it in a corner and wander round in the sling.
I wonder how old you need to be to become a curator?
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