The Egyptology Collection
Official statement about the consultation on the display of ancient Egyptian human remains
The Manchester Museum is opening up its consultation into the re-display of its Egyptian gallery. Visitors are being given the opportunity to comment on a variety of approaches to the display of human remains.
The Manchester Museum's unwrapped mummies were covered temporarily in May as an experiment, to gauge public reaction to possible approaches for their display, in the planned future redevelopment of the ancient Egypt galleries. The Museum's Human Remains Panel met in June to consider the responses received so far.
Director of The Manchester Museum, Nick Merriman, commented, "We started the consultation process with a total covering of three of the Museum's unwrapped mummies. As public feedback showed that this is not the most appropriate long-term solution, we are trying out a range of different approaches to gauge public opinion. Some of these will include techniques which are used in museums in Egypt."
For the next phase of the consultation period, one of the mummies will be left partially unwrapped in its original display state, whilst another will be partially covered leaving the head, hands and feet exposed.
The Museum's consultation period will run for twelve months, during which time a number of different display methods will be tested out. All feedback received will be reviewed, as part of the wider consultation process for the re-development of the galleries.
What do you think? Visit and contribute to the new Manchester Museum Egyptian blog
The collection
The Manchester Museum is home to one of the largest and most important collections of ancient Egyptian artefacts in the United Kingdom. The collection includes objects from prehistoric Egypt (c. 10,000 BC) to the Byzantine era, up to around AD 600.
There are about 16,000 objects in the Egyptology collection. In addition to the exhibitions in the Daily Life Gallery and the Funerary Gallery, the entrance hall of the Museum displays monumental stone sculpture from the temples of ancient Bubastis (modern Tell Basta and Ihnasya el-Medina) in the Nile Delta. Objects that are not on display are kept in storage, where they are accessible to researchers from around the world.
View highlights of the collection
View a podcast about the ancient Egyptian town of Kahun by Dr Joyce Tyldesley, Lecturer in Egyptology at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology & Fellow of The Manchester Museum. iTunes software required to play the podcast can be found here.
Egypt in its African Context
The Manchester Museum, University of Manchester
3-4 October 2009
History of the collection
Like many British museums, The Manchester Museum gave financial support to British archaeologists working in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In return, the Museum received a share of the artefacts that were found (although this practice was gradually stopped once Egypt became an independent republic in 1952). Because the artefacts were discovered in controlled excavations, where archaeologists record and keep everything they find, the Egyptology collection contains a wide variety of objects which were unearthed exactly where they had been left by the ancient Egyptians.
The Museum received material from the excavations of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, the Egypt Exploration Society, and the Liverpool School of Archaeology. One important excavator was Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), who worked on dozens of sites in Egypt and pioneered new techniques and recording methods. Petrie's work in Egypt received generous funding from Jesse Haworth (1835-1921), a Manchester textile manufacturer who visited Egypt in 1880 and was very interested in ancient Egypt. Haworth donated his personal collection of Egyptian antiquities to the Manchester Museum and funded the 1912 extension of the Museum, which was named in his honour.
