The Manchester Museum

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The Manchester Museum
Manchester University
Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9PL
United Kingdom
Telephone - +44 (0)161 275 2634
www.museum.manchester.ac.uk

 

Exterior of Manchester Museum
©Manchester Museum
The Manchester Museum collection numbers almost 4.25 million specimens and objects. The collections include Archaeology, Archery, Egyptology, Living Cultures, Zoology (including insects), Botany, Geology and Mineralogy, and live animals in the Vivarium.
 

THE EGYPTIAN AND SUDANESE COLLECTIONS

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 around 16,000 objects in the Egyptology collection, covering a geographical area from the northern Sudan to the Mediterranean. The major groups include human remains, with the Museum holding the largest collection of Egyptian mummies in the UK after The British Museum, a fine collection of Roman period mummy portraits, and material from the site of the Middle Kingdom pyramid builders at el-Lahun in the Fayyum, illustrating the lives of ordinary people. One of the most significant groups in the collection is the complete tomb group of the ‘Two Brothers’ from Deir Rifeh, which has been on display permanently since 1912. Margaret Murray, a student of the archaeologist W. M. Flinders Petrie, undertook one of the first ever scientific mummy unwrapping and analysis on the mummies of the ‘Two Brothers’.

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Margaret Murray unwrapping one of the ‘Two Brothers’ in 1908. ©Manchester Museum

A selection of objects are on display in two galleries, Daily Life, and Afterlife, and 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. Additional objects are displayed and kept in visible storage in the Discovery Centre, where teaching sessions take place. Objects that are not on display are kept in storage, where they are accessible to researchers from around the world. There is also a handling table on the gallery staffed by volunteers The collection is available online in two formats: highlights of the collection and the full catalogue with a limited number of fields. The Museum has a dedicated research area where objects can be studied, open 10am-4pm weekdays. The Museum runs a blog that details the work of the Egypt curator and Egypt-related events at the Museum and images of objects from the collection are available on the Museum’s Flickr site.

HISTORY OF THE COLLECTIONS

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.

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The ‘Two Brothers’ tomb group on display in the Afterlife Gallery. 12th Dynasty (1985-1795 BC), Deir Rifeh, Egypt
©Manchester Museum
The Museum received material from the excavations of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, the Egyptian Research Account, the Egypt Exploration Society, and the Liverpool School of Archaeology. One important excavator was Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), who worked on dozens of sites in Egypt and pioneered new techniques of excavation 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 after reading Amelia Edwards’ travelogue, A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1888). 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.

EDUCATION

The Museum’s Learning Department runs Egypt-themed sessions for schools at Key Stage 2 and above. The sessions take place on the gallery and in the Discovery Centre, where handling collections are available for supervised use.

Primary Learning runs Museum Explorer sessions which follow a journey through the Museum, stopping at key points for relevant activities, including object investigation, drawing and handling. Choose from the following topics: Ancient Egypt - Taminis' Story Children are taken on an imaginative journey through the Museum exploring life and death in Ancient Egypt. A Teacher's pack is available from our website. Ancient Egypt Material Worlds (for Y5 & 6 only) A new session developed after evaluation with teachers with an emphasis on developing research skills. Become a 'curator' and investigate wooden, stone, metal and pottery artefacts, learning about their conservation and display.

Secondary Learning offers Objects, Identity and Ethics, suitable for KS3 and KS4. This thought-provoking session offer students the opportunity to hone their debating skills and generate awareness of the ethical issues related to the use of archaeological human remains, such as Egyptian mummies, in museums. Museum professionals provide expert opinions and information on the topic and students are actively encouraged to evaluate the manner in which human remains are presented.

For more details on any of the programmes listed please call the bookings office on 0161 275 2630, or email Nora Callaghan (nora.callaghan@manchester.ac.uk).

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The Riqqa pectoral, 12th Dynasty (1985-1795 BC), El-Riqqa, Egypt. ©Manchester Museum

CURRENT WORK

The Museum is currently in the process of redeveloping its Archaeology and Egyptology galleries, with the aim of re-opening them as the Ancient Worlds Galleries in 2012, to mark the centenary of the first Egypt gallery to be opened at the Museum in 1912. The current collections work is focused on re-storing and documenting the Predynastic and Early Dynastic pottery, the lithics, and the Roman Period lamps. The collections database is constantly checked and updated across a variety of object areas.

STAFF

The Museum employs a Curator of Egypt and the Sudan who manages all aspects of collections-related work apart from Primary and Secondary Learning, and contributes to Egypt-related teaching at University level. Documentation of the collections is carried out with the help of volunteers, most of whom have an MA in Egyptian Archaeology, or equivalent, as a minimum requirement. The Museum has Conservation Department, employing specialists across material types and techniques of conservation, who maintain the storage environments and prepare objects for use in handling sessions, teaching, photography, research, loans and exhibitions.

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