The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

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Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
University College London,
Malet Place,
London
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
Telephone - +44 (0)20 7679 2884
Fax - +44 (0)20 7679 2886

 

UC 6333 Pottery storage vessel painted with depictions of boats, Naqada II period, about 3300 BC
©Petrie Museum, UCL.
THE COLLECTION
The collection contains 80,000 objects from Egypt and Sudan, representing all historical periods. There is an unusually high proportion of excavated finds from a range of sites along the Nile Valley, excavated by Petrie and his contemporaries and successors. The museum also preserves much of the supporting archaeological documentation from these excavations (notebooks, distribution lists, pictorial archive); most of this is available on the Petrie Museum Archive CD-ROM. As finds from the same sites were distributed by permission of the Egyptian Antiquities Service of the day, many objects from these same excavations are also now in local museums nationwide and abroad (see Reuniting Collections below).pet2.jpg
 

ONLINE DATABASE
For full details of the collection including an image of each of the 80,000 objects, see our searchable online catalogue at www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk. The museum participated in the MLA London-MDA trials for the projet Revisiting Collections, intended to open up data-entry to a wider public and encourage curators to revisit the material in museums from new perspectives.

UC 14320 Temple wall block with relief of the god Hapy, the Nile flood. Possibly early Eighteenth Dynasty, 15th century BC
©Petrie Museum, UCL.

EDUCATION                                                                      There is a supporting website with background information on sites and Egyptian material culture and history at: http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk. Other educational resources online include the textile pack, Roman Egypt handling collection (inreach) and we are keen to work with other museums in this area. The museum reserves Tuesday and Wednesday mornings to inreach school visits, and, as a university museum, Thursday and Friday mornings for student research and classes. An outreach service is provided for local schools, using loan-boxes with original objects.

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STAFF
The museum currently employs manager, specialist Egyptology curator, and visitor attendant: over the next few months they will be joined by conservator and outreach officers. UCL Museums and Collections employs an education officer and a digital resources manager.

FUTURE
In 2010 the Petrie Museum is moving to a new home on three floors of the future Institute of Cultural Heritage. There the collection will be more accessible, with all items on display or in visible storage. During the move access may be limited, but the museum is keen to continue innovative projects engaging new audiences, following successful earlier community outreach and artist installations.

UC 30579 Wooden openwork shrine panel (?) depicting the god Hapy, the Nile flood. Late Dynastic Period, fourth century BC
©Petrie Museum, UCL.

REUNITING COLLECTIONS
The museum has pioneered efforts at using new technologies to bring together the finds from the same excavations that are distributed among museums nationwide. The initial programme reunited on one database the Egyptian collections of the Petrie Museum, Ipswich Museum, Buckinghamshire County Museum, Bexhill Museum and Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. Results may be seen at
www.accessingvirtualegypt.ucl.ac.uk. More recent work in collaboration with the British Museum resulted in a searchable database of collections-level descriptions for all Egyptian and Sudanese collections in the United Kingdom.