Of all the ancient civilisations, Egypt seems to be more romanticised and mythologised than any other. Its place in the public imagination partly explains why Egyptology displays are so popular among museum visitors, with the subject’s appeal constantly bolstered by its presence in film, literature and education, which makes it more accessible than many other areas of archaeology.
The question of what makes these collections so attractive can be answered, in part, by the appeal of ancient Egyptian aesthetics. “It was such a visual culture, so it has continued to capture the imagination,” says Neal Spencer, the keeper of the department of ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, London.
“It also has a long history of popular exposure. The discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 was the first big media hit,” he says. Ulster Museum’s Takabuti mummy, acquired as early as 1835, is another example – it has remained a very popular exhibit for more than 180 years. “And think of all the Hollywood films around mummies and Cleopatra, which continue today,” says Spencer. “Egyptology in the UK is booming and museums are presenting new displays that bring in local relevance.”
A number of museums are developing new Egyptology galleries. Bolton Museum is opening a £3.8m gallery in late summer, while Leicester’s New Walk Museum is undertaking a complete refurbishment of its Egyptian Gallery following a £145,000 award from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and the Wolfson Foundation and is expected to reopen later this year. And the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, will unveil a new ancient Egypt gallery in 2019, which promises to “make ancient Egyptians more relatable, rather than sensationalised”.
All these initiatives have pledged to offer innovative ways of recontextualising their collections. But the question of how they will convey new narratives to audiences who are accustomed to simplistic or sensational interpretation is a difficult one.
For Bolton, the key has been to root interpretation in the legacy of the town’s industrial past, including the wider context of north-west England’s abundance of Egyptian antiquity, which was made possible through connections via the cotton mill industry. “Although we have this fantastic ancient collection, it is just as important to tell the story of why it is here,” says Sam Elliott, the crescent and collections manager at Bolton Council. “The early story of key individuals who made sure we have these objects is told in the first gallery, including the legacy of Annie Barlow, who was the daughter of a mill owner. She was part of the Egypt Exploration Society and brought pieces back in the same way as other excavation sponsors across Southport, Macclesfield, Manchester and Liverpool. Bolton is a deprived town and looking back on this prosperous time, full of innovators, is valuable to the community.”
The museum has also taken an unorthodox approach to display, focusing on emotive experiences rather than detailed explanations. “One of our rooms is full of natural light so we have created huge glass arches filled with hundreds of objects ‘floating’ in them,” Elliott says. “It is meant to feel like a market. These arches are full of hustle and bustle to show the significance and number of objects we have, as well as the Egyptian lust for life.”
Local relevance
The World Museum in Liverpool, which opened its Ancient Egypt Gallery last year, has also brought local relevance to the forefront of the narrative. “I’m interested in the ‘second lives’ of objects,” says Ashley Cooke, the senior curator of antiquities at National Museums Liverpool. “They have their first life in antiquity, then they are excavated and have this whole second one, not only in a different place but in a different time.”
Liverpool’s Egyptology collection has had a more dramatic life than most. “There was extensive damage after the museum was bombed in 1941,” Cooke says. “Objects were damaged in the fire and subsequent rescue operations and then stored in bad conditions. One example is the Padiamun mummy’s coffin – the bottom part of it twisted out of shape when it got wet during the fire extinguishing,” he says. “We decided to include this damage as part of the mummy’s story, so we treated it for stability, as opposed to attempting a full restoration.”
The new gallery is three times larger than its predecessor, so the museum can show a greater selection of objects, including 10 mummies, several of which haven’t been on public view since they were packed away during the second world war. It is now the largest UK display of Egyptology outside the British Museum.
As one might expect, the venue’s Mummy Room is a big draw, but is more than just a gimmick. “The Mummy Room is a popular title, but it was something that existed in Liverpool city centre at the Egyptian Museum from 1852 to 1867,” Cooke says. “We have reopened 150 years after it closed.”
The museum also strikes a healthy balance between promoting the popular namesakes, while offering new interpretations. “We have a broken statue of Nefertiti that we have put on display in its smashed pieces,” Cooke says. “I thought the museum director would raise questions, but it was understood that it was important to introduce something familiar in a different way.”
Cooke is also keen to address the perception of ancient Egypt as a static civilisation, as opposed to a composition of cultures and societies. “We have a 12-metre timeline spanning 5,000 years and one of my main aims is to highlight the narrative of the rebirth and regeneration of this collection, as well as the time depth of ancient Egypt,” he says. “We have mapped everything out with objects, text and images, offering snapshots of history. It is satisfying to see people studying it, especially as timelines are often a curatorial afterthought. So many people are shocked to discover that Cleopatra, who was born in 70BC, lived closer in time to the lunar landings than to the building of the pyramids of Giza in 2550BC.”
Academic interest
This kind of rethinking breaks the mould of displays found in more outdated galleries, where the narrative can be oversimplified to appeal to younger audiences.
“It is a problem,” says Carolyn Graves-Brown, the curator of the Egypt Centre Museum in Swansea. “How far do you rely on the cliches of ancient Egypt to attract people to your museum? In a way, you want to say, ‘It’s not all pyramids and mummies’, but it’s the pyramids and mummies that get people through the door.”
The Welsh museum has kept display texts fairly academic, while offering additional material and workshops for children. “We have child volunteers on Saturdays and offer activities on Egyptology and maths to schools,” Graves-Brown says. “It’s a great way to get them interested and shows how the museum collection can be cross-disciplinary and relevant to the present day.”
Maintaining contemporary relevance remains a primary concern for plenty of Egyptology collections, particularly as there is still some misconception around current excavation and collecting processes.
Anna Garnett, the curator of the Petrie Museum at University College London, says: “We get people asking what the most recent objects from Egypt are, thinking that we are still actively collecting, but the Petrie takes an ethical stance to not engage with auction houses and the antiquities market. Objects haven’t been permitted to leave Egypt since the Unesco treaty of 1970. In any case, there are few gaps to fill, as our collection is so extensive.”
The British Museum has a similar policy. On the rare occasion that a new object is considered, it is subject to strict provenance and ethics checks with colleagues in Egypt. The museum has launched the Circulating Artefacts project, an alliance that will record objects on the market in an effort to prevent looting and unethical sales. It has also launched the Collecting Modern Egypt initiative, which is designed to bring the museum’s collection of Egyptian objects into the 21st century.
“We asked: ‘How does a museum tell stories about the modern world?’ We thought Egypt was a great place to start due to the richness and popularity of the main collection,” says Spencer. “People have collected modern Egypt in the past, but they have tended to buy what I would call folkloric or ethnographic items. What we have been trying to do is represent it as a modern country.
“The collection, which now comprises some 1,200 objects, references technology, industry, fashion, and shows the country in the context of a global world.”
A selection of objects went on show in a “pop-up” exhibition held in a vacant shop in Downtown Cairo’s Kodak Passageway in 2016, and this May, a new display at the British Museum will consider how Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s drew on ancient imagery to project a new national identity. Through this collecting policy, the museum manages to connect contemporary Egypt with the lives of people in the UK, building on one of the most appealing aspects of Egyptology collections – their ability to tell everyday human stories. There’s no denying that the mummies and colossal objects draw in the crowds, but the amount of information that continues to be gleaned from reams of papyrus and often fantastically preserved artefacts and human remains means that the stories of individual lives are gradually being pieced together. Audiences can feel an affinity with divine rulers and everyday workers alike, and that is arguably the key to a successful Egyptology display.
The British Museum is using technology to uncover intimate histories, as seen in the 2014-15 exhibition Ancient Lives, New Discoveries. This focused on eight people from Ancient Egypt and Sudan whose bodies had been preserved either naturally or by embalming.
“We have been using CT scanning and the latest medical visualisation techniques, not to learn about mummification but to learn about these people who had heart disease and dental abscesses,” says Spencer. “And it’s that immediacy and universal human element that people can relate to.”
With more than 15,000 objects in the collection, this is one of the most important Egyptology holdings in a UK local authority museum.
The items come from more than 65 sites in Egypt. The majority were excavated so they retain full provenance details. How did they get to Bolton? The town’s booming 19th-century textile industry helped fund archaeological digs in Egypt, resulting in a rich collection with a particular focus on textiles and fabrics.
The new gallery promises to bring more objects out of storage than ever before, covering everything from ancient textiles and papyri to sarcophagi and sculpture.
The centrepiece will be a full-sized recreation of the tomb of Thutmose III, which was discovered by Victor Loret in the Valley of the Kings in 1898. The pharoah was a formidable ruler, reigning for a total of 54 years from 1479-1425BC, creating a large empire. The Bolton facsimile tomb promises to be a huge draw for audiences.
The gallery will be divided into several sections, beginning with the setting of the Chadwick Museum, where the collection was originally held.
Here, stories of the museum founders and prominent collectors will be told using archive material, illustrations and a miniature replica of the original museum.
The subsequent rooms explore the themes of Land & People and Beliefs, revealing aspects of life in ancient Egypt, as well as investigating the important role that the afterlife played in society.
The gallery, which is being created by exhibition design firm Leach Studio, includes enormous glass arches flooded with natural light and filled with artefacts.
Holly Black is a freelance writer.
Sam Elliot, the crescent and collections manager at Bolton Museum, and Nichola Ward, the head of creative at Leach Studio, will discuss the design approach to the Egyptology galleries at Bolton Museum at the forthcoming MP seminar Exhibitionists: Designing Great Exhibitions on 26 April at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The question of what makes these collections so attractive can be answered, in part, by the appeal of ancient Egyptian aesthetics. “It was such a visual culture, so it has continued to capture the imagination,” says Neal Spencer, the keeper of the department of ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, London.
“It also has a long history of popular exposure. The discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 was the first big media hit,” he says. Ulster Museum’s Takabuti mummy, acquired as early as 1835, is another example – it has remained a very popular exhibit for more than 180 years. “And think of all the Hollywood films around mummies and Cleopatra, which continue today,” says Spencer. “Egyptology in the UK is booming and museums are presenting new displays that bring in local relevance.”
A number of museums are developing new Egyptology galleries. Bolton Museum is opening a £3.8m gallery in late summer, while Leicester’s New Walk Museum is undertaking a complete refurbishment of its Egyptian Gallery following a £145,000 award from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and the Wolfson Foundation and is expected to reopen later this year. And the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, will unveil a new ancient Egypt gallery in 2019, which promises to “make ancient Egyptians more relatable, rather than sensationalised”.
All these initiatives have pledged to offer innovative ways of recontextualising their collections. But the question of how they will convey new narratives to audiences who are accustomed to simplistic or sensational interpretation is a difficult one.
For Bolton, the key has been to root interpretation in the legacy of the town’s industrial past, including the wider context of north-west England’s abundance of Egyptian antiquity, which was made possible through connections via the cotton mill industry. “Although we have this fantastic ancient collection, it is just as important to tell the story of why it is here,” says Sam Elliott, the crescent and collections manager at Bolton Council. “The early story of key individuals who made sure we have these objects is told in the first gallery, including the legacy of Annie Barlow, who was the daughter of a mill owner. She was part of the Egypt Exploration Society and brought pieces back in the same way as other excavation sponsors across Southport, Macclesfield, Manchester and Liverpool. Bolton is a deprived town and looking back on this prosperous time, full of innovators, is valuable to the community.”
The museum has also taken an unorthodox approach to display, focusing on emotive experiences rather than detailed explanations. “One of our rooms is full of natural light so we have created huge glass arches filled with hundreds of objects ‘floating’ in them,” Elliott says. “It is meant to feel like a market. These arches are full of hustle and bustle to show the significance and number of objects we have, as well as the Egyptian lust for life.”
Local relevance
The World Museum in Liverpool, which opened its Ancient Egypt Gallery last year, has also brought local relevance to the forefront of the narrative. “I’m interested in the ‘second lives’ of objects,” says Ashley Cooke, the senior curator of antiquities at National Museums Liverpool. “They have their first life in antiquity, then they are excavated and have this whole second one, not only in a different place but in a different time.”
Liverpool’s Egyptology collection has had a more dramatic life than most. “There was extensive damage after the museum was bombed in 1941,” Cooke says. “Objects were damaged in the fire and subsequent rescue operations and then stored in bad conditions. One example is the Padiamun mummy’s coffin – the bottom part of it twisted out of shape when it got wet during the fire extinguishing,” he says. “We decided to include this damage as part of the mummy’s story, so we treated it for stability, as opposed to attempting a full restoration.”
The new gallery is three times larger than its predecessor, so the museum can show a greater selection of objects, including 10 mummies, several of which haven’t been on public view since they were packed away during the second world war. It is now the largest UK display of Egyptology outside the British Museum.
As one might expect, the venue’s Mummy Room is a big draw, but is more than just a gimmick. “The Mummy Room is a popular title, but it was something that existed in Liverpool city centre at the Egyptian Museum from 1852 to 1867,” Cooke says. “We have reopened 150 years after it closed.”
The museum also strikes a healthy balance between promoting the popular namesakes, while offering new interpretations. “We have a broken statue of Nefertiti that we have put on display in its smashed pieces,” Cooke says. “I thought the museum director would raise questions, but it was understood that it was important to introduce something familiar in a different way.”
Cooke is also keen to address the perception of ancient Egypt as a static civilisation, as opposed to a composition of cultures and societies. “We have a 12-metre timeline spanning 5,000 years and one of my main aims is to highlight the narrative of the rebirth and regeneration of this collection, as well as the time depth of ancient Egypt,” he says. “We have mapped everything out with objects, text and images, offering snapshots of history. It is satisfying to see people studying it, especially as timelines are often a curatorial afterthought. So many people are shocked to discover that Cleopatra, who was born in 70BC, lived closer in time to the lunar landings than to the building of the pyramids of Giza in 2550BC.”
Academic interest
This kind of rethinking breaks the mould of displays found in more outdated galleries, where the narrative can be oversimplified to appeal to younger audiences.
“It is a problem,” says Carolyn Graves-Brown, the curator of the Egypt Centre Museum in Swansea. “How far do you rely on the cliches of ancient Egypt to attract people to your museum? In a way, you want to say, ‘It’s not all pyramids and mummies’, but it’s the pyramids and mummies that get people through the door.”
The Welsh museum has kept display texts fairly academic, while offering additional material and workshops for children. “We have child volunteers on Saturdays and offer activities on Egyptology and maths to schools,” Graves-Brown says. “It’s a great way to get them interested and shows how the museum collection can be cross-disciplinary and relevant to the present day.”
Maintaining contemporary relevance remains a primary concern for plenty of Egyptology collections, particularly as there is still some misconception around current excavation and collecting processes.
Anna Garnett, the curator of the Petrie Museum at University College London, says: “We get people asking what the most recent objects from Egypt are, thinking that we are still actively collecting, but the Petrie takes an ethical stance to not engage with auction houses and the antiquities market. Objects haven’t been permitted to leave Egypt since the Unesco treaty of 1970. In any case, there are few gaps to fill, as our collection is so extensive.”
The British Museum has a similar policy. On the rare occasion that a new object is considered, it is subject to strict provenance and ethics checks with colleagues in Egypt. The museum has launched the Circulating Artefacts project, an alliance that will record objects on the market in an effort to prevent looting and unethical sales. It has also launched the Collecting Modern Egypt initiative, which is designed to bring the museum’s collection of Egyptian objects into the 21st century.
“We asked: ‘How does a museum tell stories about the modern world?’ We thought Egypt was a great place to start due to the richness and popularity of the main collection,” says Spencer. “People have collected modern Egypt in the past, but they have tended to buy what I would call folkloric or ethnographic items. What we have been trying to do is represent it as a modern country.
“The collection, which now comprises some 1,200 objects, references technology, industry, fashion, and shows the country in the context of a global world.”
A selection of objects went on show in a “pop-up” exhibition held in a vacant shop in Downtown Cairo’s Kodak Passageway in 2016, and this May, a new display at the British Museum will consider how Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s drew on ancient imagery to project a new national identity. Through this collecting policy, the museum manages to connect contemporary Egypt with the lives of people in the UK, building on one of the most appealing aspects of Egyptology collections – their ability to tell everyday human stories. There’s no denying that the mummies and colossal objects draw in the crowds, but the amount of information that continues to be gleaned from reams of papyrus and often fantastically preserved artefacts and human remains means that the stories of individual lives are gradually being pieced together. Audiences can feel an affinity with divine rulers and everyday workers alike, and that is arguably the key to a successful Egyptology display.
The British Museum is using technology to uncover intimate histories, as seen in the 2014-15 exhibition Ancient Lives, New Discoveries. This focused on eight people from Ancient Egypt and Sudan whose bodies had been preserved either naturally or by embalming.
“We have been using CT scanning and the latest medical visualisation techniques, not to learn about mummification but to learn about these people who had heart disease and dental abscesses,” says Spencer. “And it’s that immediacy and universal human element that people can relate to.”
Egypt comes to Bolton Museum
In late summer, Bolton Museum will reveal a new Egyptian gallery, the result of a £3.8m refurbishment.With more than 15,000 objects in the collection, this is one of the most important Egyptology holdings in a UK local authority museum.
The items come from more than 65 sites in Egypt. The majority were excavated so they retain full provenance details. How did they get to Bolton? The town’s booming 19th-century textile industry helped fund archaeological digs in Egypt, resulting in a rich collection with a particular focus on textiles and fabrics.
The new gallery promises to bring more objects out of storage than ever before, covering everything from ancient textiles and papyri to sarcophagi and sculpture.
The centrepiece will be a full-sized recreation of the tomb of Thutmose III, which was discovered by Victor Loret in the Valley of the Kings in 1898. The pharoah was a formidable ruler, reigning for a total of 54 years from 1479-1425BC, creating a large empire. The Bolton facsimile tomb promises to be a huge draw for audiences.
The gallery will be divided into several sections, beginning with the setting of the Chadwick Museum, where the collection was originally held.
Here, stories of the museum founders and prominent collectors will be told using archive material, illustrations and a miniature replica of the original museum.
The subsequent rooms explore the themes of Land & People and Beliefs, revealing aspects of life in ancient Egypt, as well as investigating the important role that the afterlife played in society.
The gallery, which is being created by exhibition design firm Leach Studio, includes enormous glass arches flooded with natural light and filled with artefacts.
Holly Black is a freelance writer.
Sam Elliot, the crescent and collections manager at Bolton Museum, and Nichola Ward, the head of creative at Leach Studio, will discuss the design approach to the Egyptology galleries at Bolton Museum at the forthcoming MP seminar Exhibitionists: Designing Great Exhibitions on 26 April at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.