This collaborative show demystifies the practice of mummifying animals and the science behind this, says Alice Williams
Gifts for the Gods is the first exhibition of ancient Egyptian animal mummies to be held in the UK, and was created through a partnership between Manchester Museum and the University of Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology.
This touring show displays the research of the Ancient Egyptian Animal Biobank Project, which has studied 800 animal mummies from 56 museums since it was set up in 2010. This museum-university partnership has resulted in an engaging exhibition with an accompanying book.
The exhibition is divided into three broad sections, reflecting on the concept of object biographies. Tracing the changing values and status of animal mummies over time, Gifts for the Gods explores their initial role as votive offerings in the context of ancient Egypt, before moving on to their discovery and excavation, and transition from collectable curiosity to museum artefact.
Finally, the animal mummies are presented as scientific specimens framing a discussion about the history and future of their scientific investigation.
The exhibition opens with a recreation of an ancient Egyptian environment: an image of a rich, green landscape surrounded by desert, with an array of taxidermy animals and matching audio of animal sounds representing the types of species found in ancient Egypt and those featured in the show.
Not only is this a great incorporation of the museum’s encyclopaedic collections, it also reflects a crucial element of this exhibition’s narrative.
It draws on the relationship between animals and people, reinforcing the idea that before their modern objectification, these mummified remains were living and valued creatures.
Campbell Price, the curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, says this exhibition aims to address people’s misconceptions about ancient Egypt.
The choice of this opening scene and a largely green colour palette for the exhibition represents life on the Nile – an intentional contrast to the sandy colours and desert landscape usually pictured, or the dark and gloomy colours that conjure up images of an ancient culture obsessed with death.
From a design perspective, the green palette also contrasts well with the predominantly organic materials, and brightens the exhibition space – an excellent way of tackling the low light levels required for the material.
Journey through time
As you navigate the cyclical exhibition following a trail of animal footprints, you enter another immersive environment: a reconstruction of an ancient catacomb.
This walk-through tunnel, created using archival photographs, allows visitors to travel through time and recreates the archaeologists’ moment of discovery.
The arrangement of animal mummies cleverly replicates their original positioning in wall niches, helping to present an in-situ context, while a soundscape of ancient Egyptian ritual texts, dripping water and echoing footsteps adds a sense of theatre.
After visitors emerge from the catacomb they enter the Victorian Drawing Room where they
are faced with a wealth of colour and a vibrant mix of media: contemporary paintings, archival images, travel journals, newspaper reports and satirical cartoons, all interspersed with animal mummies and ancient votive objects. These tell the often- conflicting stories of mummies’ 19th-century reception.
This approach provides an opportunity for visitors to engage with a critical post-colonial history of Egyptology and early collecting, so often lacking from exhibitions on ancient Egypt.
This section is not only about objects, but also about people. Their stories are intertwined in the biographies of the collectors and scholars who were influential in bringing ancient Egyptian artefacts and animal mummies to Britain.
References to 19th-century collectors, such as the Manchester resident Max Emil Robinow, and Marianne Brocklehurst from Macclesfield, highlight local connections.
A big part of the research for the Ancient Egyptian Animal Biobank Project has been tracking the distribution of animal mummies to museums worldwide, following the first scientific excavations in Egypt in the 1880s.
This is reflected in the display of loans from 20 museums across the UK, many of which are on show for the first time. This has presented an opportunity to reunite excavated material and objects with their archives, as well as to showcase collections from smaller museums.
Forensic stories
The final section of the show is the Laboratory, a space to explore new fields of investigation, the latest technologies and the results of the university’s scientific research. The forensic stories of animal specimens are brought to life here: what did they eat? How did they die? What techniques were used in their mummification?
Much of this research is told through interactives. Screens enable visitors to watch footage of the team CT scanning the mummified animals and allow them to run their own simulation of a CT scan and watch the results unfold. Three-dimensional scans allow you to unwrap the mummy virtually, revealing each layer and the research behind its contents.
There are also more hands-on activities, such as Mummies Under the Microscope and a chance to smell and identify the ingredients that were used to preserve animals, featuring scents such as incense, pine resin and beeswax (extracted from Manchester Museum’s own beehive). As school groups wandered around the exhibition during my visit it was these elements that drew the biggest crowds.
The interactive laboratory presents accessible and engaging science that will appeal to a wide range of age groups and audiences. Its content and interpretation comes across as new and exciting, yet the subject matter is handled sensitively and does not become voyeuristic.
This section completes a well-rounded, interdisciplinary exhibition that succeeds in presenting university research in an inclusive manner, engaging different audiences through a diverse events programme, social media, education packs for school groups and families, and an accompanying book exploring the academic content in greater detail.
Overall, it demonstrates the value and impact of collaborative exhibitions, and the important role that museums can play in the communication of research.
Gifts for the Gods, Manchester Museum’s first touring exhibition in 20 years, will also be at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow (May- September) before travelling to the World Museum, Liverpool (October 2016-March 2017).
Alice Williams is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford and is researching Egyptology and museum studies
Working on an exhibition about animal mummies was an opportunity to challenge some of our preconceptions about them. For a start, the base colour palette we chose is green, not the usual black or beige that is typical of Egyptian exhibits.
Gifts for the Gods opens with birdsong and a large vista image of what the Nile valley might have been like in 750BC. It then guides visitors through a recreation of an animal mummy catacomb, based on archaeological archive photos. There are 60 mummies on display
in the exhibition. They were not pets, and are just some of millions of votive offerings or gifts to the gods.
The exhibition aims to be both immersive and interactive. CT scanning the mummies produced high-resolution images that enabled researchers to look inside, and it was a priority of the exhibition to make these accessible. The layout includes a laboratory setting to allow visitors to engage with the university’s scientific research in new ways, as well as to adopt the role of a researcher.
Audiovisual material presents how the mummies were made using experimental mummification and how they were scanned in a local hospital, along with selected scans of some of the mummies on display.
We commissioned a bespoke interactive device that simulates the effect of a micro CT scanner: a laser scans a mocked-up mummy with authentic scanning audio, creating a real-time 3D scan on a connected computer monitor.
People often ask what mummies smell like. Thanks to some sampling of the mummies, a few of the ingredients of mummification have been identified.
Sourcing “smell pots” that we thought were representative of pine resin, beeswax and frankincense proved an unexpected hit with young and adult visitors, who have been curious to get closer to the mummies.
Campbell Price is the curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum
Cost £110,000
Partners Manchester Museum (part of the University of Manchester); Glasgow Museums; National Museum Liverpool Funders Partners £25,000 each; £30,000 from the Wellcome Trust. Additional funding came from the Leverhulme Trust and Scottish Egyptian Archaeological Trust.
Tour Manchester Museum arranged the logistics, technical support, transport and installation of the exhibition at partner venues
Exhibition design Andrew Gibbs
Gifts for the Gods is the first exhibition of ancient Egyptian animal mummies to be held in the UK, and was created through a partnership between Manchester Museum and the University of Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology.
This touring show displays the research of the Ancient Egyptian Animal Biobank Project, which has studied 800 animal mummies from 56 museums since it was set up in 2010. This museum-university partnership has resulted in an engaging exhibition with an accompanying book.
The exhibition is divided into three broad sections, reflecting on the concept of object biographies. Tracing the changing values and status of animal mummies over time, Gifts for the Gods explores their initial role as votive offerings in the context of ancient Egypt, before moving on to their discovery and excavation, and transition from collectable curiosity to museum artefact.
Finally, the animal mummies are presented as scientific specimens framing a discussion about the history and future of their scientific investigation.
The exhibition opens with a recreation of an ancient Egyptian environment: an image of a rich, green landscape surrounded by desert, with an array of taxidermy animals and matching audio of animal sounds representing the types of species found in ancient Egypt and those featured in the show.
Not only is this a great incorporation of the museum’s encyclopaedic collections, it also reflects a crucial element of this exhibition’s narrative.
It draws on the relationship between animals and people, reinforcing the idea that before their modern objectification, these mummified remains were living and valued creatures.
Campbell Price, the curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, says this exhibition aims to address people’s misconceptions about ancient Egypt.
The choice of this opening scene and a largely green colour palette for the exhibition represents life on the Nile – an intentional contrast to the sandy colours and desert landscape usually pictured, or the dark and gloomy colours that conjure up images of an ancient culture obsessed with death.
From a design perspective, the green palette also contrasts well with the predominantly organic materials, and brightens the exhibition space – an excellent way of tackling the low light levels required for the material.
Journey through time
As you navigate the cyclical exhibition following a trail of animal footprints, you enter another immersive environment: a reconstruction of an ancient catacomb.
This walk-through tunnel, created using archival photographs, allows visitors to travel through time and recreates the archaeologists’ moment of discovery.
The arrangement of animal mummies cleverly replicates their original positioning in wall niches, helping to present an in-situ context, while a soundscape of ancient Egyptian ritual texts, dripping water and echoing footsteps adds a sense of theatre.
After visitors emerge from the catacomb they enter the Victorian Drawing Room where they
are faced with a wealth of colour and a vibrant mix of media: contemporary paintings, archival images, travel journals, newspaper reports and satirical cartoons, all interspersed with animal mummies and ancient votive objects. These tell the often- conflicting stories of mummies’ 19th-century reception.
This approach provides an opportunity for visitors to engage with a critical post-colonial history of Egyptology and early collecting, so often lacking from exhibitions on ancient Egypt.
This section is not only about objects, but also about people. Their stories are intertwined in the biographies of the collectors and scholars who were influential in bringing ancient Egyptian artefacts and animal mummies to Britain.
References to 19th-century collectors, such as the Manchester resident Max Emil Robinow, and Marianne Brocklehurst from Macclesfield, highlight local connections.
A big part of the research for the Ancient Egyptian Animal Biobank Project has been tracking the distribution of animal mummies to museums worldwide, following the first scientific excavations in Egypt in the 1880s.
This is reflected in the display of loans from 20 museums across the UK, many of which are on show for the first time. This has presented an opportunity to reunite excavated material and objects with their archives, as well as to showcase collections from smaller museums.
Forensic stories
The final section of the show is the Laboratory, a space to explore new fields of investigation, the latest technologies and the results of the university’s scientific research. The forensic stories of animal specimens are brought to life here: what did they eat? How did they die? What techniques were used in their mummification?
Much of this research is told through interactives. Screens enable visitors to watch footage of the team CT scanning the mummified animals and allow them to run their own simulation of a CT scan and watch the results unfold. Three-dimensional scans allow you to unwrap the mummy virtually, revealing each layer and the research behind its contents.
There are also more hands-on activities, such as Mummies Under the Microscope and a chance to smell and identify the ingredients that were used to preserve animals, featuring scents such as incense, pine resin and beeswax (extracted from Manchester Museum’s own beehive). As school groups wandered around the exhibition during my visit it was these elements that drew the biggest crowds.
The interactive laboratory presents accessible and engaging science that will appeal to a wide range of age groups and audiences. Its content and interpretation comes across as new and exciting, yet the subject matter is handled sensitively and does not become voyeuristic.
This section completes a well-rounded, interdisciplinary exhibition that succeeds in presenting university research in an inclusive manner, engaging different audiences through a diverse events programme, social media, education packs for school groups and families, and an accompanying book exploring the academic content in greater detail.
Overall, it demonstrates the value and impact of collaborative exhibitions, and the important role that museums can play in the communication of research.
Gifts for the Gods, Manchester Museum’s first touring exhibition in 20 years, will also be at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow (May- September) before travelling to the World Museum, Liverpool (October 2016-March 2017).
Alice Williams is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford and is researching Egyptology and museum studies
Focus on interactive animal mummies
Working on an exhibition about animal mummies was an opportunity to challenge some of our preconceptions about them. For a start, the base colour palette we chose is green, not the usual black or beige that is typical of Egyptian exhibits.
Gifts for the Gods opens with birdsong and a large vista image of what the Nile valley might have been like in 750BC. It then guides visitors through a recreation of an animal mummy catacomb, based on archaeological archive photos. There are 60 mummies on display
in the exhibition. They were not pets, and are just some of millions of votive offerings or gifts to the gods.
The exhibition aims to be both immersive and interactive. CT scanning the mummies produced high-resolution images that enabled researchers to look inside, and it was a priority of the exhibition to make these accessible. The layout includes a laboratory setting to allow visitors to engage with the university’s scientific research in new ways, as well as to adopt the role of a researcher.
Audiovisual material presents how the mummies were made using experimental mummification and how they were scanned in a local hospital, along with selected scans of some of the mummies on display.
We commissioned a bespoke interactive device that simulates the effect of a micro CT scanner: a laser scans a mocked-up mummy with authentic scanning audio, creating a real-time 3D scan on a connected computer monitor.
People often ask what mummies smell like. Thanks to some sampling of the mummies, a few of the ingredients of mummification have been identified.
Sourcing “smell pots” that we thought were representative of pine resin, beeswax and frankincense proved an unexpected hit with young and adult visitors, who have been curious to get closer to the mummies.
Campbell Price is the curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum
Project data
Cost £110,000
Partners Manchester Museum (part of the University of Manchester); Glasgow Museums; National Museum Liverpool Funders Partners £25,000 each; £30,000 from the Wellcome Trust. Additional funding came from the Leverhulme Trust and Scottish Egyptian Archaeological Trust.
Tour Manchester Museum arranged the logistics, technical support, transport and installation of the exhibition at partner venues
Exhibition design Andrew Gibbs
