Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

About Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

University museum in London, United Kingdom

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology in London is part of University College London Museums and Collections and holds more than 80,000 objects, making it one of the world's largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese material, surpassed outside Egypt only by the British Museum and the Egyptian Museum in Berlin; it is designated under the Arts Council England scheme as being of "national and international importance". The museum grew out of the teaching collection of Sir William Flinders Petrie, one of Britain's greatest archaeologists and the father of scientific excavation in Egypt, assembled from his digs in Egypt between the 1880s and 1920s, and is now preserved by the college in a historic building in Bloomsbury. Unlike the great museums, the collection focuses on everyday life rather than royal treasures: a beaded dress from the Old Kingdom that is among the oldest surviving garments in the world, sculpture and wall reliefs from temples and tombs, objects of daily use from combs and sandals to toys, papyri, mummy cartonnage, the largest collection of Egyptian pottery arranged chronologically according to Petrie's own system, and the celebrated Roman-period mummy portraits from Hawara. The objects are shown in crowded old-fashioned wooden cases that give the museum an intimate character Wikivoyage calls "fascinating". For Arab and especially Egyptian visitors the museum offers a quiet, direct encounter with the details of ancient Egyptian life away from the crowds of the British Museum.

Where:

London, United Kingdom