The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

February 27, 2009 at 1:16 pm | Posted in General, London, museum, Out and About, Tourism, Travel, UK | 1 Comment
Tags: archaeology, egypt, Free, London, museum, review, Tourism, Travel, ucl, UK

Located near Euston and within the University College London is the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. It’s free to enter and open Tuesday to Saturday. When you reach the entrance you’ll need to press a buzzer and wait for someone to come down and let you in.

The museum houses a wide collection of pieces from across Ancient Egypt. As you enter you’ll walk through a row of cases with wall fragments and stones covered in hieroglyphs. The complexity and intricacy of the work is fascinating and I’m sure it would be horrific for a scribe to make a mistake! Also on this main floor are a number of display cases featuring daily life objects from early fabrics to cosmetics.

The lower floor predominantly houses a variety of ceramics and sculptures. There’s a sign advising that due to the darkness of the museum it would be wise to use one of the complimentary flashlights. Not only were there no flashlights available but it wasn’t particularly dark. Unless we missed an entire wing!

There is some information associated with each section but not a great deal for specific items; possibly this was less necessary when the museum was predominantly used by knowledgeable historians.

The museum is reasonably small and easy to navigate. I think that for the most part only those with a love of history and Egypt will get much out of it. Although having said that we did see several families with small children walking around and they seemed interested in the bits and pieces.