ANCIENT EGYPT

Egypt Galleries Trail

This trail is designed for self-guided school groups and avoids the main Egypt Galleries when taught sessions are taking place.

DOWNLOAD

Take One Picture: The Afterglow in Egypt teachers' notes

Background information about Holman Hunt's painting, 'The Afterglow in Egypt'. Includes ideas for creative planning across the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 curriculum.

DOWNLOAD

Egypt Hieroglyphs Challenge

KS2 pupil activity sheet. Find out more about Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Become a Pharaoh for the day by writing your name in a cartouche!

DOWNLOAD

Ancient Egyptian Maths

KS2 pupil activity sheet. Find out about Ancient Egyptian numbers with King Khasekhem.

DOWNLOAD

Taharqa's Shrine

Find out about the largest intact Egyptian building in the UK. Once part of a temple at Kawa in Susan, it was built on the orders of Taharqa who was Pharaoh from 690 - 664 BC.

Djeddjehutyiuefankh

Detailed CT scans of Djeddjehutyiuefankh showed that all his internal organs had been removed prior to mummification, including his heart. This would seem unusual as the heart was normally returned after being dried out so that it could be weighed against the feather of truth. If the heart was light the person could travel on to the afterlife. If the heart was heavy a monster called a devourer would eat it.

Model war boat with sail (detail), Egypt, 2125-1940 BC

Magical servants in the afterlife

Wooden model, c. 2125–2080 BC

Rich Ancient Egyptians would make sure they had plenty of magical servants buried with them so that they could take it easy in the Afterlife. The servants include a butcher, baker and somebody carrying pots on a yoke.

Shawabti

Painted limestone shawabti for the lady Djymyra, 1550–1196 BC

Shawabtis are small statues that were buried in tombs. They were meant to be your servants in the afterlife, but only if you said the magic words written in hieroglphs on your bodies. The rich often had one worker for each day of the year and one foreman with a whip and flared skirt for every 10 men.

ANCIENT EGYPT AND NUBIA at the Ashmolean

Taharqa’s shrine with ram

The shrine is part of a temple built at Kawa in about 680 BC on the orders of a Pharoah called Taharqa. Taharqa's shrine is the largest intact Egyptian building in the UK.

The Afterglow in Egypt

Painted by William Holman Hunt (1827–1910)

In this painting an Egyptian woman dressed in beautiful clothes and jewellery carries a crate of pigeons on her head and a beautiful green vessel in her right hand. She gazes out at us and stands barefoot in a fertile landscape close to the water's edge. The figure was read by Hunt's contemporaries as a kind of Egyptian goddess of plenty. Hunt believed that agriculture was the only aspect of the once-great civilization that had survived in Egypt.