Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

Upper part of a statuette of an Egyptian woman and her husband. 18th Dynasty. From the Amelia Edwards Collection now housed in the Petrie Museum

The museum was established as a teaching resource for the Department of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College at the same time as the department was established in 1892.[3] The initial collection was donated by the writer Amelia Edwards.[4][5] The first Edwards Professor, William Matthew Flinders Petrie, conducted many important excavations, and in 1913 he sold his collections of Egyptian antiquities to University College, creating the Flinders Petrie Collection of Egyptian Antiquities, and transforming the museum into one of the leading collections outside Egypt. The collection was first put on display in June 1915.[6] Petrie excavated dozens of major sites in the course of his career, including the Roman Period cemeteries at Hawara,[7] famous for the beautiful mummy portraits in classical Roman style;[8][9] Amarna, the city of king Akhenaten;[10] and the first true pyramid, at Meydum, where he uncovered some of the earliest evidence for mummification.[11]

The collection and library were arranged in galleries within the main building at the university and a guidebook was published in 1915. Initially, the collection's visitors were students and academics; it was not then open to the general public. Petrie retired from University College London (UCL) in 1933,[12] though his successors continued to add to the collections, excavating in other parts of Egypt and Sudan. During the Second World War (1939–1945) the collection was packed up and moved out of London for safekeeping. In the early 1950s it was moved into a former stable, where it remains adjacent to the DMS Watson science library of UCL.

Fragments and slabs of stelae. Inscriptions Aisle

The museum is at Malet Place, near Gower Street and the University College London science library. Admission is free.[13] The museum has an exhibitions and events programme for adults and families.[14] There is a Friends of the Petrie Museum charity that supports the museum.[15]

Organisation and collections

Display case at previous entrance to the Petrie (prior to refurbishment), with figurines and statuettes

The museum is split into three galleries. The main gallery (housed above the old stables) contains many of the museum's small domestic artefacts, mummy portraits and cases, and the Inscriptions Aisle. The Inscriptions Aisle displays tablets, including Pyramid Texts, written in hieroglyphics, hieratic, Greek, and Arabic, and organised according to material type. Another gallery (the pottery gallery) contains many cabinets of pottery, clothing, jewellery, and shabti figures, arranged chronologically. A new entrance gallery was refurbished in 2019[16] which provides an insight into the history of the museum, its collections, and notable figures.

The entire collection has been digitised and the catalogue can be browsed and consulted online.[17]

Significant holdings

Limestone head of a king (its provenance is unknown and has no inscriptions). Thought by Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London, to be Narmer, on the basis of the similarity (according to Petrie[18]) to the head of Narmer on the Narmer Palette. This has not been generally accepted. According to Trope, Quirke & Lacovara,[19] the suggestion that it is Narmer is "unlikely". Alternatively, they suggest the Fourth Dynasty king Khufu. Stevenson[20] also identifies it as Khufu. Charron[21] identifies it as a king of the Thinite Period (the first two dynasties), but does not believe it can be assigned to any particular king. Wilkinson[22] describes it as "probably Second Dynasty".

The museum contains over 80,000 objects[23] as has been designated as a collection of national and international importance by the Arts Council England.[2]

There are significant holdings of Egyptian costume, including a piece of Egyptian linen from around 5000 BC, one of the earliest known,[24] and the Tarkhan dress from the fourth millennium BC, the world's oldest known woven garment as of 2016.[25]

The collection also includes material from the Ptolemaic, Roman and Islamic periods.[26] This includes Britain's largest collection of Roman period mummy portraits.[27]

There is a substantial archive held in the museum, including excavation records, correspondence and photographs relating to excavations led by Flinders Petrie. There are additionally documents relating to the distribution of finds from fieldwork to museums worldwide between 1887 and 1949.[28]

• 1948–1963: Anthony J. Arkell[29]
• 1963–1970: Harry Smith
• 1970–1978: David M. Dixon
• 1984–2001: Barbara Adams
• 2013–2017: Alice Stevenson[30]
• 2017–present: Anna E. Garnett[31]

In 2007 Left Coast Press published Living Images: Egypian Funerary Portraits in the Petrie Museum, edited by Janet Picton, Stephen Quirke, and Paul C. Roberts. This book is on the Roman mummy portraits from the Fayum and details their conservation work.

In 2014 Bloomsbury Press published Archaeology of Race which "explores the application of racial theory to interpret the past in Britain during the late Victorian and Edwardian period."[32] The book, written by Debbie Chalice, specifically focuses on how Flinders Petrie applied the ideas of Francis Galton on inheritance and race to the discipline of archaeology.

In 2015 UCL Press published a multi-author compilation of articles, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections, which is available in both print and via a free open access download.[33] It is edited by Alice Stevenson.

• List of museums of Egyptian antiquities

• Charron, Alain (1990), "L'époque thinite", L'Égypte des millénaires obscures, Paris, pp. 77–97{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).
• Petrie, W.M. Flinders (1939), The making of Egypt, British School of Archaeology in Egypt and Egyptian Research Account, vol. 61, London: Sheldon Press.
• Stevenson, Alice (2015). The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections. London: UCLPress. ISBN 978-1-910634-04-2.

Open access pdf download.

• Trope, Betsy Teasley; Quirke, Stephen; Lacovara, Peter (2005), Excavating Egypt: great discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College, London, Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.
• Wilkinson, TAH (1999), Early Dynastic Egypt, London; New York: Routledge.

• Drower, Margaret S. (1995). Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology (2nd ed.). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-14624-3.
• Petrie, W. M. Flinders (1932). Seventy Years in Archaeology. New York: H. Holt and Company. OCLC 2128941.
• Petrie, W. M. Flinders (1894). Tell el-Amarna. London: Methuen & Co. OCLC 926196841.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.

• Petrie Museum website
• UCL Museum Collections blog
• Friends of the Petrie Museum
• Information at Culture24
• Digital Egypt site
• Characters and Collections e-book