Birmingham: The
Birmingham City Museum
has three human mummies, plus a
cat and bird mummy. Thanks to Mark Simmons (for this and many of
the UK entries that follow).
Blackburn: The
Blackburn City Museum has
a female mummy.
Bolton: The
Bolton Museum has
a male and a female Egyptian mummy on display. The museum also has a
number of uncataloged animal mummies.
Bournemouth: Be
Careful, according to Mark Simmons. A private exhibit called Magic of the Mummies?
is
"a cheap and nasty replica exhibition...the "mummies"
are store dummies covered in first aid bandages. Laughable !
Unfortunately, they never point out in their publicity that it's all
amateurish replicas." To be avoided....
Bristol: The
City of Bristol Art Museum displays
9 Egyptian mummies, including Horemkenesi (20th Dynasty).
Cambridge: The
Fitzwilliam Museum has three mummies: one male and two cats. The display may be
old-fashioned, but it's still nice. Also on display is a huge
scarcopaghus lid of Ramesses III.
Dorchester: The
Tutankhamum Exhibition displays
only replicas, though they are well done. It also includes a a tomb
tableau. Mark Simmons writes: "Worth popping in if you are in the
area, but I wouldn't make a special journey. Enjoyed it when I was
14."
Exeter: The
Royal Albert Memorial Museum "has
an Egyptian mummy case, which compares favorably with the one at
Bristol, but I am not positive if it also contains a mummy (I think it
does, but I can't remember from my last visit to Exeter)." The
museum which also has a ethnographic collection, displays a shrunken
head as part of this exhibit. (Thank you Dr. Dig, Caroline
Nicholson.)
Hull: The
West Riding Museum and Art Gallery has
an education center with original 1920's replicas of the treasures
from King Tut's tomb. Although the museum's collection includes
two Egyptian mummies, they are no longer displayed because they are no
longer well-preserved.
Leeds: The
City Museum and Art Gallery exhibits Natsuf-Amum, the keeper of the Royal Bulls. The museum once had many
more mummies, but was hit by an incendiary bomb in WW2, and only
"good old Netty" survived. His coffin is excellent.
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The
MUMMY TOMBS
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Liverpool: The
Liverpool Museum has
18 human Egyptian mummies, though not all are no display. The
collection also has over 70 animal mummies. Highly recommended.
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Liverpool: The
University Museum in
Liverpool also has a few animal mummies.
London:
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The
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The
British Museum has
three rooms of Egyptian mummies (recently remodeled and reopened) and
a display of one of the most famous bog bodies: the
Lindow Man. The museum's Egyptian
mummy collections include approximately 78 humans and over 80
animals. This is a "don't miss"
collection.
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Also
in London is the Tower
of London.
And
while you wouldn't expect to find a mummy in a medieval castle, you
would be wrong. Only the mummy is not that of a medieval person, it's
of a rodent. It is displayed in St. Paul's Chapel (look closely in one
of the glass display cases along the inner wall, because it's easy to
miss) as an example of evidence that the King's written documents were
not properly maintained in the 1800s (after all, how could a rodent
end up dead with important documents of State?).
Three small
London museums that might be worth a visit
are:
The British
Optical Association Museum
(42 Craven Street, near Charing Cross station) has
some archaeological specimens including the eye models of a few Egyptian
mummies and a fascinating online exhibit (one of many) about Optography
& Optograms.
Museum website
The Grant
Museum of Zoology
(University College London on Gower Street,
near the British Museum) is the oldest and last university zoological
collection. It includes the dissected corpse of a Tasmanian tiger
("Fluid preserved specimen, dissection in 4 sections - section of
torso, section of torso with leg attached, separate hind leg and tail")
as
well as a selection of moles preserved in formalin. There
are many other preserved specimens, skeletons, and stuffed animals. Museum
website
The
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (also at University College
London on Malet Place, off Torrington Place map)
is a lesser known Egyptian museum with many mummy cases and Roman
portrait panels (the world's largest collection) and artifacts galore.
If you want to see mummies, go to the British Museum. But if you want
to see everything else, you won't go wrong here. The museum says that
costume is one of its strengths: "In addition to the 'oldest
dress' there is a unique beadnet dress of a dancer from the Pyramid
Age, about 2400 BC, two long sleeved robes of the same date; a suit of
armour from the palace of Memphis, as well as socks and sandals from
the Roman period." Museum
website
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The
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Manchester: The
Manchester Museum (formerly
University Museum) has one of the best displays
in the world. Plus with Dr. Rosalie David as keeper of Egyptology and
prolific author, you
can read in great detail about many of the mummies you will see. Highly recommended.
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Newcastle: The
Hancock Museum displays
two mummies and has a permanent exhibition called "The Land of
the Pharaohs."
