Daily Photo - Egypt at the Pitt-Rivers

After visiting the newly re-opened galleries at the Ashmolean in Oxford (U.K.), we made a visit to the Pitt-Rivers Museum. I've been to the Ashmolean many times but the Pitt-Rivers was new to me, and something of a surprise.

Artefacts are arranged by theme, irrespective of geography or time period. One cabinet, for example, had Egyptian Predynastic C-Ware and D-Ware alongside Nubian Meroitic and some Zuni and other southwest American ceramics. The model boat exhibit was truly mind-numbing in its scope. It is very difficult to make any sense of many of the cabinets, particularly since the lighting is so dim (many people had wind-up torches which were available from Reception, which added an additional sense of strangeness as the museum resonated to the sound of them being wound).

Apart from the torches, it felt like being transported back into a much earlier era of museum management. I truly enjoyed the experience, surrealistic as it was, but it does make me very grateful for modern museum labeling and chronologically ordered displays. The Pitt-Rivers is an important piece of museum archaeology in its own right.