Exhibition: Excavating Egypt moves to Miami

Suite 101 (Stan Parchin)

It is nice to see that Excavating Egypt is on its travels again. As usual Stan Parchin has produced a reliably clear and informative account, describing the background to the exhibition, an overview of the exhibits and the main themes. There are photographs at the end of the piece. Here's a short extract:

The show's overriding theme is the origins of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, established through bequest at University College London in 1892 by British author and traveler Amelia Edwards (1831-1892). It was named after professor of Egyptian archaeology Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie.

A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1877), a description of Edwards' journeys in the land of the pharaohs, sparked Englishmen's interest in ancient Egyptian art and architecture. The neglect of the country's archaeological sites stirred the writer to create the Egypt Exploration Fund (1882) and donate her Egyptian antiquities to University College's museum, a collection supplemented by Flinders Petrie's finds from his organized and systematic excavations.