Museum showcases life in ancient Egypt

Suite101 (Karen Dabrowska)

It's a really ghastly shame that they cannot spell the name "Petrie" correctly, but here's an extract from the piece because however bad the spelling is the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology deserves all the credit that it is given in this piece:

In a small street on London University's sprawling campus is a small museum which houses 80,000 artefacts from ancient Egypt.

The unassuming building in Gower Street has one of the greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. It illustrates life in the Nile Valley from prehistory through the time of the pharaohs, the Ptolemaic, Roman and Coptic periods to the Islamic period.

The collection is full of 'firsts': One of the earliest pieces of linen from Egypt (about 5000 BC); two lions from the temple of Min at Koptos, from the first group of monumental sculpture (about 3000 BC); a fragment from the first kinglist or calendar (about 2900 BC); the earliest example of metal from Egypt, the first worked iron beads, the earliest example of glazing, the earliest 'cylinder seal' in Egypt (about 3500 BC); the oldest wills on papyrus paper, the oldest gynaecological papyrus; the only veterinary papyrus from ancient Egypt, and the largest architectural drawing, showing a shrine (about 1300 BC).