The Manchester Museum holds a collection of about 20,000 ancient Egyptian objects, making it one of the largest collections in the United Kingdom. Many of these originate from Petrie or British School of Archaeology in Egypt excavations. For a number of years, Petrie received funding for his work in Egypt from a local Manchester textile manufacturer, Jesse Haworth. During that time, one of the sites excavated by Petrie was the ancient town of Kahun, located about 80 km (50 miles) south of modern Cairo. This important site, which flourished in the 19th and 18th centuries BC, includes a pyramid complex, an ancient town, and cemeteries.
Many objects from Kahun were given to the Manchester Museum and also to the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. In recognition of this link, these museums collaborated to create the joint website, Virtual Kahun, featuring plans and 3D reconstructions of the ancient site. Through Virtual Kahun, it is also possible to search a database of 800 objects from Kahun, now in The Manchester Museum. More recently, The Manchester Museum has been able to put a larger number of objects from their collection on-line through their own website. For this reason, The Manchester Museum collection is not now included in the COVES database.
To learn more about the history of the museum and its collections click here.
To find out details about visiting the museum and searching their on-line database, please visit the museum's website, http://www.museum.man.ac.uk