Trails and Resources

Here are a number of themed trails to guide yourselves around the Petrie Museum. Each trail contains a museum map with a list of objects for easy location. They are written by museum staff, PhD candidates or specialists and are authored.

There are three types of trails: long guided tours with full references, family guides and quick introductions.

Quick Guides

A quick guide to the founding collection of the Petrie Museum and the founder of the museum Amelia Edwards:

Amelia Edwards

A quick guide to objects involved in mummification and burial of the dead in Ancient Egypt:

Mummified

A quick guide to what the ancient Egyptians ate and the tools they used in cooking:

Food and Cookery

A quick guide to objects associated with the Freemasonry movement and its history:

Freemasonry and Ancient Egypt

Family Trails

Introduction to archaeology through the museum and its founding archaeologist Flinders Petrie:

Egypt! Can you dig it?

Let Shaggy the cat tell you about the importance of cats in Ancient Egypt and discover cats in the museum collection:

Cat in Ancient Egypt

Long Trails

Discover the collection:

Explore the often hidden beauty of objects from Islamic period Egypt with this trail written by expert Carolyn Perry. Generously sponsored by the British Egyptian Society:

Islamic Egypt

A trail that uncovers the objects in the Petrie Museum from the late antique period when Egypt was Christian and explores the meaning 'Coptic' through language, theology and material remains. By Copt scholar Carol Downer and generously funded by the British Egyptian Society:

Coptic_Egypt.pdf

Go behind the scenes of the museum to find out how conservation treatment determines how we see the faces of some of the mummy masks:

Cartonnage Mask Conservation

Find out about the Greeks in Egypt and Alexander the Great. NB. This trail contains some sexually explicit words and images:

Alexander and the Greeks

A Different Look at Egypt:

Discover how Dr Who encountered Seth, what Stargate takes from Egypt and how the past fills our visions of the future. Written by Dr Who BBC Books author and general sci-fi geek, Simon Guerrier:

Sci-Fi Egypt

Find out more about the fascination of Egypt for the morbid and macabre in Gothic Egypt:

Gothic Egypt

Take another look at sexuality in Ancient Egypt in this popular trail written by John J Johnston. NB. This trail contains some sexually explicit words and images:

Beyond Isis and Osiris