Friday 11 July 2014

Our Kind of Yummy Mummies

When I told Tiger that we were going to see some mummies at the British Museum, his immediate response (although he knew full well that I meant the Ancient Lives exhibition) was, "Are they homeschooling mummies?"


"Well, I suppose you can say they were homeschooled, since mass schooling didn't exist in those days,"  I replied.


The British Museum's Egyptian mummies gallery is easily the most crowded gallery at any time.  It is always packed with tourists, visitors, and school groups.  This time, the exhibition focuses on the latest technology made available to historians and archaeologists to study the insides of the mummies without unwrapping the linen.


I am blown away by the clarity of images and the amount of new information that is made available for further research because of the use of CT scans.


Since this is a "revision" topic for us (we studied ancient Egypt in Year 1), we also reviewed the ancient Egyptian's mummification process:



This post is linked up to:
  1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 7/8/14
  2. History & Geography Meme #125
  3. Weekly Wrap-up: The last one of summer break
  4. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (7/12/14)

16 comments:

  1. That looks like a fun trip!! Love the comment on them being homeschool mummies ;) hahahah

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    1. Thank you, Jenni. It's a funny play on words, isn't it? :-)

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  2. Homeschoolng mummies - interesting thought :)

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    1. Don't you just love the pay on words? :-)

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  3. Oh, I'll have to show some of these to my kids because we're going to see the traveling King Tut exhibit this weekend. Perfect timing.

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    1. The King Tut exhibit you're going to will be a very cool one to see. Lucky you! I'm sure you'll all have a great time looking at all the treasures. :-)

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  4. Great trip! Thanks for linking up.

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    1. You're welcome, Phyllis. Have a great weekend!

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  5. I hadn't really thought much about how modern technology is changing how we deal with things like mummies. That is very cool. Thanks for all the great videos.
    Love Tiger's sense of humour!

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    1. You're welcome, Lucinda. It's a small exhibition, compared to the usual ones that the British Museum puts on, but the technology is very impressive. :-)

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  6. Hwee,

    Mummies are so fascinating. Unwrap them and find out more, but damage the mummies in the process... It's wonderful that modern technology has resolved this dilemma. The digital images in the video were so detailed. I must remember to show the videos to my girls!

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    1. I hope you and the girls enjoy the videos as much as we have enjoyed visiting the exhibition! These are the best videos I can find that are the closest to our experience there.

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  7. I find the whole going to look at mummies at the museum fascinating. Basically we as humans are peering through glass at dead humans. I'm not sure if I ought to be grossed out by that thought (I'm not, of course, but one wonders if one should be KWIM?)

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    1. I know what you mean, Claire. While fascinated by mummies since a young age, I have always wondered about the morality and integrity of the issue about displaying dead people to be 'exhibits', even in the name of science and research. Isn't it somewhat disrespectful to the dead to disturb their final resting place, and worse, to move them from one place to another?

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  8. I've heard about the CT images-must go to see. I know what you mean about looking at dead bodies. As a medical student, the pathology museum was fascinating but also slightly disrespectful. Soon after seeing the brain of a famous violinist, some non-medical friends happened to put on a recording of him playing-very odd.

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    1. With your medical background, Sarah, I'm sure you'll get so much more out of the exhibition than we did. The images are absolutely clear that they even show brain tissues! Most amazing.

      I'm sure there is a module of 'ethics' in medical schools, but I wonder whether it goes into areas such as using dead people, or indeed, live people for experiments/research/trials. It's an interesting topic, isn't it? :-)

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