Visit guide for
primary teachers
Ancient lives
new discoveries
22 May – 30 November 2014
Mummy of a priest’s daughter
named Tamut in a painted
case, and CT scan of the same
mummy. From Thebes, Egypt,
22nd Dynasty, c. 900 BC.
Contents
About the exhibition
3
Using the exhibition
5
Planning your visit
6
Exhibition activity sheets
8
Activity sheet: introduction
9
Activity sheet: 1
10
Activity sheet: 2
11
Activity sheet: 3
12
Briefing sheet for adult helpers
13
Background information
134
Exhibition image banks
145
Further resources
156
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About the exhibition
This special exhibition explores how non-invasive scientific techniques are being
utilized to study mummified bodies from the Nile valley and artefacts in the
Museum’s collection to provide new insights into how people lived and died over a
period of 4000 years.
Studying human remains provides unique evidence for the reconstruction of lived
experience in ancient cultures. This exhibition focuses on the Nile valley over a
4,000 year period – from Egypt before the pharaohs to the establishment of
Christianity in Sudan.
The British Museum is involved in innovative research and cutting-edge
visualisation to study human remains in its collection.
Virtual explorations inside funerary cases and mummies are leading to dramatic
new discoveries that, in this exhibition, bring us face to face with eight people
living in the Nile valley.
Innovative interactive visualisations and digital interpretation communicate the
excitement of these discoveries at first hand.
Studying objects found in graves and settlement sites complements what can
be learned from human remains and deepens our understanding of the lives
and beliefs of the ancient people.
Mummification was not just the preserve of Pharaohs. It was used by people
at different levels of society and children were also mummified.
Deliberate mummification ended with the arrival of Christianity, but natural
mummification still occurred. This means that human remains provide unique
insight into the lives of people over a remarkably long period and wide
geographical area.
A short blog introducing the exhibition written by the exhibition curators can be
read at
http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2014/05/22/eight-mummies/
The British Museum policy on human remains in the collection can be read at
http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/Human%20Remains%20policy%20July%20201
3%20FINAL.pdf
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The exhibition features eight mummies which have been the focus of recent
scientific investigation. These bodies cover a period of over 4000 years
(Predynastic to Christian), from sites in Egypt and the Sudan. The exhibition
explores different aspects of living and dying in the ancient Nile valley by
focusing on the lives of these eight individuals. The arrangement of the
exhibition is thematic rather than strictly chronological.
The layout of the exhibition is as follows:
Introduction: an introduction to CT scanning
Mummies: eight mummies and the stories they tell us about life in the ancient Nile
valley with a selection of accompanying ritual and everyday objects
Mummy masks: three ancient mummy masks
Mummy faces: a digital visualisation of the faces of three of the mummies
Content
The Ancient lives, new discoveries special exhibition features the mummified
remains of eight people who lived in the ancient Nile valley. The mummies include
women, men and children. Some of the mummies are in their coffins/wrappings
while the natural mummies have less covering and more of the body can be seen.
The exhibition also includes interactive and passive visualisations of the mummies
based on data gathered during recent CT scans of each mummy. These
visualisations include internal views of the human body.
Dead bodies
The exhibition includes human remains. Please encourage students to behave
with respect throughout their time in the exhibition. Response to human remains
can range from exaggerated revulsion to prurient interest to emotional upset. We
recommend talking with students about the remains in school, before they visit
the exhibition. Discuss how the remains were recovered by archaeologists, how
the remains and the objects discovered with them inform us about who the
people were, and how they remind us that this distant historical period involved
real people. You may like to discuss modern approaches to burial and respecting
human remains.
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Using the exhibition
In advance
Decide on a focus for the visit and a follow-up activity. Go through these with the
students. Some examples of possible ‘big question’ focuses are given on
page 6.
If you are using activity sheets, go through them with the students in advance.
Use the ideas in Pre-visit preparation below (see page 7) and the exhibition image
banks (see page 15) to provide general background and to familiarise students
with some of the content of the exhibition.
On the day
Divide the class into small groups, with an adult assigned to each group.
Give each adult a copy of any activity sheets the students are using (see pages 912) and a briefing sheet (see page 13). Explain what you want the students to do in
the exhibition.
Encourage adults to allow students to linger at mummies and objects which
interest them, to discuss what they see and share things they find out as they go
round.
Remind students to behave calmly and politely.
Photography is not allowed within the exhibition, but students may take
photographs of relevant mummies and objects in the Museum’s permanent
galleries.
Afterwards
Discuss the students’ thoughts and responses to the exhibition.
Use what the students have gathered in the exhibition for the follow-up activity.
Re-visit the exhibition image banks, if relevant.
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Planning your visit
We recommend the following three guidelines in planning your students’
visit to the exhibition:
provide a focus that students should keep in mind as they explore the exhibition
and which you can follow up afterwards
do some preparatory work in school to develop the focus of the visit and familiarise
students with the content of the exhibition
allow students some scope to explore and to find mummies and objects that
interest them
Curriculum links
The exhibition offers opportunities in the following curriculum areas and for crosscurricular work:
History
archaeology and how evidence is found, types of evidence, finding out about the
lives of women, men and children in the past
English
the idea of ancient lives revealed and the lives of the people in the exhibition offers
great potential for a wide range of writing and oral work, including poetry, first
person narratives and drama
Science
materials and their properties, organic and non-organic material, weathering
Art and design
sculpture, jewellery and decorative objects
PSHE and Citizenship
interacting with other cultures, cultural influence, preserving the past, excavating
human bodies
Structuring the visit
It is often a good idea to have a general ‘big question’ for the students to
keep in mind during their visit. Here are some possible examples:
Which did I think, and why, was the most interesting mummy or object in the
exhibition?
What did I learn about ancient people that I did not know before?
What sources of evidence does the exhibition include?
How useful did I find these for learning about people in the past?
What have I learned about ancient people from the mummies and objects in the
exhibition?
What else would I put in the exhibition to make it interesting/informative?
This guide includes a number of activity sheets which you can use or adapt to help
focus the students as they go round the exhibition (see pages 9-12).
If you want students to do any drawing, we recommend that they draw one thing
carefully rather than doing lots of drawings.
Encourage the students to enjoy looking at the mummies and objects they find
interesting as well as completing their focused work.
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Pre-visit preparation
Here are a few suggestions of things to do before your visit to
prepare students.
Use maps to identify the location of Egypt and the Sudan.
Use some of the resources listed on page 16 to help students understand the
technique of CT scanning and the nature of the images they will see in the
exhibition
Familiarise the students with the chronology of the Nile valley. Mummies featured
in the exhibition come from many different periods of Egyptian history including the
pre-dynastic period, the pharaonic period, Roman Egypt and Christian Sudan.
Discuss what happens when something is dehydrated and ask the students to
think about the process as it applies to fruit, for example a dried grape becoming a
raisin, and other examples of fruit which are often dried to preserve them for longer.
Look through the exhibition image bank (see page 15) to introduce students to the
mummies and the kinds of objects they will see and to familiarise them with some
mummies and objects they will subsequently see ‘for real’.
Choose one of the mummies or objects in the image bank and explore in detail
what information a single item can provide about life in the past.
Look at mummies and objects from Egypt and the Sudan in the Explore section of
britishmuseum.org
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Exhibition activity sheets
There is one set of activity sheets:
Investigating ancient lives
There are four activity sheets which ask students to look at the mummies, objects
and digital interpretation and think about what they tell us about the lives of people
in the past.
The first sheet is an introduction sheet followed by three activity sheets relating to
specific sections of the exhibition.
The sections relating to activity sheets 1, 2 and 3 are identified by numbered
scarab beetles on the walls inside the exhibition.
The activity sheets are designed to be printed/ photocopied as separate A4 sheets.
Each group of students and their accompanying adult can use the sheets as
prompts for exploring the exhibition and recording relevant information.
Use these sheets in combination with the briefing sheet for adult helpers on page
13.
The activity sheets encourage the students to explore natural mummification,
artificial mummification, how embalmed preserved and protected the bodies of the
dead, ancient Egyptian diet, temple music, hair styles, childhood and religious
beliefs.
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Activity sheet: introduction
Read
 In this exhibition you will meet eight mummies.
 Each was once a living person – a woman, a man, a girl or a boy.
 Each tells us a story about life in the ancient Nile valley.
 These mummies have never been unwrapped but the Museum is
using modern technology to find out what is inside them.
Answer these questions
How many mummies will you see? _____________________
Where did the people used to live? _____________________
Have the mummies ever been unwrapped? ______________
What has the Museum used to find out what is inside them?
_________________________________________________
Look for
a map of Egypt
a timeline of the eight mummies
a large photograph of Egypt
a set of CT scan images
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Activity sheet: 1
Read
 The first two mummies tell us about how natural and artificial
mummies were preserved.
 The earliest Egyptian mummies were natural mummies dried out by
the hot, dry sand in which they were buried.
 Later, the Egyptians invented a way to dry out bodies deliberately
with a type of salt called natron.
Look for
something to eat
something to preserve a body
something to wrap a body
something to protect a body
Write your ideas down if you want to.
If you want to draw, choose just one object to draw carefully.
Talk
Imagine you are an archaeologist excavating an ancient Egyptian
tomb – what might you find inside the tomb?
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Activity sheet: 2
Read
 The next three mummies all have a connection to ancient Egyptian
temples where the ancient gods and goddesses were worshipped.
 Mummies were usually protected by several outer layers of covering
such as linen wrappings and painted wooden coffins.
 The Egyptians also made mummy cases from layers of linen or
papyrus covered with plaster. This is called cartonnage.
Look for
something to make a rattling
noise
something to make a clapping
sound
something to wear on your head
something to style your hair
Write your ideas down if you want to.
If you want to draw, choose just one object to draw carefully.
Talk
The ancient Egyptians worshipped many different gods and
goddesses – how many can you name?
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Activity sheet: 3
Read
 The next two mummies tell us about mummification in Roman Egypt.
 The final mummy is another natural mummy and tells us about
changes in religious beliefs in the Nile valley.
Look for
something to play with
something to wear on your feet
something to read
something to put over a
mummy’s face
Write your ideas down if you want to.
If you want to draw, choose just one object to draw carefully.
Talk
In Egypt today people follow the Christian and the Muslim faiths –
what other modern world religions do you know about?
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Briefing sheet for adult helpers
Please:
help students find their way around the exhibition
encourage students to share ideas and observations
keep them focused on the work their teacher has set
use the mummy and object labels to explain things to students
draw students’ attention to things they may have missed
The main part of the exhibition is arranged:
Introduction: an introduction to CT scanning
Mummies: eight mummies and the stories they tell us about life in the ancient Nile
valley with a selection of accompanying ritual and everyday objects
Mummy masks: three ancient mummy masks
Mummy faces: a digital visualisation of the faces of three of the mummies
Activity sheets
Activity sheet: introduction This sheet helps to set the scene for the information
which the students will encounter in the exhibition. This sheet relates to the first
two spaces in the exhibition and encourages the students to think about ancient
Egypt and the modern technology used to gather information about the mummies.
Activity sheet: 1 This sheet starts in the space near scarab beetle 1 and
encourages the students to look at the next two mummies. These mummies help
us to understand about natural and artificial mummification, ancient Egyptian diet
and the job of an ancient embalmer as they preserved and protected the bodies of
the deceased.
Activity sheet: 2 This sheet starts in the space near scarab beetle 2 and
encourages the students to look at the next three mummies. These mummies all
have a connection with ancient Egyptian temples. They help us to understand how
embalmers prepared the bodies of the dead for the afterlife, ancient temple music
and ancient hair styles.
Activity sheet: 3 This sheet starts in the space near scarab beetle 3 and
encourages the students to look at the next three mummies. The first two
mummies in this section tell us about mummification in Roman Egypt, hairstyles
and childhood. The third mummy is another natural mummy and tells us about
changes in religious beliefs in Egypt and the Sudan as the Christian faith became
established in the Nile valley.
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Background information
Mummification
In the Predynastic period (about 4400-3100 BC), the time before the pharaohs, the
dead were buried in shallow graves cut into the desert sand. The graves were
often lined with reed mats, making them like a bed, and the body was covered with
linen or skins and more mats, like a blanket, before the grave was refilled and
perhaps topped by a mound of dirt. Contact with the hot dry sand naturally
preserved the bodies because the sand absorbed the water that constitutes
approximately 75% by weight of the human body. Bacteria cannot breed without
moisture and as a result, the bodies frequently did not decay, but simply dried out.
Chance discoveries of these sand-dried mummies (for example, when a grave was
disturbed by animals or robbers), may have promoted the belief that physical
preservation of the body was necessary for the afterlife. This may have led the
later Egyptians to develop means of artificial mummification after the introduction
of coffins and deeper graves separated the body from the natural drying effects of
the sand. Artificial preservation, by the process of mummification, was first
introduced in the Old Kingdom (about 2613-2160 BC).
Mummy masks
Mummy masks are a depiction of the head and chest of the dead and were worn
over the wrapped head of the mummy. They were principally used to protect the
deceased's face but could also act as substitutes for the mummified head should it
be damaged or lost. Egyptians believed that the spirit or ba survived death and
could leave the confines of a tomb. The mummy mask therefore provided the
means for the returning ba to recognize its host - whose face was hidden by layers
of bandage. Mummy masks were rarely particularized portraits and usually showed
idealized features.
The use of gold was connected to the belief that the sun god Re, with whom the
mummy hoped to be united, had flesh of pure gold. The mask was created from
layers of wet linen gummed together, usually shaped over a mould and then given
a thin outer coating of plaster. Once it had hardened, it could be gilded or painted.
CT scanning
CT scan (or CAT scan) stands for Computerised (Axial) Tomography scan. This is
a type of scan which takes a series of X-rays and uses a computer to put them
together to create a 3D image. The CT machine takes pictures of the body from
different angles and gives a series of cross sections (slices) through the part of the
body being scanned. A very detailed picture of the inside of the body can be built
up.
Many diseases and injuries leave distinctive evidence on the skeleton. Until the
twentieth century, the diseases and injuries that affected the ancient Egyptians
could only be detected by unwrapping mummies. It is now possible to use noninvasive techniques, such as X-rays and CT scans to investigate ancient human
remains.
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Exhibition image banks
You can download exhibition image banks at
www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/ancient_lives/schools.aspx
There are two image banks related to the exhibition
Image bank: mummies
An image bank showing the eight mummies featured in the exhibition
Image bank: objects
An image bank showing a selection of exhibition objects exploring the themes of
diet, music, hairstyles and childhood.
You will find information about the mummies and the objects in the Notes section
of each slide.
You can use the image banks to introduce students to the eight mummies and the
types of objects they will encounter in the exhibition and to support follow-up
activities back in the classroom. Individual images can be printed out for use in
small group work.
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Further resources
British Museum website
Explore is an online database of over 5,000 objects from the Museum’s collection.
To investigate mummies from Egypt and the Sudan click on Explore at
britishmuseum.org
A short video looking at how CT scanning was used to investigate one of the
Museum’s oldest natural dried mummies can be viewed at
britishmuseum.org/channel/exhibitions/2012/virtual_autopsy_gebelein_man.aspx
Books for students
Nigel Strudwick, Pocket Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian Mummies
British Museum Press, 2004
Books for teachers
John H. Taylor and Daniel Antoine, Ancient lives, new discoveries: eight mummies,
eight stories
British Museum Press, 2014 - detailed book on the exhibition
Other websites
Video showing a British Museum mummy being taken to a London hospital for
scanning available to view at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA0LMZPzLbs
Video showing one of the mummies in the exhibition being CT scanned with
comments from John Taylor, one of the exhibition curators, available to view at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wse3Eun9G2A
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have the results from the CT scanning of
three of their mummies available to view at
http://www.schoolsliaison.org.uk/mummies/index.html
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