Today we ventured into Philadelphia to visit the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. I hadn't been there since I was a child, so I was really looking forward to the visit. It was just a quick train ride (it was nice to leave the car behind for a change!) and the museum was literally right across the street from the train station. (can't get much more convenient than that!)
Founded in 1887, the Penn Museum has always been one of the world's great archaeology and anthropology research museums, and the largest university museum in the United States!
The African collection is one of the largest collections in the country. It includes approximately 15,000 ethnographic and 5,000 archaeological objects.
The collections of the American Section are the largest of the Penn Museum and number approximately 300,000 archaeological and ethnographic specimens. The collections span the continents of North and South America from Alaska to Argentina, and document human habitation and history from the ancient past to the present day. More than half of the American collection is archaeological in nature, and much of the collection was acuqired on more than 100 archaeological and ethnographic collecting expeditions initiated by Museum and University faculty and staff as early as 1895.
The Collections of the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum comprise some 34,000 objects of Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Cypriot, and Bronze Age Aegean origins, as well as small numbers of artifacts from related culture areas covers all of Asia and has a little over 25,000 objects.
A little bit into our visit, we took a break for lunch in the bright and airy cafe.
Penn Museum houses one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Nubian material in the United States, numbering in excess of 42,000 items. Assembled through nearly a century of archaeological research, this collection is unusual in that the vast majority of the objects were obtained through archaeological investigations in Egypt and entered the museum through a division of finds with Egypt's Antiquities Service.
The Egypt (Mummies) Gallery shown in the photos above displays carved reliefs, stone coffins, and three-dimensional sculpture that testifies to the superb craftsmanship of Egyptian artists and sculptors throughout its long history. We saw human and animal mummies, tomb artifacts, and funerary objects and materials used in the mummification process.
The Egypt (Sphinx) Gallery (shown above) houses one of the finest collections of Egyptian architecture on display in the United States. A 15-ton red granite sphinx, the LARGEST in the Western Hemisphere dominates the gallery. It is breathtaking! There is also a display of materials from the beginnings of Egyptian history and the founding of a unified country of Upper and Lower Egypt including ivory tags that bear examples of some of the earliest hieroglyphs found in Egypt, dating to over 5,000 years ago.
The Penn Museum holds nearly 25,000 artifacts from the area that encompasses modern Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon, and parts of Syria, making it the largest collection of artifacts from this region. A sampling is on display in the Canaan and Israel Gallery (shown above)
The China Gallery (above) is located in one of the largest unsupported masonry domes in the United States (the photo on the left doesn't do it much justice, but it was amazing)
The Iraq exhibit interested us right away because my husband was stationed there for a year and because it is so rich in Biblical history.
Last, but not least, we visited the Artifact Lab- Conserving Egyptian Mummies. It is a working laboratory. One of the conservators gave us a talk on how they investigate and learn about the mummies in their collection.
Can you tell how much we enjoyed our visit and how much we learned? We can't wait to go back again sometime!
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