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2,000 Ancient Egyptian Artifacts Go on Show in Stunning New Exhibition at UK Museum

The Bolton Museum has customised a new wing for the artifacts, one of which is thought to be the mummy of Rameses the Great's son

Staff Writer

The Bolton Museum in the namesake northern English town of Bolton, will be showing a collection of more than 2,000 Ancient Egyptian artifacts for the opening of their multi-million UK pound Egyptology gallery which will be welcoming the public as of Saturday 22nd of September.Titled A Journey of Life, Death and Rebirth, the museum will be showcasing a replica tomb of Pharaoh Tuthmose III, recreated using 3D laser scanning.  Thuthmose III was the 6th pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. The room details the story of the Amduat, an important Ancient Egyptian funerary text reserved only for Pharaohs and recounting their journey to the afterlife. 

Granted an honorary spot in the replica tomb is 'the unknown man', a mummy believed to be the son of Rameses the Great but never officially identified as such. Collection access officer for Egyptology at the Bolton Museum, Ian Trumble adds “he’s in a woman’s coffin and we’re not sure how he came to be in it.”
Donated to the Bolton museum in the 1920s, the mummy is believed to have been used as part of the décor for a woman's drawing room. Trumble muses that this was around the time that mummies were all the rage in films, which may have influenced the woman’s decision to decorate her room with it. Among the museum’s vast collection of artifacts is the oldest sample of mummification in the world and part of stonework from Pharoah Tuthmose III’s original tomb.The gallery displaying the collection was designed to show several aspects of Ancient Egypt. Made up of glass arches, the layout creates a 360 degree experience for guests to enjoy the collection containing hundreds of objects pertaining to everyday life in Ancient Egypt, touching on everything from Egyptians' relationship with their gods and the kind of professions they held to the beauty regiments they used at the time.

“We wanted to show the landscape, its flora and fauna. It’s animals which influenced its culture," Trumble adds.

The exhibition boasts of two rooms looking into the West's relationship with Ancient Egypt, one of which covers the Ancient Egypt's impact on pop culture. The pop culture room even includes (supposedly) clips from Mickey Mouse and Batman that have found inspiration in Ancient Egypt. 

Main Image taken from theboltonnews.co.uk