Lesson Plan for Artefacts

A Trip to the Manchester Museum

The Manchester Museum has an excellent Egyptology collection, located in two rooms on the first floor. The first room contains mainly objects related to everyday life, found in towns. The second relates mainly to burial and the afterlife, and contains about ten mummies. A visit is well worthwhile, and there are several activities you might engage the children in which follow on from the workshop. Of course if your school is a long way from Manchester you might want to find out if there are any other Egyptian collections nearby. The British Museum in London has probably the best collection outside of Cairo. The following lessons are based specifically on the Manchester Museum, but might be adapted for others. Children will need to bring paper and pencil, and a book or clipboard to lean their paper on.

1. Finding items used in the workshop

Most of the items the children saw or made in the workshop can be found in the museum, or their near equivalents. Give the children the following checklist for them to find these items (just copy and paste into Word):

Find each of these items you saw in the Egypt workshop:

1. Mirror

2. Scarab

3. Large statue of Anubis as a jackal

4. Horus as a falcon

5. Dagger

6. Wand

7. Ushabti

8. Eye of Horus

9. Djed pillar

10. Sistrum (just the handle)

 

When they have found them all, they should choose one and draw it, and write a brief description of it (what it's made of, size, colours, etc.)

The objects are in the locations given below:

  map of the Egyptology exhibit

1. Mirror 5, 2d
2. Scarab lots, but especially b
3. Statue of Anubis c
4. Horus as a falcon a
5. Dagger 11
6. Wand 10, 8
7. Ushabti h
8. Eye of Horus lots, but especially c
9. Djed pillar lots, but especially c
10. Sistrum 8

2. Treasure Hunt

For fun, as well as to learn about other sorts of artefact, the children can try to find the following items. To make sure they have actually found them they have to answer a question about each one.

Treasure Hunt! Find each of these items and write down the answer to the question.

Item Question Your answer
1. Horus as a baby Whose arms is he in?  
2. Carving of the pharaoh Akhenaten Who is standing behind him?  
3. A purple scarab What is it made of?  
4. Kohl jar and stick What was it used for?  
5. Firestick What was it used for? (and how?)  
6. Headrest What is it made of? (and do you think it would have been comfortable?)  
7. Coffins of the two brothers What were their names?  
8. Four canopic jars What kinds of heads do they have?  
9. Asru (a mummy) What was her job?  
10. Hundreds of amulets found on a mummy What type of amulet is there most of?  

The answers, and the locations of the objects, are as follows:

Item Question Answer Location
1. Horus as a baby Whose arms is he in? Isis (his mother) 9
2. Carving of the pharaoh Akhenaten Who is standing behind him? Nefertiti (his wife) 10 (round back)
3. A purple scarab What is it made of? Amethyst b
4. Kohl jar and stick What was it used for? Make-up (eyeliner) 5, 2d
5. Firestick What was it used for? (and how?) Starting fires; the bow was used to twist the stick against the wood at the bottom which gave a spark, used to light dried grass 3
6. Headrest What is it made of? (and do you think it would have been comfortable?) Alabaster; presumably it was! e
7. Coffins of the two brothers What were their names? Nekht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht d
8. Four canopic jars What kinds of heads do they have? Human, falcon, baboon, jackal d, a
9. Asru (a mummy) What was her job? Temple chantress (singer) j
10. Hundreds of amulets found on a mummy What type of amulet is there most of? Djed (about 37 of them) c

If there is time, you can get the children to draw one of these objects and describe it, as above, or to choose their own and do the same.

Later the drawings can be coloured in (unless you allow them to take coloured pens to the museum) and made into a display or stuck in their history books. There should also be a class discussion about what was learned in the museum, about the Egyptians, and perhaps about museum displays in general.

  

drawing of a fish-shaped 'toilet tray' from 1450 BC

3. Do your own research

Older or more able children may get more out of their visit by picking one topic, one cabinet perhaps, and looking at all the items relating to that topic. They can draw a few of them and describe them, and later on make a poster or write a short essay on that topic. If they have already done research on this website on a certain topic, for example necklaces, they might want to look at all the necklaces in the exhibit and write/draw about those.

4. Finding Hieroglyphs

Children will probably enjoy spotting some of the hieroglyphs they have learned in the workshop. Click here for this activity.

5. Finding clothes and make-up

Children can also try to spot items that relate to the last part of the workshop, clothing and make-up. Click here for this activity.

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