Yesterday Primary 4 from St Margaret’s School for Girls came along to the University for the Ancient Egyptian Experience Day at Special Collections and King’s Museum. The girls started off their day the museum, learning all sorts of amazing facts about life (and death) on the Nile. After a quick lunch they visited the library, where they were able to amaze me with their brilliant Ancient Egyptian knowledge, before learning even more from the University’s collection.
The class were challenged to imagine themselves as Victorian Egyptologists
travelling all the way to Egypt from Aberdeen to explore the wonders found there. But there was a problem: some of the artefacts were too big to take home to show our friends in Scotland! Some quick problem solving discussions came up with some useful answers such as writing descriptions and drawing pictures. The girls got to see examples of what two real Victorian Egyptologists did to record their findings before trying out some of the methods for themselves. As well as drawing and rubbing, the class used modelling dough to create “squeezes” or impressions of the Egyptian engraving. Here are a few examples:
Egyptologist Ellen Pollard didn’t record by drawing or squeezing. Instead she wrote down the hieroglyphs she saw and translated them later. Some of her translations reveal some pretty disgusting facts regarding Ancient Egyptian health care including ingredients such as dog’s blood and lizard dung! Using Ellen’s notebooks as inspiration the class were tasked with making up their own Ancient Egyptian medicines recipes and they definitely rose to the challenge. Some fairly horrid concoctions were invented however we weren’t sure if they would really make you better or just make things worse!
If you would like to bring your class to the Special Collections Centre for a school workshop, email scc.learning@abdn.ac.uk or phone (01224) 273047 or (01224) 273048.
Posted by: Lynsey
UoA Collections 