Ancient Egyptians
Undoubtedly the star of our Egyptian Collection is ‘The Lady of the House, Ta-Kesh, Daughter of Osiris, Pa-Muta; her mother Lady of the House, Shy’.
This 2,700 year-old Egyptian mummy was brought to England in the 1820s. In 1843 it was opened by Samuel Birch of the British Museum, and a local doctor, HW Diamond, who made the cuts (still visible) in the skull and the abdomen. Usually a mummy would have had an inner and outer coffin; only the inner wooden coffin reached the Museum in the 19th century.
The collection explores ancient Egyptian culture with an emphasis on their obsession with death.
