Haslemere Museum
On Thursday 12th November, Chestnut Class visited Haslemere Museum to learn about the Ancient Egyptians. This trip was one of the highlights for Chestnut class this term.
SUTY-EM-WIA
One of the first activities we did was mummifying Suty-em-wia. Suty-em-wia was a fake doll. We pretended that we were ancient Egyptians and Suty-em-wia had died. This meant that we had to do the traditional thing the ancient Egyptians would do. Most of these things were really gross. First we had to take out the brains (which were pieces of yellow string) with a crochet hook. Then we took out the intestines, which were also fake, and pretended to embalm them.
First, Elspeth pulled out Suty-em-wia's brain! Next, Harry pulled out the intestines - yuck! Then, Emily pulled the stomach - Eeeeeeoooooo! After that, Sean took the liver out. Finally, Alfie pulled out the lungs.
We then had to put the intestines into the correct Canopic jar, there were four jars, all of which had differently shaped gods heads on the top. Finally we learnt that the Egyptians fed the brain to cats. They did this because, the cats get happy, then the gods get happy, so good things happen to them.
DEATH MASKS
Death masks are very detailed and pretty. There are differences, boys have red velvet faces on their sarcophagus and girls have pale yellow faces on their sarcophagus.
GIRL
BOY
MUMMIFIED ANIMALS
There were 3 mummified animals we saw a mummified hawk/falcon (below), a mummified cat and a crocodile. These animals were used as they are linked to the Egyptian Gods.
ACTIVITIES:
We did a variety of different activities such as working out a sentence of Hieroglyphics, playing games that Ancient Egyptians would have played. We even looked at Egyptian artefacts from 5000 years ago. There was an x-ray of the mummy and we used it to check if the mummified Egyptian had any injuries. One of the x-rays showed us a great example of a cleft pallet [a hole in the jaw.
MUMMIFYING OUR TOYS
First we wrapped our teddies with real bandages and added gem and sequins to represent their riches. Next we wrote our names on papaya for our teddies using hieroglyphics. Then we got some tape and stuck it on the bandages. After that we drew a picture of a face as a death mask for our teddy, here is the final product.
All in all it was a very gory but interesting day out.
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