CUR8 at the Petrie Museum

This October, CUR8 – along with Vicky, Roz, and Becky from Maidstone Museum – paid a trip to the Petrie Museum of Egyptology in London. During the visit, the youth group met with the curator of the museum, Alice Stevenson, and had the opportunity to explore the museum during an exclusive two-hour period before it was opened to the public. Alice then led a tour of the museum, pointing out specific objects from the 25th Dynasty – the same era our very own Ta-Kush had lived.

Following the tour, there was the opportunity to handle objects from this Dynasty, with Alice proving extremely helpful and answering all questions put forth by the CUR8 group. After lunch, CUR8 returned to the museum for some unguided exploration, with information and useful books to help with research.

On Saturday, October 1, near UCL in London, a small minibus of excited CUR8-ers could be found rumbling through the busy weekend traffic. A few streets away from the Petrie Museum, the youths tumbled out of the door and consulted a handy map. Their interesting destination was just a short walk away!

We arrived at approximately 10:40am, ready for several hours of Ancient Egyptian artefacts and enlightenment. After a brief wait at the nearby café, we finally entered the museum – an early opening specifically for us! This was going to be awesome…

A few hours of exploration later, suffice to say that my horizons had expanded considerably. We’d wondered at the fascinating displays of millennia-old carved tablets and ancient jewellery, then got to handle objects ourselves with the help of protective gloves – we didn’t want to contaminate the artefacts or them to contaminate us!

As we examined the artefacts, the older CUR8-ers made some great inferences from the appearances of the objects, ranging from their shapes to estimates of what they were made of. This was great fun!

Next, we had a yummy lunch and then looked around the museum searching for more interesting facts and intriguing objects (and, in my case at least, taking a lot of photos!).

This was an amazing experience for all CUR8 members and we would like to thank Roz and Vicky for taking us and arranging the trip. It was certainly enlightening and fascinating, and has made us very excited for more! Next we will visit the British Museum… which we are hoping will be as equally awesome.

Charlotte Pettett, 12, Invicta Grammar School

Fancy becoming a member of the CUR8 team? Our youth group is aimed at 12-24 year-olds and provides the chance to get involved in key projects at Maidstone Museum, as well as experience tours of other museums and much more. To find out more about becoming a member, simply complete and submit an enquiry form below.