Mummies!

Sunday morning we went to church with Sandra and Phil, and then we ate lunch at their house. They were heading off to eat with Phil's parents, who live nearby, before Phil jetted back off to London, where he has business. We went back to downtown Philadelphia, this time to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeaology and Anthropology . What a fascinating place! I had found this place on the internet, and since we'll be studying the Ancients again in history this year, and I will be teaching a unit on ancient Egypt for our homeschool co-op, I thought it would fit right in for us.
We started out in the "Lower Egypt Gallery". Here they had all these pillars, door frames, and other parts of a palace that a man from the museum had excavated back in the early 1900's. This sphinx had guarded the palace. Apparently, after the pharoah's death (no one you would recognize, most likely, and I'm too lazy to search for it right now), the palace burned down. It was buried in ash and mud, which preserved it until the archaeologist discovered it. The body of the sphinx was under the mud, but the head was exposed to the wind and sands for thousands of years, and it wore away his face.

After Lower Egypt, we moved through the galleries dealing with Greece, Rome, and Canaan and Ancient Isreal. Here Caleb is in front of a Roman mosaic. I always like seeing things with Latin on them, to see if I can recognize any words!
Next we moved through an amazing rotunda, which was totally huge. The whole building was so old and fascinating, and this rotunda was a beautiful part of it! It housed artifacts from China, including a bunch of Buddhas, but also this really cool crystal ball.

Next we moved on to the Upper Egypt Gallery, which had a lot of mummies exhibited. The mummies in the display case were the "youngest" mummies on display, from around 1000 B.C. There were others that were much older. One of the mummies had been removed from his bandages so you could actually see what was left of him. It was definitely a "him" too, since they preserve all those parts too. The boys were quite amazed by that. Ewww.

There were also a lot of other sarcophagi and huge statues displayed, including this one of another pharoah. He's wearing the white bowling ball hat of the Upper Egpyt kingdom. I'm sure you all remember that Lower Egyptian pharoahs wore a red bowling ball crown, and eventually the 2 kingdoms merged together.

By this point, Anna and Grace were rapidly approaching total meltdown, so we called it a day. This was truly a fascinating museum, with lots of neat things to see. Bob and most of the kids headed off to get the van, and I nursed again while Grace, Faith and I waited for them to come. We started to drive back home the same way we came, down I-95, which is certianly the shortest way, distance-wise. As we crept along hitting speeds of 20 mph, Bob asked if there wasn't any other way we could possibly get back home. We headed north again, and then out west on Rt. 30 through Lancaster and York. What a beautiful drive! We passed Amish farms and even a buggy, and lots of very old houses. Even though it was a lot farther, we made it home in only 5 hours, and we were actually moving the whole way! So we had such a fun time, and we are very grateful to Phil and Sandra for their amazing hospitality! Now we need to go back because there were things we still haven't seen, like the Mint, which is only open on weekdays.

But for now, we're off to Ohio tomorrow (well, today actually, as I see it is after midnight), where we are hoping to spend some time with a few families that I haven't seen since college, as well as family! Blogging will probably be light for awhile because we'll be too busy having fun!