Visiting The Petrie Museum Of Egyptian Archaeology

My fifth time visiting London and I’m still finding new places to explore!

Like Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury, a public space that is not only peaceful and invites reading on park benches for hours, but also has a Gandhi statue and a bust of writer Virginia Woolf to admire.

Unfortunately, no quiet introspection for me today, as I was on the way to another new place, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. I only found out about this museum during my last visit to London.

At its entrance, you’re greeted with this quote by founding archaeologist, Flinders Petrie: “The present has its most serious duty to history in saving the past for the benefit of the future.” located near University College of London, its 80,000 piece collection ranks behind the Cairo Museum, British Museum and Egyptian Museum of Berlin.

The musty museum is small in size, but crammed with artifacts behind glass cases. And tucked away in the stairwell. One might say it feels very collegial or from another time, but as much as I enjoyed perusing the artifacts, I prefer wider, more open spaces.

And so I go where I always have to go whenever I’m in London. The British Museum.

I’ve always loved the Egypt galleries, but this time around, I gravitated to the Middle East floors. With all the ancient artwork and temples being destroyed in the Middle East, I felt like I had to study, appreciate and honour the art and sculpture from that part of the world. To pay reverence for what is now gone forever.

So I spent a lot of time taking in Assyrian sculptures, the Balawat Gates, the art of ancient Iran, South Arabia, Anatolia, Urartu and Mesopotamia.

And because the Temple in Palmyra was recently destroyed, I spent some time studying this artwork, The People of Palmyra.

These stone faces, representing Roman Syrians, who lived between AD 50-270, come from tombs outside the city of Palmyra. Their fashions are Syrian but they are shown in realistic Roman style.

There were three types of tombs, all built for wealthy citizens: single-story house tombs, tomb towers of several stories and underground rock-hewn tombs.

Inside each tomb contained rows of compartments set into the walls to hold the remains of the dead. Each was sealed with a plaque bearing a stone portrait of the dead person accompanied by a brief inscription.

Here’s some more of my favourite pieces: Lamassu and Balawat Gate, Pharoah Rameses, the Nereid Monument, fragments of a Colossal Horse from the Quadriga of the Mausoleum at Halikamassos 350 BC, Winged Bull of Assyria and Dragon Tiles, Ming Dynasty 1400-1600.

After spending the bulk of the day at the British Museum, I headed to the National Portrait Gallery for the Audrey Hepburn Portraits of an Icon exhibit.

The exhibit featured a selection of more than 70 classic and rarely seen prints from photographers such as Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Terry o’Neill, Norman Parkinson and Irving Penn. Since I’m such a huge fan and a collector of several books, not to mention Audrey Hepburn movies, I was already familiar with a lot of the portraits on the wall.

If I knew that, I would’ve scheduled my trip to London/Iceland earlier and caught the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the V&A instead. It was between these two exhibits and in hindsight, I wish i had chosen differently. Only because I have most of these photos in my books. Being a super fan and all. But nonetheless, it was a lovely exhibit – and one that I can’t really regret.

Museums may very well be one of my favourite things to see when traveling. There’s so many things to revisit and as this visit proves, so many more things to discover and appreciate.