Today we took our second field trip and I've decided it's my favorite part of homeschooling. We went to the art museum because I remembered from years past that they had this great Egyptian section with a mummy and some really cool hands-on activities for the kids, including make your own hieroglyphs.
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| Casia points out all the figures painted on the sarcophagus and explains who they represent. |
Unfortunately, the exhibit as I remember it, has changed. Looking back, it might have previously been a special exhibit up only for a limited time. I remember entering a tomb-like room by walking past two Anubis statues. Now they have the Egyptian artifacts in the same small room with the Greek and Roman antiquities. Gone are the make your own hieroglyphs and the collection is quite a bit smaller than I remember it. But they still have the mummy and sarcophagus and some other interesting relics, including canopic jars, a relief from a burial chamber's wall, jewelry and shabtis. Casia enjoyed looking at the sarcophagus and identifying the figures painted on its side.
They also had this computer terminal that gave a brief Egyptian history and explained some of the mythology. Casia had fun playing the games. The room was very dark and the lights were not turned on in the sarcophagus exhibit. We could still make out all the details on it, but it was harder to get good pictures because I couldn't use a flash.After visiting the Egyptian room, we then toured the rest of the museum. It had been more than a year since Casia and I had been there. Our favorite exhibit is the impressionist paintings. We both really like Monet and they have two on display at this museum. On our way out we checked out the gift shop. I almost never buy anything at gift shops, but I couldn't resist when I saw a "make Your Own Papyrus" kit. It's one of the activities that I have been planning but I've been struggling to figure out what to use since papyrus doesn't grow around our parts. I had heard that you could use parts of the cattail plant, which grows around here. I just hadn't gotten around to picking some and experimenting. When I saw the papyrus being sold for $7, I decided to save myself the trouble and probably a lot of frustration. Casia bought herself a hieroglyph stencil ruler. She wants to use it in an art project involving Nkuku (her mummified chicken) and his sarcophagus.
All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon and I look forward to planning our next field trip.
I would have gotten down and dirty trying to make papyrus with the cattails myself. Kits are convenient (and you don't have to put on hip waders to get them), but you learn a whole lot more by doing the whole process from start to finish yourself. There are probably technical problems to be overcome- how do you keep the leaves from curling as they dry? Do you need to press them? Should you dry the leaves before you start trying to make a sheet of papyrus out of them, or can you work directly with the green leaves? Is there any sort of processing (scraping, pounding, etc.) that improves the final product?
ReplyDeleteYou won't get any of that experience or insight from a kit. But if you have a low tolerance for mud and mad-scientist experimentation, the kit makes more sense. Although somehow I can't bring myself to believe that a mother-daughter team who are happily attempting to mummify a chicken would have any serious problems with either the mud or the mad-scientist part of do-it-yourself papyrus-making.
Does the art museum still have one of the stone lions from Karnak in its collection? I'm ambivalent about having a looted antiquity in the local museum, but it was pretty cool to be able to touch it. At least, it was available to be touched back in the 1970s.
Orion, thanks for your comment. You are most certainly right, it would be a good experience to do it from the cattails. But, I have to balance time and energy, and I opted for easier and quicker. (Honestly, it wasn't the mud!)
ReplyDeleteOh, and I was thinking that it was part of the stem that you'd peel from the cattail stalks, not the leaves, but you could be right. The kit is just the papyrus plant stems. We still have to soak them, pull them apart, roll them, re-soak them, etc. It's still pretty involved. I'll definitely be posting pictures of the process and final results.