The Manchester Museum collection houses more than 18.000 objects from Egypt and Sudan – one of the largest collections in the United Kingdom. Unlike many museums, most of this collection comes not from auctions, but from known excavations – mainly those conducted by Sir Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) and the Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville (1844-1926).

  Perhaps the most imposing object in the museum’s collection is a ten feet tall red granite column found by Naville at the site of Heracleopolis Magna in 1891. The column dates originally to the Old or Middle Kingdom, but was reused during the reign of Ramesses II. Along with his names, the column also bears a depiction of Ramesses giving offerings to the god Herishef – he-who-is-upon-his-lake. During the reign of Ramesses’ son Merenptah, the column was again re-used. Merenptah added his own throne names to those of his father, although the quality of the carving is much poorer, the carving being shallow and relatively faint.

Having access to the Manchester Museum collection is a massive benefit to our teaching, and to our student experience. Even though we mainly teach online, we incorporate museum objects into our lectures, and even shoot ‘museum visits’ – dedicated video seminars consisting of discussions of various objects and object types between the teaching staff and the Curator of Egypt and Sudan, Dr Campbell Price.

During this week, Dr Nielsen was fortunate enough to be given access to the large red granite column of Ramesses II for the purposes of shooting promotional material for our upcoming short courses. Currently the column is in a part of the Manchester Museum which is closed to the public making it an ideal time to shoot footage of it without the problems of background noise or visitors wandering into frame.

At the moment, the museum’s Egyptology displays are closed to the general public as part of a major revamp of the museum as a whole. They will however reopen in 2021 and in the meantime some of the collection will be used for a major travelling display Golden Mummies of Egypt which will utilise the museum’s enviable collection of objects from Graeco-Roman Egypt.