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Welcome to the Penn Museum blog. First launched in January 2009, the Museum blog now has over 800 posts covering a range of topics in the categories of Museum, Collection, Exhibitions, Research, and By Location. Here you’ll hear directly from our staff and Penn students about their work, research, experiences, and discoveries. To explore the Museum's other digital content, visit The Digital Penn Museum.


Something’s Fishy in the Palace of Merneptah: Graffiti in Ancient Egypt

Merenptah's Palace

By: Jennifer Houser Wegner

Visitors to our Lower Egyptian gallery are struck by the colossal scale of the architecture on display there.  Towering columns, massive doorways and an enormous gateway entrance – all of which speak to the power of the Egyptian pharaoh.  One is impressed when looking at this monumental architecture, but very detached. There’s a reason for […]

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Native Life in the Philippines (1913), or, Another missing film found in the Archives.

By: Kate Pourshariati

Thanks to our digitized and streamed film collections on the Internet Archive, Dr. Mark Rice, a researcher who teaches at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, found a rare 1913 film of which the Museum likely has the last remaining elements (i.e. portions).  To quote Dr. Rice: “… Titled,  Native Life in the […]

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