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.
Wine Jar [Object of the Day #118]
By: Josef Wegner
Most ancient Egyptian pottery tends to be very utilitarian: rough vessels used for day to day purposes, the pots and pans of the land of the pharaohs. Occasionally, however, Egyptian potters produced beautifully decorated wares. Techniques such as slipping and polishing, incised decoration, modeling, and painted decoration (as in this example) produced Egypt’s fine wares. […]
Egyptian Jar [Object of the Day #108]
By: Josef Wegner
Egypt’s Predynastic Period (ca. 5000-3000 BCE) was a formative time when many of the key features of the civilization of the pharaohs took shape. One of the characteristic types of pottery of the Predynastic of Upper (southern) Egypt is D-ware (short for Decorated-Ware) as we see in this example from the site of Ballas. During […]
Royal Shawabti [Object of the Day #103]
By: Josef Wegner
Shabtis are mummiform funerary figurines buried in tombs to assist the deceased in the afterlife. Early ones appeared first around 2000 BCE during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom and then became very popular in later periods. They occur in a wide range of quality: from crude mud versions to elaborate ones in fine materials for elite and […]
Painted Jar [Object of the Day #93]
By: Josef Wegner
Painted jar from Karanog. The site of Karanog was located in Lower (or Northern) Nubia, now entirely flooded beneath Lake Nasser. In 1907-1912 this region was the focus for the first excavations of the Eckley Coxe Jr. Expedition of the Penn Museum. Karanog was once a flourishing town, and the administrative capital of Lower Nubia, […]
Colossal Head of Ramses II [Object of the Day #45]
By: Josef Wegner
Almost all Egyptian gods and goddesses could take the form of an animal. Osiris, the god of the dead, never developed animal associations. That is because he symbolizes the idea of the mummified pharaoh. To the ancient Egyptians, Osiris was the first mummy in history and every person whose body was mummified was following in […]