The museum is hosting an Ancient Egypt Open House today. This open house was put together for all local students who are taking Dr. David Silverman’s Introduction to Ancient Egypt and Its Civilization on Coursera, an online platform which allows students from all over the world to enroll in the course (more than 20,000 people have signed up for the first offering). But you don’t have to be enrolled in the class to take part in the open house, which will include a talk by Dr. Silverman, Egyptian gallery tours, a mummification workshop, a hieroglyph workshop, book signings, and a special open window session in the Artifact Lab. The full schedule is posted on the museum’s website – follow this link for more information. You can also read about the course and the Open House in the Inquirer article from earlier this week:

Penn online course on Ancient Egypt – The Philadelphia Inquirer

If the open house isn’t alluring enough, remember that this is one of the last weekends to visit the Artifact Lab before we go on hiatus at the end of the year. We will be closed temporarily from December 31 but we will reopen to the public on April 8, 2017. As usual, we have some pretty interesting things in the lab that you can see when you visit, including our Egyptian mummy Hapimen, a Graeco-Roman terracotta coffin lid, and several artifacts that have been selected for our new Middle Eastern Galleries, slated to open in 2018. Here are a few images to show you how our work is coming along:

A detail of Hapimen (E16220A), showing the damage to his wrappings and body, likely caused by tomb robbers. Conservator Alexis North is working to stabilize the damage and get Hapimen ready to go back on exhibit.

Graeco-Roman terracotta coffin lid from Meydum (32-42-1107) (before treatment)

Djed-Hapi’s cartonnage mask with a temporary facing applied (during treatment) (E3413D)