Search: "Abydos"

At the Museum

Over the past eight years, Williams Director Julian Siggers led the way in transforming our Penn Museum. Re-imagining how visitors experience our building and our galleries led to the most extensive renovation of the Museum in a century, including moving the massive Sphinx of Ramses II. New K–12 programs invited students to engage with the […]

Remembering Jo Klein THE PENN MUSEUM COMMUNITY was saddened to learn of the passing of longtime volunteer and friend Josephine Klein, of Gladwyne, PA, in June 2020, just a month shy of her 100th birthday. An ardent and generous supporter of arts organizations throughout the Philadelphia region, Jo leaves a special legacy at the Penn […]

From the Editor

By: Jane Hickman

I began as Editor of Expedition in 2009, just after I finished graduate school at Penn. Issue 51.2 that year was a special magazine focused on the site of Gordion in Turkey, a Museum excavation that began in 1950 and continues to this day. Since then, I have been responsible for over 30 issues of […]

Scientist and Mentor, 1951-2018

By: Deborah I. Olszewski

Harold L. Dibble, preeminent paleoanthropologist, passed away on June 10, 2018, age 66. He was first and foremost a scientist in his approach to archaeology and a mentor to countless students and colleagues. Harold was the Francis E. Johnston Term Professor in Anthropology and Director of the Laboratory of Ancient Technology at the University of […]

Penn Museum to Award Drexel and Boyer Medals Regents’ Professor and Director of the Center for Bioarchaeological Research at Arizona State University Dr. Jane Buikstra will receive the Penn Museum’s Lucy Wharton Drexel Medal at a dinner and awards ceremony following a public lecture at the Museum on May 11, 2018. A member of the […]

Deciphering Bed Figurines from Ancient Egypt

By: Charlotte Rose

Ancient Egyptians welcomed childbirth with ritual, using medico-magical spells, amulets, and various other objects to help ensure the survival of mother and child. Objects used in childbirth rituals took many forms. For example, a Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE) magical birth brick discovered by the Penn Museum in South Abydos—used to support the mother during labor—depicts […]

The Annihilation of the Damned in Ancient Egypt

By: Joshua Aaron Roberson

“I will tear the veils from every mystery: mysteries of religion or of nature, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony, and nothingness.” – Arthur Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer, I, III (1873). Few mysteries fascinate humankind so deeply as that veil to which Rimbaud alludes: the gossamer barrier that separates “here” from “hereafter.” All […]

Curator Receives AIA Gold Medal On January 9, 2015, Dr. C. Brian Rose, the Penn Museum’s Ferry Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section, and James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, received the Archaeological Institute of America’s (AIA) top honor, the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished […]

Transforming the Penn Museum

By: Julian Siggers

Last summer, I wrote to our membership and readers from a redesigned Expedition with added Penn Museum departments and content, reflecting on my first year as Williams Director and sharing our new mission statement: The Penn Museum transforms understanding of the human experience. The two issues since—with a special focus on our new Native American […]

The Thrill of Discovery

By: Julian Siggers

Since arriving at the Penn Museum in July 2012, it has been one of my great privileges as Williams Director to be able to allocate—from the Director’s Field Fund—seed funding for new and ongoing projects led by Penn Museum researchers. 5rough this fund, in summer 2013, we were able to support many di6erent types of […]