Anyone visiting London for the first time and walking along the Thames Embankment may be surprised to come across an original Egyptian obelisk.
The Petrie Museum houses an estimated 80,000 objects, making it one of the greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world.
Anyone visiting London for the first time and walking along the Thames Embankment may be surprised to come across an original Egyptian obelisk.
This obelisk is known as Cleopatra's Needle …though it has very little to do with Cleopatra at all.
It was made in Egypt for the Pharaoh Thotmes III in 1460 BC, making it almost 3,500 years old. It is known as Cleopatra's Needle as it was brought to London from Alexandria, the royal city of Cleopatra.
It seems Britain wanted something big and noticeable to commemorate the British victory over Napoleon, sixty-three years earlier. The Needle arrived in England after a horrendous journey by sea in 1878.
The British public subscribed £15,000 to bring it over from Alexandria in Egypt, and waited eagerly for the 'needle' to arrive.
Cleopatra's Needle stands on the Thames Embankment close to the Embankment underground station. Two large bronze Sphinxes lie on either side of the Needle. These are Victorian versions of the traditional Egyptian original. The benches on the Embankment also have winged sphinxes on either side as their supports.
There are four plaques mounted round the base of the Obelisk giving a brief history of the 'needle' and its journey to London.
The Petrie Museum houses an estimated 80,000 objects, making it one of the greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. It illustrates life in the Nile Valley from prehistory through the time of the pharaohs, the Ptolemaic, Roman and Coptic periods to the Islamic period.
The Petrie Museum is a university museum. It was set up as a teaching resource for the Department of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College London (UCL). Both the department and the museum were created in 1892 through the bequest of the writer Amelia Edwards (1831-1892).
Amelia Edwards donated her collection of several hundred Egyptian antiquities, many of historical importance. However, the collection grew to international stature in scope and scale thanks mainly to the extraordinary excavating career of the first Edwards Professor, William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942).
Petrie retired from UCL in 1933, though his successors continued to add to the collections, excavating in other parts of Egypt and the Sudan. During the Second World War (1939-1945) the collection was packed up and moved out of London for safekeeping. In the early 1950s it was brought back and housed ‘temporarily’ in a former stable building, where it remains today.
The museum is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 1pm until 5pm, check out the website for the latest exhibitions.
