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Pan the Tool-Maker
Latest Homo erectus of Java
Neandertal mtDNA
Middle Stone Age Bone Industry from Katanda
Pedra Furanda
Venus Figures

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Stolen Stones: The Modern Sack of Nineveh
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Egypt Exhibit
Evolution of Man Exhibit

Bibliography 		ROM Visit 1: Egyptian Exhibit

The entrance to this exhibit was very well done. There was an obilisk with hyroliphs engraved into it, a head made out of black stone, the head of a sarcophagus, and some other small artefacts. There was also a wonderful map explaining where the civilisations lived along the Nile Rivel Valley. Please see the image below for a picture of the entrance.


The entire exhibit was well layed-out. The colour scheme was very good, as it made me feel as if I was in a desert in Egypt.

The pottery portion of the exhibit had everyday pottery, decorated pottery, and luxery pottery. These reflected the class boundaries in ancient Egyptian societies, which was very interesting to note. Most of what is seen on TV and read in magazines solely focuses around the upper class (and kings and queens specifically).

Egyptian food was another part of the exhibit (vegetables, fish, fowl, meat, bread, and beer), as was agriculture (crops, sheep, goats), and a statue of Sekhmet, the goddess of destruction.

There were maps along the way as I went around the exhibit. I found this really helpful as it helped put me in a geographical location for each stop. There were also period names and dates, which was also very useful.

I found that there was a very interesting video on Egyptian language. It detailed how the Egyptians wrote, and how they developed their writing system. It also said how to pronounce the words, which apparently doesn't have any vowels. My only critique is that the vowel assignment in a roman language (such as English) must be then somewhat arbitrary, unless correlated with Greek (or another known language).

There was a very interesting model of pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. I always find models so neat, because they're like a scaled down version of seeing the real thing.

An especially neat part of the exhibit was where they took plaster casts of walls from a pyramid, and did a partial reconstruction along the walls at the ROM. This was really cool, because, if you pictured the lights turned down, you could almost picture what it might have been like inside a pyramid thousands of years ago.

Overall, I found this exhibit to be very informative and enjoyable. One of my only complaints is that sometimes it's a little hard to figure out where Egypt ends, and where other exhibits like Ancient Rome or Greece begin.

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