Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London (UCL) ,despite its name, is a product of many more individuals than its famous founder, William Matthew Flinders Petrie. The MUseum set up in 1892 by eccentric traveller and diarist Amelia Edwards, is named after Flinders Petrie, tireless excavator of ancient Egypt. Where the British Museum’s Egyptology collection is strong on the big stuff, the Petrie is dim case after dim case of minutiae. Its aged wooden cabinets are full of pottery shards, grooming accessories, jewellery and primitive tools. Highlights include artefacts of from the heretic pharoe Akhenaten’s short-lived capital Tell el Amarna. Among the oddities is a 4,000-year-old skeleton of a man who was buried in an earthenware pot.
