Year 5 - behind the scenes at the Pitt Rivers Museum

On Wednesday, Year 5 immersed themselves in the world of the Ancient Egyptians when they were given a virtual tour of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum. They made some interesting discoveries to enhance their understanding of this important civilisation and were even able to see a coffin and death mask used during the mummification process more than four thousand years ago.

The children learnt that the use of colour was important to the Egyptians. For example, blue represented the sky, the River Nile and the Eye of Horus. Interestingly, the mineral, malachite was crushed to create blue pigment. Black signified the nutrient-rich soil left behind after the River Nile flooded. The children were astonished to discover that in the absence of adequate eye protection, the black eye make-up that was commonly worn contained an antiseptic that deterred flies from laying eggs in the Egyptians' eyes!

As historians, they were given the opportunity to look for clues to suggest what made the artefacts at the museum distinctly Egyptian such as the symbolic use of the scarab beetle and hieroglyphics.