Download Sekhmet`s Ancient Egyptian Quest!

Sekhmet’s Ancient Egyptian Quest!
Notes for Teachers
These teacher’s notes give you extra information about each of the objects
featured in our ancient Egyptian trail. We have also suggested follow-up
activities for pupils back in class.
Practical points:
• This trail is for pupils in Primary 3–5 (age 7–9) who have some prior knowledge of the
ancient Egyptians.
• The trail will take approximately 50 minutes.
• The trail will involve moving between levels 0,1,3 and 5. You can access all these areas
using the lifts and stairs. Each group should take a map with them to help them find
the galleries and directions can be found on the trail sheet.
• The trail contains 8 challenges for pupils to do.
• Start the trail with your whole class together at the mummy in Discoveries on Level 1.
After this, you can split up into smaller groups to complete the challenges.
• Enjoy looking at all the objects up close, but please remind pupils not to touch them.
If objects have numbers next to them, look at the numbered text nearby to tell you
more about the object.
• This trail is available in black and white or colour.
Introduction to Sekhmet – the narrator of the trail
• The goddess Sekhmet was believed to have been the daughter of the sun god Ra and
is often seen with a sun disc on top of her head.
• Sekhmet was worshipped as a warrior goddess. She helped the pharaoh win battles
against his enemies, but if angered, she could bring war and disease upon Egypt.
Worshipping her and bringing offerings to her statues in the temples could help
prevent this.
• She is often depicted as a woman with the head of a lioness; the fiercest hunter known
to the Egyptians.
• There are many stories about her including that her fiery breath formed the deserts.
Challenge 1:
• The coffin here has been well preserved. Sometimes coffins were mass produced and
extra hieroglyphs were painted later to indicate who was buried inside. If you look
closely you can see the darker black paint on the top of the coffin where the person’s
name has been added.
• The symbols represent the afterlife and rebirth and offered protection to the body on
their journey to the afterlife.
• The falcon depicts Horus, the god of the sky and son of Osiris, the god of the afterlife.
• The cow represents Hathor, the goddess of motherhood and joy, and is shown with a sundisc on her head, surrounded by papyrus plants, coming out of the side of a mountain.
• You should also be able to see the god Osiris on the coffin. He is often shown with
green or black skin – this was symbolic of new life and regeneration like the colour of
growing crops and fertile soil/earth.
• There are some other interesting symbols on this coffin:
oThe scarab beetle was thought to roll the sun across the sky during the day
oThe sun travelling in a boat through the underworld during the night
oGeb the earth god lying on the ground with the air god Shu holding up the sky
goddess Nut.
Activity: back at school use the museum website to discover more about hieroglyphs
using our game ‘A stela of a tale’. www.nms.ac.uk/hieroglyphs
Challenge 2:
Answer to questions: The top part belonged to the woman and the man’s job was a
priest. The coffin is 180cm long.
• The coffin was brought to Scotland in the late 1800s by Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff, an
engineer stationed in Egypt.
• The coffin is almost 3000 years old and inside lies the body of a man called
Iufenamun who died when he was around 40 years old.
o Iufenamun was an Egyptian priest at the Temple of Karnak.
o Around 961 BC the mummies of the pharaohs were secretly moved from the Valley
of the Kings and reburied in small anonymous tombs – to keep them safe from
grave robbers. Iufenamun was one of the priests entrusted with this task.
o A reconstruction of Iufenamun’s face made from CT scans can be found next to
the information label.
• The lid of this coffin belongs to a different person, Tjentwerethequa, who is believed to
be the grandmother of Iufenamun.
o We don’t know why a different lid was brought back to Scotland. It could be that the
lid and base were reused for another burial in ancient times, or the original lid was
damaged or did not look as striking as this one when Sir Colin brought them back.
Activity: back at school write a story about what led to two different sections of the
coffin coming to Scotland as one.
Challenge 3:
• Both men and women would have worn make-up and perfume as a symbol of wealth
and rank.
• The make-up palettes are carved from slate and the perfume bottles from calcite stone.
• These objects probably came from graves/burials and some are probably bigger than
they would have been for everyday use.
Activity: back at school gather together some examples of the different materials
that Egyptians would have used in their tombs, such as slate, food or make-up,
and predict what would happen to these over thousands of years.
Challenge 4:
• The top 4 figures; 2 of the left and 2 on the right represent the 4 sons of Horus: Hapy
(baboon), Imsety (human), Duamutef (jackal) and Qebehsenuef (falcon). You may be
more familiar with them as the heads of the 4 canopic jars containing the organs of
the mummy.
• Stela are grave markers and the symbols on them would have told a story about
the person, similar to gravestones today.
• This coffin is made from limestone.
• This coffin is almost 1000 years younger than the wooden coffin we looked at in
Challenge 1.
Activity: back at school find out more about how coffins changed over time.
www.nms.ac.uk/egyptiancoffins
Challenge 5:
Answer: Toga
• This statue dates from around the same time as the stone coffin lid.
• This statue is of a citizen of a city called Oxyrhynchus. After the conquest of Egypt by
Alexander the Great, Greeks, and later Romans, started living in the city and brought
this style of clothing with them.
• The toga shows that this man was educated and had a powerful job. Egyptian people,
before the arrival of the Greeks, wouldn’t have worn these clothes.
Activity: back at school learn more about what ancient Egyptians might have worn.
www.nms.ac.uk/egyptiandress
Challenge 6:
From left to right on the activity sheet, the answers should be:
• Stela (gravestone) – On the left, shows Ra-Horakhty, the combined god of Horus and Ra.
On the right is a woman carrying a lotus flower (a symbol of regeneration) and incense.
• Pyramidion – shows people worshipping the sun. It would have been the top block of
a very small pyramid above the tomb of a wealthy person, probably from the city of
Thebes. The man who invented pyramids was so highly thought of that after his death
he was made the god of wisdom and medicine.
• Apis bull footboard – comes from the bottom of the coffin. The bull was a sacred
animal in ancient Egypt, associated with the king and the sun god, and was a powerful
protector of the body.
• Gold earrings – Egypt had many gold mines and traded this with neighbouring lands.
One king of Assyria was thought to have asked for more, stating ’gold is in your land
like dust’. When many of the gold mines in Egypt had been exhausted and Egypt had
lost control of the gold mines in Sudan, some people turned to grave robbing.
• Cat – a bronze statue of Bast (or Bastet), the cat goddess of protection. She is also
associated with fertility, and is the peaceful side of Sekhmet. In later Egyptian history,
cats were often mummified and offered to the gods in temples. Sometimes when cat
mummies are x-rayed or CT-scanned today, they are discovered to actually be made of
sticks and mud.
Activity: back at school discover more about what objects would be found inside a tomb.
www.nms.ac.uk/tombadventure
www.nms.ac.uk/threepyramids
Challenge 7:
Answer: Crocodile
• Many gods and goddesses were depicted as having the head or body of an animal
associated with their power.
• Sobek was the crocodile-headed god of the River Nile and protected against the
dangers of the river. He also represented fertility as the Nile would flood every year
and fertilise the land for crop-growing.
Activity: back at school create your own god or goddess with the head of an animal.
What are their powers and what do they protect people from? Or, why not write your
own animal riddles?
Challenge 8:
Answer: Sekhmet’s sun-disc headdress and body are missing
• This statue was originally made for the funerary temple of Amenhotep III. The temple
was built by King Amenhotep III, the grandfather of Tutankhamen. A later pharaoh
moved many Sekhmet statues to the temple of Karnak. Over 700 statues of Sekhmet
have been excavated at Karnak.
• The pharaoh may have dedicated the statues to Sekhmet because he was sick and he
wanted her to heal him. The huge number of statues may have been created so there
would be one for every day and night of the year.
Activity: back at school try making your own Sekhmet statues, using different
materials, and creating your own temple.
For more resources and information about our schools programme, visit
www.nms.ac.uk/schools