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Sekhmet's Ancient Egyptian Quest! Notes for Teachers

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Sekhmet's Ancient Egyptian Quest! Notes for Teachers 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 sun- disc 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: o The scarab beetle was thought to roll the sun across the sky during the day o The sun travelling in a boat through the underworld during the night o Geb 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.
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