- Ancient Worlds Big Saturday: Shiree and Gaby with youngsters
Last Saturday 17th November was the Museum’s Big Saturday event to help celebrate the opening of our Ancient Worlds galleries. Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes and Vicky Grant, Primary Outreach Educator, organised some events and activities for visitors. Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan, and I spent some time on the galleries talking to the public. Members of the Museum’s branch of the Young Archaeologists Club also came in to help piece together pieces of broken pottery from excavations in Manchester. Shiree and Gaby who are conservation student placements at the Museum were on hand to glue together broken pieces of pottery that the children were able to find. We have run this activity several times and each time it attracts as much interest from adults as from children.
Now where does that piece go?
Meanwhile I was talking to visitors in the galleries and using the Museum’s handling collection of ancient Greek artefacts as a talking point. People were really fascinated to find out about the objects, which included Classical pots and a replica of Mycenaean dagger. One of my favourites is a pot known as a lekythos showing ancient Greek warriors called hoplites fighting. This worked well with the ancient Greek Corinthian helmet on display in the gallery and the plaster cast of a frieze from a monument at Xanthos in Turkey.
Young visitor Haily looks at the ancient Greek objects
One young visitor called Haily was very interested in the Mycenaean dagger and drew a picture of it. I’ll post that image shortly.
Ancient Worlds 