The ancient Egyptians had complex beliefs about what would happen after death. They did everything they could to protect and preserve the bodies of their dead, as they believed the bodies were necessary for life after death. These human remains have received various types of attention. Previously, they were often completely ignored and thrown aside in favour of the objects with which they were found; now they are carefully collected and studied.
There are several collections in museums worldwide that include human remains (mummies and skeletons) from ancient Egypt. Even small local museums with no other links to Egyptology may hold some ancient Egyptian remains, including the West Berkshire Museum in south-east England. But why are there so many ancient Egyptian skulls in these collections, and what can they tell us about the lives of the deceased individuals?
Collecting skulls
Many know Sir Flinders Petrie as ‘The Father of Pots’ because of his work classifying the finds from the Predynastic Period. He did this by using tiny changes in the patterns of pottery found in graves to chart the development of different types of pottery. Like many people of his time, Petrie was also interested in eugenics (the discredited theory that humans can be improved by selective breeding), and collected human skulls in order to look for changes of skull shape to represent racial differences.
