Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery: Ancient Civilizations Gallery

This is an ongoing exhibition.

This gallery explores Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations with a wide range of artifacts and displays.  It is clear that a lot of time and effort has been made to ensure this exhibition is engaging for children.  Interspersed between the the different cabinets of artifacts there are child friendly activities, or at least, the remains of them.  Any with removable parts seem to have long ago been decimated, which is a shame but pretty inevitable.  I am not sure how long this exhibition has been in place but it is quite a few years!

For all this, the exhibition is clearly very much beloved and it is always the busiest room whenever I visit.  Children really like it.  I understand the fascination with these civilizations with their stories of Gods and Goddesses, beautiful artifacts and convoluted histories.  They are often taught in school and I remember being fascinated with them when I was younger.

As I grow older though, I find myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable with how many of these artifacts have been taken from their countries of origin.  It is something museums recognise but these things have been donated to museums such as the Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery.  It is not always clear what should be done with these things, but so many were effectively stolen from graves.  

This exhibition features an actual mummy and I find I am not very comfortable with this.  His grave was likely robbed before the mummy was recovered.  It is not easy to return these mummies to the graves they came from.  They may not even exist still.  It is a difficult question because this is not the mummy of royalty or some historically significant person.  It is also clear that people are very much interested.

The range of artifacts on show is impressive.  The tools of every day life.  Jewellery.  Religious items. It is lovely to see them all.  Most of the items are small, so there are so many of them.  This is where the exhibition benefits from being broken up with larger items and interactive displays.  There was a video talking about afterlife practices and beliefs in Egypt.  A sound booth to listen to things like music.  A headset to listen to different languages.

These sorts of permanent exhibitions take time and money to develop though.  Every item has to be securely mounted and many of these mounts need to be custom made.  Interactive elements can not be cheap either.  The museum has redeveloped the ground floor exhibitions and has plans to do the same of the first floor.  Things are in their early stages with the National Lottery supplying some funding, but further work needs to be done.  I imagine there will still be an Ancient Civilizations gallery in some form though as people obviously really enjoy this space.

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