Sudan and the Petrie Museum: Histories of Display, Scholarship and Engagement

Of the 80,600 objects in UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, around 4000 are from Sudan. 1 Flinders Petrie himself did not travel south of Aswan, and these items were acquired through different channels after his death. While many of these are on display in the Museum galleries—albeit tucked amongst the greater proportion of archaeological material from Egypt—much of the Sudanese collection remains in storage due to historic limitations of space. This paper presents an overview of the history of this collection, how it has inspired creative engagement projects targeting diverse museum audiences, and thoughts on future work.