Title: Ceremonial Royal Palace of Merenptah
Year: Created around 1213 and 1204 BCE
Material: Stone
Collection: Egypt Gallery

Egyptian artifacts, like dinosaurs, are perennially popular, so it comes as no surprise that the Egypt gallery at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is widely thought of as an old favorite. This exhibit would attract anyone interested in ancient history, travel lovers, and even fans of The Mummy franchise.

The Penn Museum has always utilized the University's scientists and scholars. This palace, however, was excavated by famous archaeologist Sir William M. Flinders Petrie, a member of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Found in Memphis, it was one of the few royal palaces of ancient Egypt ever discovered. It is now an example of the museum's prestige.

The palace consists of a series of columns covered with pained, inlaid, and gilded images and symbols, all declaring pharaoh's power and his relation with the gods. It is easy to become entranced with just one of the pillars, and study it up close for a long period of time, yet walking through the columns, there is an overwhelming urge to look up. Nearly every visitor could not but help search the tops of the columns.

The palace remnants are not the only thing in the room; a sphinx is placed front and center, and there are friezes along the wall. The overall evocation is one of power, mystery, and the exotic. There is little doubt that this was exactly what the exhibit designer was aiming for, but in some ways the design was an old fashioned choice. Although the room is awe-inspiring, it is in a faux-exotic, colonial sort of way rather than actually communicating how life may have been thousands of years ago.

Egyptian exhibits nearly always commemorate royalty, for they house monuments and paintings that do the same. Perhaps including information on how daily life was lived could better illustrate the social structure in this ancient civilization for a museum visitor.