Discovering Ancient Egypt
Vatican Museums
Edizioni Musei Vaticani
January 2018
A detailed and fascinating guide-catalogue of the Gregorian Egyptian Museum, for children, available in Italian and English and produced by the Vatican Museums Department of Egyptian and Near Eastern Antiquities.
The brief volume, rich in drawings, comic strips and colour reconstructions, and with illustrated fold-out inserts, aims to make Ancient Egypt known through some of the most representative artefacts conserved in the Pope’s Museums.
The items chosen include the Mask of Nimaatra, the Sarcophagus of Djedmut, the shroud of the “Lady of the Vatican” and the Statue of Tuya.
The 20 concise sections are presented as a fun virtual visit, and offer the description and a photo of the work, followed by the reading of hieroglyphics, an account of how and when the item arrived in the Vatican Museums, and interesting historical insights that help the reader know more about Egyptian civilization.
The volume ends with a chronological table and a very useful glossary explaining the most difficult terms used in the catalogue notes, as well as a short final section for note-taking.