On Friday 18th October, Year Three enjoyed a visit to the Oriental Museum in Durham to learn even more about ancient Egypt. We began the day with a treasure hunt around the gallery, focusing on reading the information to answer questions. During this part of the day, we learned about how the ancient Egyptians dressed, the gods they worshipped, how they wrote and how they lived their daily lives. Next, we went behind the scenes of the museum and were able to handle some real artefacts, some of which were 5000 years old. One of our favourites was a clay stamp which still had the fingerprints on of the Egyptian who made it! We enjoyed using our prior knowledge to make educated guesses about what some of the items were, just like an archaeologist would have to do. After this, we went to look at a real Egyptian mummy. Our guide, Michael, explained how the mummy came to be at the museum and what we have learned from studying it. Year Three asked brilliant questions and were so interested to find out more. From this, we found out that the mummy was actually woman who lived in around 300BC was born without her left hand. Because of her elaborate sarcophagus, we also know she was probably a priestess. Our final job of the day was to act out the ritual of ‘the weighing of the heart’ which the Egyptians believed took place after they had died. Tom had the unfortunate job of being the mummified pharaoh whilst Lucas, Isla and Kasper removed his organs and placed them in canopic jars! After this, the gods (otherwise known as the rest of Year Three) had to decide whether the pharaoh’s heart was light enough to grant him passage to the afterlife, or so heavy with lies he was to be sent to Duat (the underworld). Sadly for our pharaoh, his heart was deemed to heavy and was sent to be gobbled up Emily, playing the role of the goddess Ammit. We had a wonderful day and learned so much.