Recommended Field Trips:
Field Trips to Ancient Egypt

Suggested Books and Resources

New York City is home to two great collections of Ancient Egyptian art and artifacts: at the Metropolitan and Brooklyn Museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an endless series of rooms beginning at the Great Hall leading up to the magnificent Temple of Dendur. You pass great statues, brilliant tomb paintings, and even small funerary models of life in ancient Egypt. Download a family map and a Kids' Guide called Think Sphinx (pdf format). Educators can use the museum's online resource and download the entire publication The Art of Ancient Egypt, including images, activities and lesson plans for free.

The Brooklyn Museum has kid-friendly web pages on ancient Egypt with an interactive feature. Educators' materials on past exhibits, including several on ancient Egypt, are available for free download. You can browse many of these exhibits from the comfort of your own home, including: Egypt Reborn, Egypt Through Other Eyes, and Magic in Ancient Egypt. .

Every museum trip is an opportunity to become an historian. Art is a primary resource which can inspire us and lead us to more knowledge and new connections. Bring a guide for reading hieroglyphics. Ask yourself how these things were made, and how these people lived. Look for clues in paintings as to what people ate, how they worked and what they valued. Consider writing your own historical fiction storybook using ancient Egypt as the background, designing jewelry based on ancient Egyptian designs, or making a papyrus scroll.

Suggested Books and Resources

• The Shipwrecked Sailor: An Egyptian Tale with Hieroglyphs , by Tamara Bower, for ages 4-9. Based on a story found in an ancient papyrus scroll, this story tells of a shipwreck on the island of the soul and a happy homecoming. One line on each page has been translated into hieroglyphs, with illustrations inspired by papyrus scrolls.
  
  
• Day of Ahmed's Secret , by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland, for ages 4-8. Ahmed, a young boy in contemporary Egypt, spends his days delivering butane gas. The sights and sounds of Cairo are vividly described, and at the end of the day, he reveals his secret: he has learned to write his name.
  
  
• Seeker of Knowledge: The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs , by James Rumford, for ages 6 and up. This is the biographical story of Jean-François Champollion who translated hieroglyphs.
  
  
• The Golden Goblet , and also Mara, Daughter of the Nile , by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, for ages 9-12. Popular adventurous historical fiction novels set in ancient Egypt.
  
  
• Tales of Ancient Egypt (Puffin Classics) , by Roger Lancelyn Green, for ages 9 and up. These myths became the basis for the more well-known Greek and Roman myths.
  
  
• Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors , by Marian Broida. This activity book includes the neighboring cultures of the Hittites, Nubians, and Mesopotamians.
• Ancient Egypt hands-on kit from Hands and Hearts is full of fun activities. This is a Christian-based company, but you don't have to use the bible cards to have fun learning how to mummify fruit!
  
  
• Fun with Hieroglyphs , by Catherine Roehrig, for all ages. Published by the Metropolitan Museum, this rubber stamp kit, easy-to-use chart, and accompanying booklet can enable anyone to start writing in hieroglyphs!