Philadelphia is about to travel 4,000 years back in time – happily, no time machine required. On December 12, the Penn Museum will open its reimagined Egypt Galleries: Life and Afterlife, a full century after its Egyptian galleries first welcomed visitors and the biggest milestone yet in the largest transformation in the museum’s 139-year history.
The new galleries fill the entire 7,000-square-foot main level of the Eckley B. Coxe Wing, first built in 1926 and fully renovated for this moment. More than 1,000 artifacts – drawn from one of the most important Egyptian collections in the United States, nearly 50,000 objects strong – will trace daily life from the Predynastic Period to the Greco-Roman era: tools, furniture, papyrus manuscripts, jewelry and the writings ancient Egyptians left behind.
At the heart of it all stands the newly conserved Tomb Chapel of Kaipure, a 4,300-year-old monument built for a high-ranking treasury official of Egypt’s Old Kingdom. Excavated at Saqqara more than a century ago, its nearly 100 carved and painted limestone blocks – and a monumental five-ton false door – have been carefully restored so the original colors shine again. Best of all, visitors will be able to step inside the chapel and experience the space firsthand.
From hieroglyph tactile blocks and a model New Kingdom home to canopic jars, decorated coffins and a wall of nearly 100 shabti figurines, the galleries present ancient Egyptians as real people with names, families, jobs and dreams. Public tours will run most Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. from December 19, 2026 through March 27, 2027 – a joyful new reason to visit University City this winter.
Photo: Mary Harrsch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons – carved hands on an Egyptian sarcophagus fragment at the Penn Museum.
