Ipswich Museum has recently re-done its Egyptian stuff, so as it was finally open again we went along yesterday to have a look. Previously it had been just a small, rather tatty, room with a few quite nice bits & pieces not very well displayed - but now they've done a good job with it :) The stuff is all in a bigger space, and much better lit & better labelled. The labelling is aimed at children, which is kinda a shame for me, but I'm guessing they know their target audience - certainly there were quite a few children there at 4pm on a Saturday. Oddly the stuff behind little doors was often the more detailed adult-level labelling, but I'd've thought it was younger children that were more likely to open all the doors? Particularly as the other interactive stuff was more aimed at the younger age group - like jigsaw-type puzzles to talk about the seasons of the Egyptian year.

The outer room of the two has a selection of things from right across Egyptian history, organised in sorts to talk about various different aspects of Egyptian life. Some things related to food production, some things related to craftsmen, etc. I think my favourite cabinet there was the one with various statues of gods, including a rather fine Anubis & someone seated carrying Osiris. The inner room was about death & burial in Egypt, with the centrepiece being a coffin containing the mummy of the Lady Tahathor, which they've recently acquired from Colchester Museum. They also had set into the floor a (fake) early sand mummy surrounded by the (genuine) pots that you'd find in burials from this period (~4000BC). I think my favourite thing in that room was the unwrapped mummy of a hawk, where you could see the feet & feathers perfectly preserved.

Definitely worth a visit & definitely going to have to go back - we went towards the end of the day because there were Egyptian-themed events for kids running all day & we wanted to miss them. But that meant we were a little rushed through the second room (50 minutes just wasn't long enough to properly look at everything in both rooms, for us ;) ).