The Experience
If you called its 12-ton Egyptian sphinx “one in a million,” you’d be right: it is just one in a collection of nearly a million objects at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (commonly known as the “Penn Museum”)—one of the world’s finest archaeological and anthropological museums.
For more then 125 years, the Penn Museum has sponsored more than 300 worldwide scientific expeditions which yielded many of the artifacts on display including Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets (some of the world’s oldest writing), architectural elements from the 3,200-year-old palace of the pharaoh Merenptah, the 4,500-year-old jewelry of Queen Puabi’s from the Mesopotamian Royal Cemetery at Ur (in modern-day Iraq), towering ancient Maya stone monuments and evocative masks from West Africa.
Ancient Greek and Italian treasures are presented in a suite of Classical World galleries. Other noteworthy galleries explore ancient Egypt and Egyptian mummies, Africa, Asia, and Central America.