September 28, 2026
Quinn Russell Brown/For Penn Museum
Inside the Tomb Chapel of Kaipure at the Penn Museum.
Visitors to the Penn Museum will soon be able to walk through a reconstructed Egyptian tomb chapel that is more than 4,000 years old.
The museum’s new Egypt Galleries: Life and Afterlife opens Dec. 12 with more than 1,000 artifacts spanning 4,000 years of ancient Egyptian history. The centerpiece is the 4,300-year-old Tomb Chapel of Kaipure, a high-ranking treasury official during Egypt’s Old Kingdom whose burial chapel was excavated at Saqqara more than a century ago.
The chapel is made from nearly 100 carved and painted limestone blocks and includes a five-ton false door, a symbolic threshold tied to ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife. After extensive conservation, more of the original pigment is visible, and visitors will be able to enter and move through the reconstructed space.
The galleries will also look beyond burial traditions to show how ancient Egyptians lived and worked. Displays include tools, furniture, papyrus manuscripts, interactive hieroglyph blocks and a 3-D model of an ancient Egyptian home.
The Dec. 12 opening marks the first phase of the Penn Museum’s larger Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries project and comes 100 years after Egyptian galleries first opened in the museum’s Coxe Wing.
Hour-long public tours of the new galleries are scheduled for most Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. from Dec. 19, 2026, through March 27, 2027.
Opening: Saturday, Dec. 12
Location: 3260 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Collection: More than 1,000 artifacts spanning 4,000 years
Centerpiece: 4,300-year-old Tomb Chapel of Kaipure with a five-ton false door
Public tours: Most Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m., Dec. 19, 2026-March 27, 2027
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