Founded by the University of Pennsylvania in 1887, the Penn Museum in front of you grew out of more than a century of field expeditions to Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, and the Americas, and ranks among the great archaeological and anthropological museums in the world. The Penn Museum's collection of more than a million objects includes some of the most important archaeological finds ever made. The Great Sphinx from Memphis, Egypt, the largest sphinx outside Egypt, sits in its own gallery.
The Mesopotamian galleries hold artifacts from the ancient city of Ur, excavated by Penn Museum and British Museum archaeologists in the 1920s and 30s: the Royal Cemetery of Ur yielded the gold and lapis lazuli objects of extraordinary beauty that represent the height of Sumerian civilization, including the Ram in a Thicket, the Great Lyre, and the headdresses of the queens of Ur. The museum also holds major collections of Native American, African, and Asian material. The building itself, with its rotunda, colonnaded galleries, and mosaic floors, is a masterwork of Beaux-Arts design.
Admission is required; the museum is less visited than it deserves.