LIVERPOOL, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- Britain's largest Ancient Egypt gallery outside of the British Museum in London is to open here, National Museums Liverpool (NML) announced Monday.
The nationally-run NML said its new "Ancient Egypt: A journey through time" gallery would open at World Museum on April 28, revealing one of Britain's most significant collections of Ancient Egyptian and Nubian antiquities.
The museum is to expand into gallery space unused for 35 years to create the biggest ever exhibition area for its ancient Egypt collection.
The extended gallery will see the reopening of World Museum's Mummy Room for the first time in 150 years. With a total of ten mummies on display, it is the largest display of mummies in Britain outside of London.
A spokeswoman for NML said: "The gallery will take visitors on a journey spanning 5,000 years of history from the time of the first settlers in the Nile Valley through to the impact of the Roman Empire."
World Museum's ancient Egypt collection has been amassed over more than 150 years, from the time when Liverpool was one of the main trading seaports in the world.
The new gallery will expose around 1,000 key objects, including many items never before put on public display. It includes the Djed-hor's Book of the Dead, a four-meter-long intact roll of papyrus dating from about 332 BC. It is to be displayed in full for the first time since its discovery in 1905.
Other items going on display for the first time include a recently identified part of the Nefertiti statue and a mummified head decorated with a mask of more than 3,000 beads still in place after 2,600 years.
Also being shown for the first time since the museum was bombed in a German air raid 76 years ago will be four mummies and their coffins.
The atmospheric Mummy Room will have nine mummies for viewing, with an additional mummy in the main gallery space, four of which have not been shown since the museum closed following the 1941 bomb damage.
A reassembled Predynastic burial (3500 BC), discovered in the desert sand in 1906 by John Garstang of the University of Liverpool, will also be presented for the first time.
