Now the Egyptian gallery is open I'll be spending more time in the stores working with the reserve collection. Students and academics from universities use the collection for teaching and research.

One group of students from the University of Liverpool came in this week to study objects from the extensive Roman sculpture collection. The students are reading for masters degrees in the School of Archaeology Classics and Egyptology, which the museum has had links with for over a century.

Apart from examining Roman sculptures they also came to see the replicas we have of Aegean objects. The actual objects are in museums in Greece. Replicas are a good way of becoming familiar with key historical objects that are in foreign museums and is much more instructive than viewing them as photographs in books or behind the glass of showcases. The collection was put together by Professor Bosanquet (1871 - 1935) who taught Greek archaeology at the University of Liverpool from 1906 to 1920 and was the first holder of the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology.

You can see more photos of the Bosanquet teaching collection on our Flickr pages.