Work is to commence on the new Egyptian Gallery at the City Museum & Art Gallery in Bristol at the end of the year.

The existing Egyptology gallery is more than 20 years old and the museum says it no longer meets current standards of conservation and display for long term preservation.

It aims to create a new gallery which will approach the subject in a new way.

Sue Giles, curator of Ethnography and foreign archaeology, said: “If you go to any Eygptian gallery in any museum, it is usually arranged in one of two ways: as art, or thematically, with objects which tell you about writing, religion death and mummification and so on.

“We want to get away from those ideas and present the collection through life stages: birth and childhood, adulthood and work, old age, death and the afterlife.”

Visitors to the museum can also have a say in the development of the new gallery by filling in a questionnaire.

The new gallery is expected to take a year to create and open in the spring of 2006.