SINGAPORE — To encourage its younger audience to engage with history, the ArtScience Museum has turned to a tactile, multisensory approach with two exhibitions under the Singapore Science Festival (SSF).

The museum’s exhibits Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb and Essential Eames: A Herman Miller Exhibition provide an up-close and personal look at two diverse aspects of history through unique programmes that cater to children and teenagers — although feedback across the board has suggested that adults are quite happy to get involved, too.

In Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb — a collaboration with the British Museum — the mysteries of Egyptian burial are divulged through a 3D movie experience which introduces Nesperennub, a mummy discovered some 3,000 years ago.

CT Scanning has been employed to unravel the secrets of embalming and mummification, and discovering how and to what degree the corpse has been preserved. The documentary goes even further to reconstruct what Nesperennub may have looked like when he was alive, and calculates how old he was when he died.

The 3D movie sets the backdrop for the rest of the exhibit, which is divided into three thematic sections.

The Secrets of Embalming is an hour-long presentation that looks at how priests prepared the body for burial. Amulets for the Afterlife is another hands-on workshop that allows kids to create their own amulets out of clay and paint.

There’s also the Scents of Ancient Egypt workshop, which shows how scents were made in ancient Egypt, as well as a hieroglyphics workshop, which has calligraphy expert Gu Jianping draw similarities between the ancient Egyptian alphabet and ancient Chinese characters.

The Essential Eames exhibit, which celebrates the work of famed designer couple Charles and Ray Eames, would ordinarily be more suited to adults, but a tactile play section encourages children to discover how the Eames’ creative empire extended beyond furniture to include photography, graphics, film and toys.

The workshops allow children to build their own mini furniture as well as masks, encouraging them to explore their design skills while imparting the Eames’ passion for exploring through play.

Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb runs until Nov 4.

Essential Eames: A Herman Miller Exhibition runs until Jan 5, 2014.

For more information visit http://www.marinabaysands.com/singapore-museum/