MUSEUMS IN EGYPT
Abdeen Palace Museum Complex - Cairo
Agricultural Museum - Cairo
Ahmed Shawki Museum - Cairo
Al-Alemein War Museum
Alexandria National Museum - Alexandria
Bayt al-Kritliyya - Cairo
Bayt al-Sennari - Cairo
Bayt Al-Suhaymi - Cairo
Beit El-Umma (House of the People) - Cairo
Beshtak Palace - Cairo
Carriage Museum - Cairo
The Child Museum - Cairo
The Coptic Museum
Denshway Museum - Menofeya Governorate
The Egyptian Antiquities Museum - Cairo
Egyptian Modern Art Museum - Cairo
Gayer-Anderson Museum
Geology Museum - Cairo
The Graeco-Roman Museum - Alexandria
Imhotep Museum - Saqqara (Cairo)
Ismailia Museum - Ismailia
Karanis Site Museum - Fayoum
Kasr (Qasr) El-Gawhara (Jewel Palace) - Cairo
Kharga Museum - El Kharga
Library of Alexandra Museum - Alexandria
Luxor Museum - Luxor
Manial Palace- Cairo
Marine Museum - Hurghada
Mawlawi Museum and Sunqur Sa'di Madrasa
Military Museum - Cairo
Military Museum - Port Said
Mukhtar Museum - Cairo
Mohamed Nagy Museum - Cairo
Museum of Islamic Art - Cairo
Museum of Islamic Ceramics- Cairo
Museum of Modern Art - Port Said
Museum of Mohamed Khalil - Giza
The National Museum - Port Said
Nubian Museum - Aswan
The Pharaonic Village - Jacob Island
The National Police Museum
Postal Museum - Cairo
Qasr Al-Eini Museum (Medical) - Cairo
Rail Museum - Cairo
Ramses Wessa Wassef Art Center
The Royal Jewelry Museum - Alexandria
Taha Hussein Museum - Cairo
THE EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES
Location:
Cairo, Egypt
How to get there:
International flights direct to Cairo, or via many European and Eastern European cities. Also package tours and charter flights. Contact your travel agent for details.
Description
The Egyptian Museum was first built in Boulak. In 1891, it was moved to Giza Palace of "Ismail Pasha" which housed the antiquities that were later moved to the present building. The Egyptian Museum is situated at Tahrir square in Cairo. It was built during the reign of Khedive Abbass Helmi II in 1897, and opened on November 15, 1902. It has 107 halls. At the ground floor there are the huge statues. The upper floor houses small statues, jewels, Tutankhamon treasures and the mummies.
Hidden Treasures on View
By Zahi Hawass
Can you imagine that an Ancient Egyptian physician once fitted a patient with a prosthetic toe? It is hard to believe that a person who died 3,000 years ago had a custom-made wooden toe. I considered it important enough to be included in the exhibition the "Hidden Treasures" now open to the public in the basement of the Egyptian Museum.
The basement of the museum is a complex maze of corridors. It was so crowded with the 60,000 artifacts and thousands of pottery shards, skulls and even flint tools crammed into it that it was almost impossible to locate a specific object. The biggest mistake ever made was using the basement of the museum as a storeroom for objects found by foreign teams working in Egypt. Egyptian archaeologists, too, used it for the same purpose.
When I started my first excavation at Kom Abu-Bellou in the Delta I was assistant to my good friend Ahmed El-Sawi, who helped me a lot at the beginning of my career. Every year I would load a truck with boxes, statues and even gold artifacts to be transported to the Egyptian Museum. Among the statues were some unique Aphrodite/Isis statues in faience which should have been put on exhibition, but although Ahmed El-Sawi asked many museum curators to find a place for them, no one was able to help. Their destination was uncertain; El- Sawi even thought they had been lost.
When I became secretary- general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, El-Sawi called me and said: "We are relying on you to find the Aphrodite/Isis statues." One of the reasons that we cleaned the basement of the museum was to sort out and record all the objects, and to make a plan to put the artifacts into some semblance of order. We have already started to place selective pieces in boxes and have moved them to a storage facility in Fustat. We are also considering changing some of the displays in the crowded museum. No one can stand seeing more than 20 Late Period sarcophagi in one room! There are also hundreds of statues on display with poor lighting and what appears to be a complete lack of interior design. And should you be unfortunate enough to visit the museum in August, it is like being in an oven.
We have consequently decided to remove some of those objects of which there are many similar types and exhibit them in museums that will be built throughout the country -- in Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh, for example. This is apart from our plan for the Grand Museum at the Pyramids and the Fustat Museum, which will exhibit artifacts that span the full range of Egyptian history from the predynastic period to modern times.
The interior of the Egyptian Museum will be redesigned so it displays its contents to the best advantage. Air-conditioning will be installed, and the entrance will be used as an entrance only; the shops and cafeteria will be moved. Visitors will leave from the west side of the building and a 12-metre high extension will be built.
Five years from now Cairo will be able to boast five great museums: the Islamic and Coptic Museums, currently being restored and reorganized; the Grand Museum, which will exhibit some of the artifacts of Tutankamun; the National Museum in Fustat, which will house mummies of the great Pharaohs who ruled during the Golden Age; and the Egyptian Museum, which will be devoted to objects of exceptional artistic value.
The "Hidden Treasures" exhibition currently on show in the re-designed basement of the museum has many unique pieces, apart from the artificial toe on exhibition. Such an object certainly encourages one to re-read the Medical Papyri with careful attention; we were so encouraged after the discovery of evidence of brain surgery in the skull of one of the workmen who built the pyramids; this man lived for two years after his surgery... remarkable!
There are interesting stories about each artifact, some of which were found as far afield as Alexandria, Marsa Matrouh and Tanta.
The Museum also comprises a photography section and a large library. The Egyptian museum comprises many sections arranged in chronological order
The first section houses Tutankhamon’s treasures.
The second section houses the pre-dynasty and the Old Kingdom monuments.
The third section houses the first intermediate period and the Middle Kingdom monuments.
The forth section houses the monuments of the Modern Kingdom.
The fifth section houses the monuments of the late period and the Greek and Roman periods.
The sixth section houses coins and papyrus.
The seventh section houses sarcophagi and scrabs.
A hall for the royal mummies was opened at the museum, housing eleven kings and queens.
More than a million and half tourists visit the museum annually, in addition to half a million Egyptians.
Source: Tour Egypt
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