The Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum or Museum of Cairo, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. The Egyptian government established the museum, built in 1835 near the Ezbekeyah Garden and later to the Cairo Citadel.

 

A new museum was established at Boulaq in 1858 in a former warehouse, following the foundation of the new Antiquities Department under the direction of Auguste Mariette. The building lay on the bank of the Nile River, and in 1878 it suffered significant damage in a flood of the Nile River.

 

In 1892, the collections were moved to a former royal palace, in the Giza district of Cairo. They remained there until 1902 when they were moved, for the last time, to the current museum in Tahrir Square. On the ground floor there is an extensive collection of papyrus and coins used in the Ancient world.

 

The numerous pieces of papyrus are generally small fragments, due to their decay over the past two millennia. Several languages are found on these pieces, including Greek, Latin, Arabic, and ancient Egyptian. The coins found on this floor are made of many different metals, including gold, silver, and bronze. The coins are not only Egyptian, but also Greek, Roman, and Islamic.

 

It is unique in its presentation of the whole history of Egyptian civilization, especially of antiquities of the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman periods. The more than 100,000 items in the museum include some 1,700 items from the tomb of Tutankhamen, including the solid-gold mask that covered the pharaoh’s head.

 

Other treasures include reliefs, sarcophagi, papyri, funerary art and the contents of various tombs, jewelry, ornaments of all kinds, and other objects. The aim of the museum is to represent and display the diversity and heritage of Egypt.

 

The museum creates a great experience for tourists by helping them connect history to the present. The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities has one of the best artifact collections in the world. The Egyptian National museum is the most famous in the world as Egyptian Archeology is the most studied and most popular of the ancient civilizations.

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The Egyptian Museum

Unfortunately, you cannot take pictures of the huge number of artifacts, arts, jewellry pieces inside the museum as photography and videos are strictly not allowed inside. The museum sits in Midan Tahrir district and just lies across historic Tahrir Square. It houses more than 120,000 artifacts related to Egyptian culture, of which only parts of it are on display in the showrooms and most are in the store rooms.

 

Designed in the Neoclassical style by Marcel Dourgnon, the Egyptian Museum boasts 107 halls filled with artifacts dating from the prehistoric through the Roman periods, with the majority of the collection focused on the pharaonic era.

 

The museum houses approximately 160,000 objects covering 5,000 years of Egypt’s past. The ground floor takes the visitor on a chronological tour through the collections, while the objects on the upper floor are grouped according to tomb or category; exhibits here include the treasures of Tutankhamun, wooden models of daily life, statuettes of divinities, and a rare group of Faiyum Portraits as mentioned before.

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