Last month saw Zahi Hawas, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), and Mohamed Abdel-Fattah, Secretary of the Museum Sector of the SCA, open an exhibition of the history of the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir Square in Downtown Cairo. The exhibition includes a group of the original architectural plans of the Egyptian museum, the equipment used to build it, and the tools Khedive Abbas Helmy II used to lay the foundation stone to the museum. In addition, a collection of photographs that chronicle the building and the opening of the museum are on display. The exhibition runs till 20 November.
Not large enough
The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square tops the list of tourist destinations in Downtown Cairo. The building is huge, but not large enough for the treasures it contains. Inside, it looks like a storeroom. Priceless statues are piled up one above the other and in every nook and cranny.
The Ministry of Culture has set a major overhaul in place to upgrade the museum. Behind the 19th-century neo-classical façade, Tahrir’s Egyptian Museum, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, will be redesigned, renovated and developed. Culture Minister Farouk Hosni and Italian Minister of Culture Francesco Rutelli have signed a memorandum of understanding on the redesigning of the museum with a budget of 1,319,000 Euros.
The museum of tomorrow
A new scenario based on guidelines provided by the special committee and a detailed plan of the new displays within the exhibition space, including new showcases and an up-to-date lighting system, will be implemented.
The committee will be responsible for studying both the structural and aesthetic problems related to the restoration, renovation and upgrading of the existing museum building in such a way as to seamlessly integrate the restoration of the existing building. The renovation will accommodate the modernisation of the museum’s technological and structural facilities.
When the renovation is completed, the Egyptian Museum will be one of the three most important museums that display the history of ancient Egypt, the others being the Grand Egyptian Museum on the Giza plateau and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat.
Fakher Sobhy Bishay, general manager of engineering at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, says the restoration will include renovating paintings and choosing the most appropriate decorative colours. Improvements to the museum’s facilities will include the installation of new security and fire fighting systems, as well as air-conditioning and a lighting system to include natural and artificial light sources. Plumbing and sanitation will be upgraded. A new aeration system will be installed to control temperature and humidity inside the building, in addition to renovating washrooms and building a new bazaar, bookshop and open and closed cafeterias.
The person responsible for following up engineering processes of the museum’s projects is Soheir Selim, who is preparing a new display scenario for the museum’s unique collection. Restoration includes the development of storerooms, administrative offices and study rooms for training courses to enhance the professional skills of the museum’s curators and restorers.
History of the museum
The Egyptian Museum was the first national museum to be established in the Middle East and is home to the most extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in the world. Of its 120,000 items a representative amount is on display, while the remainder in storerooms.
It was Mohamed Ali Pasha who, determined to put a stop to the trade in Egyptian antiquities, began to store them in a small building in the Azbakiya Gardens, later called the Azbakiya Garden Museum, where they were conserved and suitably displayed. Mohamed Ali appointed Refaa al-Tahtawy to supervise the collection. A small museum was then built to house the display, but unfortunately, some of Mohamed Ali’s successors presented items from the Azbakiya Garden collection as prestigious gifts to important guests. Finally, all the contents of the Azbakiya Museum were transferred to a single gallery in the Ministry of Education within the Citadel of Saladin, which was called later the Citadel Museum.
In 1855, Khedive Abbas I bestowed the entire antiquities collection on the Austrian Archduke Maximilian who hired a French architect to design and construct a new museum. In 1858, Auguste Mariette, the French Egyptologist, managed to select a building on the bank of the Nile at Bulaq to be a museum for ancient Egyptian antiquities. All of this work was done with the support of the Viceroy of Egypt, Said Pasha. The Bulaq Museum was opened during the reign of Khedive Ismail Pasha in 1863.
Twenty three years later, in 1878, the building suffered irreversible damage during a high flood, and in 1880 all the antiquities were relocated to an annex of Khedive Ismail’s palace at Giza, which served as the Giza Museum. As a result of continued excavations and the subsequent increase in the number of antiquities needing to be housed in a museum, Egyptologists insisted on selecting a permanent site for a new, larger museum. The artefacts remained in Giza until 1902.
The first day of April 1897 witnessed the laying of the foundation stone of the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir Square, celebrated in the presence of Abbas Hilmy II and the renowned Egyptologist Gaston Maspero. The neo-classical design was by French architect Marcel Dourgnon, and building took four years and eight months. The total area measured about 15,000 square meters, and the cost was approximately EGP240,000. Between April and July1902, the entire contents of the Giza Museum were transferred to the new museum. Egypt’s dream of having a purpose-built museum for its artefacts was realised on 15 November, a Saturday afternoon, when it was opened by Khedive Abbas Hilmy II.
The present museum
The museum was built to house 50,000 objects, but more than 160,000 are currently on display. The Egyptian Museum of Antiquities contains many important pieces of history. Not only does it house the world’s largest collection of pharaonic antiquities, but it is also home to the many treasures of King Tutankhamun. At the entrance are the architectural designs of Marcel Dourgnon and photographs of stages of the building of the museum.
The museum has two main floors, the ground floor and the first floor. The ground floor display is arranged chronologically, beginning with ancient Egypt and ending with the Graeco-Roman period. Assemblages from the tomb of the young king Tutankhamun, as well as coffins, mummies, and Fayoum portraits can be found there.
The first floor includes the Tutankhamun collection. Many of the objects were made of gilded wood, inlaid with semi-precious stones, and others were made of solid gold. The jewellery room contains selected precious stones and gold items such as diadems, necklaces, gold bracelets, pectorals, pendants, amulets, belts, and more, from various periods of Egyptian history.
The coin collection on this floor is interesting with specimens not only from ancient Egypt but also from Greek, Roman, and Islamic times. Studies of coinage have helped historians research the history of ancient Egyptian trade. Also on the ground floor are artefacts from the New Kingdom, the time period between 1550 and 1070 BC. These artefacts are generally larger than items created in earlier centuries. Those items include statues, tables, and coffins.