Egyptian Museum


The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, commonly known as the Egyptian Museum and also called the Cairo Museum or the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, is a national history museum in Cairo, Egypt.
An Egyptological museum, it houses the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world, including over 170,000 items. The Egyptian Museum occupies a building constructed in 1901 on Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, and is one of the largest museums in Africa as well as the first national museum of the Middle East.

History

Early museums and relocations

The Egyptian government established a museum in 1835 near the Ezbekieh Garden.
Youssef Diaa Effendi, the Director of the Antiquities Department, began inspecting the antiquities of Middle Egypt shortly after assuming his position, focusing on those discovered by farmers. In 1848, Muhammad Ali Pasha assigned Linan Bek, the Minister of Education, to compile a report on archaeological sites and send artifacts to the Egyptian Museum. However, this effort was not successful due to the death of Muhammad Ali Pasha in 1849, followed by a period of instability. The trade in antiquities resurfaced, and the collection housed in the museum established in Azbakeya began to shrink until it was transferred to a single hall in the Cairo Citadel. The situation worsened when Khedive Abbas I donated the entire contents of this hall to Archduke Maximilian of Austria during his visit to the citadel in 1855; these are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Following the foundation of the new Antiquities Department under the direction of Auguste Mariette, a new museum was established in 1858 at Boulaq in a former warehouse on the riverbank. Mariette considered the Boulaq Museum a temporary location, and after the building was damaged in an 1878 Nile flood, he advocated for a permanent museum with greater capacity, situated away from the flood path. After Mariette's death, he was succeeded by Gaston Maspero, who attempted to move the museum from Boulaq but was unsuccessful. By 1889, the building was overcrowded, with no available rooms for more artifacts in either the exhibition halls or storage areas. Artifacts discovered during excavations were often left for long periods in boats in Upper Egypt. Khedive Ismail offered one of his palaces in Giza, the location of the present-day zoo, to serve as the new museum. Between the summer and the end of 1889, all the artifacts were moved from the Boulaq Museum to Giza, and the artifacts were reorganized in the new museum by the scholar De Morgan, who served as the museum's director. From 1897 to 1899, Loret succeeded De Morgan, but Maspero returned to manage the museum from 1899 to 1914.
The artifacts remained there until 1902 when they were moved again to the current museum in Tahrir Square, built by the Italian company of Giuseppe Garozzo and Francesco Zaffrani to a design by the French architect Marcel Dourgnon.

Construction and opening

The architectural design of the museum was created by the French architect Marcel Dournon in 1897, to be located in the northern area of Tahrir Square, along the British Army barracks in Cairo near Qasr El-Nil. The foundation stone was laid on 1 April 1897, in the presence of Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, the Prime Minister, and all his cabinet members. The project was completed by the German architect Hermann Grabe. In November 1903, the Antiquities Department appointed the Italian architect Alessandro Parazenti, who had received the keys to the museum on 9 March 1902, and began transferring the archaeological collections from Khedive Ismail's palace in Giza to the new museum. This operation involved the use of five thousand wooden carts, while large artifacts were transported by two trains, making about nineteen round trips between Giza and Qasr El-Nil. The first shipment carried approximately forty-eight stone coffins, weighing over a thousand tons in total. The transfer was completed by 13 July 1902, and Mariette's tomb was moved to the museum garden in accordance with his wish to be buried among the artifacts he had spent much of his life collecting.
The Egyptian Museum was officially opened on 15 November 1902. The new museum adopted an exhibition style based on a gradual arrangement of halls, without allocating rooms for periods of turmoil, as they were considered historically insignificant. The museum's artifacts were categorised by theme; for architectural reasons, large statues were placed on the ground floor, while funerary items were displayed on the first floor in chronological order. Each day, new artifacts were arranged and displayed by theme in various rooms. The museum became the only one in the world so filled with artifacts that it resembled a storage facility. When asked about this, Maspero replied that the Egyptian Museum was a reflection of a pharaonic tomb or temple, where every part of the space was used to display paintings or hieroglyphic inscriptions.

20th and 21st centuries

The museum's gardens used to reach the banks of the Nile; however, in 1954, the majority of the property was seized to build the Cairo Municipality Building.
In 2004, the museum appointed Wafaa El Saddik as the first female director general.
In the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the museum was broken into and reportedly used as a torture site, with protestors forcibly detained and allegedly abused, according to reports, videos, and eyewitness accounts. Activists state that "men were being tortured with electric shocks, whips and wires," and "women were tied to fences and trees." Singer and activist Ramy Essam was among those detained and tortured.
During this time, two mummies were destroyed, a third was damaged by fire, several artifacts were damaged, and 54 objects were stolen. Twenty-five of the missing objects were found soon after on the grounds of the museum. Among these were six of seven Ushabtis of Yuya, and a statuette recovered in 2014; one shabti remains missing. The restored artifacts were displayed in September 2013 in an exhibition titled "Damaged and Restored". Among these artefacts were two statues of King Tutankhamun made of cedar wood and covered with gold, a statue of King Akhenaten, Ushabti statues that belonged to the Nubian kings, a mummy of a child that was unwrapped due to its bandages being burned, and a small polychrome glass vase.

Museum development

In 1983, the museum building was registered as a heritage site for its architectural value. In August 2006, a major renovation began. This included a cultural center and an administrative-commercial annex on the western side of the museum, where informal settlements were removed. Due to damage the building had suffered over the years from pollution and heavy traffic, which obscured much of its original appearance, the Ministry of Antiquities launched an initiative in May 2012 to create a rehabilitation plan for the museum. The German Foreign Ministry funded the necessary studies and research, and the International Environmental Quality Association participated in implementing the initiative. The project included architectural and engineering restoration work, as well as redevelopment of the surrounding area of Tahrir Square. The project was completed by 2016, after restoring the eastern and northern wings, addressing lighting issues, and reorganizing artifact displays.
The first phase involved sampling the original color of the museum building and restoring the walls. It also included wall surface restoration, the restoration of wall and column decorations, the replacement of window glass with UV-protective glass to safeguard the artifacts, and the restoration of the original ventilation system. Restoration work relied on 257 preserved panels within the museum's library, which displayed the building's original designs.
In July 2016, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities upgraded the museum's internal and external lighting systems, enabling nighttime visits. In November 2018, the final phase was inaugurated, which included a new exhibition layout, the display of the collections of Yuya and Thuya on the upper floor, and King Tutankhamun's artifacts, until the rest of his collection is moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum. The works also involved repainting the walls, upgrading the outlets, updating the lighting system, and restoring the display cases. A committee that included directors from the museums of Turin, the Louvre, United Museums, and Berlin oversaw the redistribution of artifacts.

Museum library

The museum library was established at the museum's opening, with funds allocated since 1899 for the purchase of books. The Egyptologist Maspero advocated for a permanent budget for acquiring books and appointed Dacros as the first librarian from 1903 to 1906. He was succeeded by several librarians, including Monier, who compiled a catalogue of the library's holdings until 1926. Abdel Mohsen El-Khashab later assumed management, assisted by Diaa El-Din Abu Ghazi, who became head librarian in 1950. Abu Ghazi prepared catalogues, increased international exchanges, and expanded the library, which eventually grew to its current two-story size with two reading rooms and a storage area for publications.
The library houses over 50,000 books and volumes, including rare works on ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern archaeology, as well as other specialised fields. Notable holdings include Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités de l'Égypte et de la Nubie, and Lepsius' works. The library also contains a collection of maps, paintings, and photographs.

Collections