This picture shows the Museum of Contemporary Art.

 

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is a must-see for anyone who goes to Egypt. This museum is so big that it would take months to see everything, and you still wouldn’t see even a tiny part of the exhibits. About 120,000 things are now in the museum, which was started by a French architect more than a hundred years ago. Excellent stuff from the golden age of the ancient Egyptian kingdom can be seen at the museum. Inside its walls are mummies, sarcophagi, pots, jewelry, and Tutankhamun’s treasures.

Tutankhamun’s clothes, burial couches, gilded caskets, and urns with his body parts are the most well-known things in his collection. The museum also has the mask that Tutankhamun wore when he died, and it is made of 11 kg of gold and has azure, obsidian, and quartz stones.

The museum is in a beautiful building made by the French architect Marcel Durgon. The building won a global competition and was built by Durgon, who did an excellent job of painting old buildings in a neoclassical style. On the two main floors of the museum, there are galleries with things to see. About 120,000 artifacts from different times in Egyptian history are kept here, and more are added to the permanent exhibition.

 

The Past of the Museum

The Egyptian antiquities agency, Service des Antiquities de l’Egypte, has been around since 1835. It was set up to stop locals, foreigners, consuls from other countries, and their agents from stealing from ancient sites. The Egyptian government has finally put all of the country’s ancient artifacts in a tiny building in Cairo’s Azbakia Garden.

Then, these things were moved to a different building inside Saladin’s Citadel. When King Abbas Pasha of Egypt went to Austria in 1855, he gave Archduke Maximilian of Austria his whole collection of Egyptian artifacts.

Auguste Mariette opened his second museum in the town of Boulac in the year 1858. After that, he worked hard to make a museum that was the best in the world and fit for Egyptian artifacts. This was especially true after the water destroyed the first museum in Bulak in 1878.

After that, a lot of things were taken or washed away. There was a museum in Bulak before the current one was built in 1902, and it stopped being used in 1890, and its collections were moved to the vault of Ismail Pasha’s palace in Giza.

 

Shows are held in galleries.

The objects on display in the galleries on the first floor are set up in order of time to show how ancient Egypt changed from prehistory to the Roman era. Things on the second level have been put into groups based on what they have in common and how they can be used.

The hall of royal mummies and Tutankhamun’s treasures are on the museum’s second floor (moved to the Museum of Egyptian Civilization). The new show of mummies of animals is a must-see, and tThe mummies of cats, dogs, and even crocodiles used to belong to the royal family. The hall with jewels from ancient Egypt also amazes people.

 

In addition to what has already been said

Beginning in early February 2016, artifacts in the museum’s conservation labs that had never been shown to the public were displayed. The other two collections have also been moved to more visible places that demonstrate their importance in art and history. The museum has started showing off its readers in a new way.

At the start of each month, objects that have never been on display before being taken out of storage and put on display. The “Oedipal painting,” a fresco on the wall of a house in the western part of “Hermopolis” (Tuna Al-Gabal), dates back to the 2nd century and shows the well-known story of Oedipus as told by the Greek playwright Sophocles; a statue of a donor found in the Market Ra cemetery from the 11th Dynasty, and a piece of colored cloth showing Saint-Nefer in front of.

 

Things that are on display in a museum

The museum’s most important items are shown in the following collections:

1- Queen Ah-jewelry was Hotep’s wife and mother of Kamose and Ahmose during the 17th Dynasty, and she was also married to Sekenen-ra. Her body was found in a tomb in Thebes in 1859.

2- A stockpile of mummies and sarcophagi of monarchs from the 18th to the 20th dynasties was found in the temple of Deir el-Bahari in Theban. Between 1875 and 1881, the tomb of Queen Inhapi was where the bodies of Seqenenre, Ahmose I, Amenophis I, Thutmose I, II, and III, Seti I, and Ramses II and III were found.

3- In 1886, things for the temple were found in the tomb of Sennedjem and his family (tomb N1 at Deir el-Medina, Thebes).

4- Priests of the religion of Amon, whose mummies and tombs were found in 1891 at Deir el-Bahari. Many of Egypt’s 153 sarcophagi from the 21st and 22nd dynasties that were given back to the state were given away or sold.

5- These things were found in 1894 in the graves of Middle Kingdom rulers and their families (Khor, Nub-khetepti-Cheered, Khnumit, Sat-Hator, Ita, Merit, Sat-Hator-Yunet).

6- Treasures from the tomb of Prince Magerpey, who lived during the 18th Dynasty, were found in the Valley of the Kings in 1898.

7- In 1898, royal items and mummies were found in the tomb of Amenophis II in the Valley of the Kings (mummies of Amenophis II, Thutmose IV, Amenophis III, Merenpt, Seti II, Siptah, Ramses IV, V, VI, three women, and a child).

8- Artifacts from the royal tombs of Thutmose III and IV, Amenophis III, and Horemheb, all of which were found before 1906, as well as funeral equipment from the vaults of Yuya and Tuya.9-

9- The treasures that were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. Over 3,500 artifacts were found, but the museum only has 1,700 of them on display. The rest might be in storage places in Cairo and Luxor.

10- Things that belonged to Khufu’s mother, Hetepe-eres, were found east of the Great Pyramid of Giza in 1925.

11- During the Amarna period, things were made just for Akhenaten, his family, and some officials in his court. They were found between 1912 and 1933 at Tel Amarna, Hermopolis, Thebes, and Memphis.

12- Artifacts from the grave of Hemaki, a high-ranking official in the government of the First Dynasty since King Udimo’s time in power. At Saqqara, everything was found between 1933 and 1936.

13- The things inside a few royal and private tombs from Tanis’s 21st and 22nd dynasties (East Delta). Not until 1939 were these artifacts found.

14- Egyptian and foreign teams found objects at Giza, Saqqara, Helwan, Abu Bello, Athribi, Bubastis, Heliopolis, Aswan, Nubia, the Eastern and Western Deserts, and Sinai.

15- Items from different royal homes were taken, bought, or given to them.6- 

16- The hall of Animal Mummies is a new special exhibit at the museum. Salima Ikram put it together. This area has some of the most extensive collections of animal mummies.