The Poetics of Egyptian Museum Practice

picture at 50mm from top frame
The Poetics of Egyptian Museum Practice

Wendy Doyon
British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan 10 (2008): 1–37

The Poetics of Egyptian Museum Practice
Wendy Doyon
In a recent study, Stephanie Moser (Wondrous Curiosities) discusses the abiding impact that
ive major exhibitions at the British Museum from 1759 to 1880 have had on the Western
perception of ancient Egyptian culture. Through an in-depth analysis of representational
strategies in the Egyptian installations of this period, she argues that the British Museum
instituted two enduring features of our understanding of Egyptian history. Firstly, its
cultural opposition to the development of Western society through direct contrast between
the material cultures of Egyptian and classical antiquity. Secondly, its unique popular appeal
among past cultures through its establishment as the most intellectually accessible subject of
ancient history. In an essay of 2003, Donald Preziosi (Brain of the Earth’s Body) provides a
historical and philosophical account of Western museological order in the late 19th Century
imperial exhibition of Egyptian history. Preziosi observes that the legibility of European art
history and modernity was achieved through narrative exhibition structures in which non-
European material cultures were assembled in ideological contrast to Western principles. He
argues that this disciplinary structure, by measuring cultural differences against a universal
standard of value, supported the political order of imperialism. This museological narrative
was thus central to colonial identity in Egypt, which was deined by its obverse relationship
to a characteristically Eastern or native identity. By simulating European exhibition styles
in Egyptian museums, these colonial institutions reframed a hybrid Egyptian identity into a
progressive, evolutionary account according to the nationalist interests of France and Britain,
and the Orientalist interests of European scholars and tourists. Consequently, the ideological
structure of Orientalism, vis-à-vis the representation of Oriental reality as an object deined
by its observed differences from the West, has imprinted European notions of meaning and
order onto the general perception of Egyptian history.1 Such analyses of rhetorical strategy
in 19th Century museum exhibition provide a framework for discussing the conceptual
development of Egyptian museums over the past 150 years.
Up to the 1850s, the scientiic and aesthetic principles in practice at the British Museum
did not support the systematic presentation of Egyptian material on its own historical terms.
According to Moser,
Without the intellectual framework of archaeology to guide the presentation of the

antiquities, the museum avoided constructing a narrative or sequence that would
inform visitors about the existence of distinctive cultural histories in antiquity, and
rather, the displays were arranged so as to educate visitors about the rise of Western
art.2
1
See Mitchell (in Preziosi and Farago, Grasping the World).
2
Moser, Wondrous Curiosities, 232.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/online_journals/bmsaes/issue_10/doyon.aspx
2008 EGYPTIAN MUSEUM PRACTICE 3
In the mid-to-late 19th Century, Egypt’s irst museums originated in the midst of an
epistemological shift, for both museology and Egyptology, from an abstract to a rational
perspective. Victorian display practices, having developed out of more abstract organizing
principles for the early modern collections of Europe, produced knowledge through objects
and the visual relationships in which they were arranged.3 As Steven Conn observes, the form
of Victorian display traditions, presented as an encyclopedic order of objects in glass cases,
‘made it possible for the visiting public to understand the meaning of museum displays’.
These Victorian museum forms relected contemporary ideologies of art, nature, and culture
in Western society, and were brought to Egypt under French and British administration.
It was also during this time in the second half of the 19th Century that a systematic
understanding of Egyptian antiquity was introduced by the emerging discipline of Egyptology.
The chronological framework advanced by archaeological studies replaced many of the
earlier concepts about Egyptian history that had been based on classical studies of Greek and
Roman art history. Along with the Victorian salon-style aesthetic imported from European
institutions, the early principles of Egyptian archaeology had a direct and lasting impact on
Egyptian museum arrangements. It was an encyclopedic style based on chronological and
taxonomic classiication that formed the basis for archaeological then geological, biological,
ethnographic, and historical display in Egypt.
It is important to qualify the presentation of ancient Egypt in terms of both museum-based
and discipline-based epistemologies of this time, because they reveal essential museological
precepts about Pharaonic culture. Firstly, that it came to signify Western advancement through
its appropriation as the ultimate Other represented as an essential and exotic counterpart to
the cultural development and identity of Euro-American society. Secondly, imperial display
methods established Pharaonic Egypt as the indigene of all Egyptian history. And third, exhibit
arrangements based on visual order and classiication provided the structural foundation for
all Egyptian museums to follow. The legacy of a priori exoticism and exclusivity afforded
to ancient Egypt by colonial institutions has persisted in Western representations for the
past two-and-a-half centuries, and this legacy was also inherited and later adapted by Egypt’s
postcolonial administration.
Throughout the 19th Century, Pharaonic culture became synonymous with Egypt in
representations from the outside looking in, framed by a Western-Orientalist perspective in
literature, painting, photography, and exhibition. From this perspective and with a European
aesthetic, Egypt’s irst major museums established an exhibitionary order that relected
Western ideologies by segregating Egyptian history within the urban fabric of Egypt itself
(Table 1). The Pharaonic collection came irst as the Boulaq Museum in 1858, and was
subsequently relocated to Giza in 1890 and inally, as the Egyptian Museum, to the center of
downtown Cairo in 1902. The Graeco-Roman Museum was founded in 1892, installed in a
building of neo-classical design in Alexandria, and the Coptic Museum was established at the
Hanging Church in Old Cairo in 1908. The Islamic Museum, née Museum of Arab Art, was
established in 1884 in the Mosque of el-Hakim in Fatimid Cairo, moving to a neo-Islamic
3
See Abt (in Macdonald, Companion), Coombes (in Preziosi and Farago, Grasping the World), Findlen (in Preziosi
and Farago, Grasping the World), and Schulz (in Pearce, Interpreting Objects and Collections).

Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 8.
4 DOYON BMSAES 10
building on Mohammed Ali Street in Bab el-Khalq, ‘medieval’ Cairo, in 1903.5

In the original formulation, the Egyptian antiquities museum at the heart of Cairo came
to represent an indigenous Egyptian culture and the other three collections were presented
and viewed as ethnic diversions. Of the Pharaonic, classical, Byzantine, and Islamic pasts,
only the irst would serve as a synonym for Egyptian. There would be some overlap between
Pharaonic and classical antiquity in early museum collection, but the Coptic and Islamic
traditions remained isolated. In his seminal study on the relationship of archaeology and
Egyptian nationality from 1798-1914, Donald Reid notes that,
Even in its striking new premises, the Museum of Arab Art never rivaled the Egyptian
Museum as a cultural landmark in either Western or Egyptian eyes. The Egyptian
Museum’s building of 1902 cost over four times as much as the building of the
combined Museum of Arab Art and Khedivial Library. Today the Egyptian Museum
remains a landmark in Cairo’s central square- despite being overshadowed by the Nile
Hilton, Arab League, Mugamma (a government ofice complex), and commercial
high-rises- while the Museum of Arab Art lies off the beaten tourist track… In 1913
the Egyptian Museum drew 29,879 visitors, six times as many as the 5,166 who visited
the Museum of Arab Art.7
A wide spectrum of critical studies has addressed the role of museums in the production
of scientiic and cultural knowledge, meaning, and identity.8 These studies examine the
epistemological development of Western museum structures from classical to Renaissance,
Victorian, and later ‘democratic’ concepts of museum organization. In this, they provide a
valuable analytical framework for the study of semiotic and metonymic strategies in museum
exhibition over the past ive centuries. Along with Reid, Frederick Bohrer (in Preziosi and
Farago, Grasping the World) and Wendy Shaw (Possessors and Possessed) relate this work to the
subject of Europe and the Near East in the 19-20th Centuries.
Shaw’s work in particular illustrates the metonymic function of museums in shaping the
identity of Near Eastern nations as a form of resistance to European colonial inluence. She
examines the distributive arrangement of antiquities in late 19th Century Ottoman museums
as an express effort to institutionalize a modern nationality in response to European imperial
overtures. Her discussion of the adaptive use of Western museum structures in the Ottoman
Empire relates to modern Egypt by demonstrating the repossession of a regional patrimony
through the selective use and modiication of inherited exhibition practices. The particular
adaptations she describes are dissimilar to those in postcolonial Egypt, but she establishes
an important precedent with this work by emphasizing the political and cultural agency of
reformulated display structures as self-relective narratives.
The museum practices of collection and display may have relied on European
5
See Reid (Whose Pharaohs).

See Preziosi, Brain of the Earth’s Body, 127.
7
Reid, Whose Pharaohs, 239.
8
Leading studies in this genre can be found in Karp and Lavine (Exhibiting Cultures), Macdonald (Politics of
Display and Companion), Preziosi and Farago (Grasping the World), and Yanni (Nature’s Museums).
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/online_journals/bmsaes/issue_10/Doyon.aspx
examples, yet the modes of their performance in the Ottoman context addressed
local traditions and contemporary needs. As a space of selective collection, self-
relection, and conscientious display, the museum provides a unique venue through
which to consider how the Ottoman Empire adopted a European institution and
modiied it to very speciic local needs, ideologies, and aspirations.9
Shaw goes on to describe the Ottoman rejection of a positivist order of display based on
European epistemologies (evolutionary models of display emphasizing a cultural periodization
from primitive to civilized), and the resulting adoption of ‘a new language of archaeological
ownership,’ which instead ordered its classical antiquity according to expository principles
emphasizing ‘the contemporary geography of archaeology’.10 The re-telling of Near Eastern
history from a postcolonial perspective is thus achieved through the reordering of visual
associations in museum arrangements.
In the Ottoman example, displays based on historical provenance rather than on historical
contexts rooted in Western aesthetics and systematics expressed an emergent national identity.
In its own shift from a European-based to a postcolonial narrative, the Egyptian museum
tradition has composed its ‘language of ownership’ by emphasizing the longevity of Egyptian
identity. In Egypt, much of the architecture of display has remained the same, but the new
narrative structure has reintegrated local cultures into one long indigenous tradition stretching
back to predynastic Egypt. This integrated approach replaces the episodic approach of earlier
museum practice by allowing multiple cultural relections to occur simultaneously rather than
progressively.
Museography, that is the study of the museum and its methods as a documentary form,
can enhance the narratological study of Middle Eastern museums by adding a practical
dimension to criticism. In referring to methods for arranging and describing museum
contents, museography relates convention to ideology.
Egyptian museography is based on 150 years of modern precedent, two-thirds of which
was developed in the Western tradition under French and British administration and the
remainder of which has developed indigenously. The modern museum tradition in Egypt
begins with Auguste Mariette in 1858.
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Institut Impérial de France) has

heard with satisfaction from M. Mariette that His Highness the Viceroy of Egypt,
Mohammed Said, has resolved to take effective measures for the conservation of
ancient monuments, and has ordered the construction of a museum in which to
deposit those ancient works still exposed to destruction, and which are able to be
transported into the new establishment; and inally, that His Highness has given orders
to the Conservator of the new Egyptian Museum to clear the temples, palaces, and
ancient buildings still standing. This is perhaps the irst time that a sovereign Moslem
cares for the conservation of works of antiquity and gives such brilliant proof of his
9
Shaw, Possessors and Possessed, 29.
10
Ibid. 164.
6 DOYON BMSAES 10
enlightened zeal for the progress of the Sciences. (7 October 1859)11
Methods of museum presentation directly relect the conceptual development of their

disciplines, so that the fundamental structure of all Egyptian museum display derives in part
from the disciplinarity of early Egyptology. In its infancy, the Egyptian Museum was unrivaled
in its signiicance to the epistemological development of Egyptology and its presentation was
central to the discourse of the time.12 As the country’s capital museum, it also dominated her
museology. In their description of the founding arrangements at the Boulaq Museum and
succeeding arrangements at the Egyptian Museum between 1872 and 1946, Mariette (Album
du Musée), Maspero (Guide du Visiteur au Musée de Boulaq and Guide to the Cairo Museum), Quibell
(Some Notes on Egyptian History and Art), and Engelbach (ASAE 40 and Introduction to Egyptian
Archaeology) illustrate the basic architecture and aesthetic of Egyptian museum display, still
familiar today (igs. 1–7).
In form and tradition, the Arab Art (1884), Graeco-Roman (1892), Ethnographic (1895),
Botanical (1898), Geological (1904), Entomological (1907), Coptic (1908), and Aswan (1912)
Museums followed. The Ethnographic Museum found by the Khedivial Geographical Society
in 1895 provided another forum for the Orientalist politics and cultural discourse of the day,13
but no other folk museums were born out of this era and it is likely that the early emphasis
on monumental art history predicated their (still) slow development.
The Egyptian museum tradition has witnessed three distinct periods of growth and
transformation in the 20th Century. The irst of these occurred in the 1920s and 30s with
the appearance of a modest number of museums devoted to modern history and industry
in Egypt, including transportation, communication, agriculture, and hygiene. Egypt’s irst
modern art museum was also established in Cairo in 1927, and a small regional museum
appeared in the Middle Egyptian province of el-Minya during this time.
In the years leading up to and following the 1952 revolution, the Egyptian museum
demographic was popularized with a series of museums dedicated to modern history and art,
including several biographical collections, which were primarily located in and around Cairo,
Alexandria, and the Delta region. These included the Mahmoud Khalil, Mostafa Kamel,
Mohammed Nagy, and Hassan Heshmat Museums in Cairo, the Gezira Art Museum, the
National Museum in Mansoura, the military museum in Alamein, and Alexandria’s Museum
of Modern Art.
Finally, in the last quarter of the 20th Century, the number and variety of museums in
Egypt increased dramatically, with a sharp rise in the number of rural museums devoted to
modern Egyptian art, history, and ethnography; a steady increase in modern history museums
in Cairo; and a proliferation of new antiquities museums in every region of the country. The
Luxor Museum of Ancient Egyptian Art was established in 1975, followed by the Solar Boat
Museum in Giza in 1982, the Nubia and Mummiication Museums in 1997, the Museum of
Islamic Ceramics in 1998, and the Antiquities Museum at the Library of Alexandria in 2000.
Several regional archaeological museums were also established at this time, including those in
11
Maspero, ASAE 2: 112.
12
See Reid (Whose Pharaohs).
13
Ibid. 96.
Beni Suef, Mallawi, New Valley, and Port Said.

The development of Egyptian antiquities museums has continued steadily into the 21st
Century with the inauguration of the National Museum in Alexandria in 2003 and the Imhotep
Museum in 2006, in addition to the two ongoing museum projects in Giza and Fustat, and
over a dozen local museum projects in development from the Sinai to Upper Egypt. Building
on the impact of the original Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibitions, this latest generation of
archaeology museums (1973-present) has dramatically increased the Egyptian museum range
both geographically and thematically.
At the time of this research in 2005-2006 there were approximately 97 museums active in
Egypt and at least 15 more in development (Table 2).14 Broadly, the past one hundred years
have produced ten times the number of museums housing archaeological material than were
found in the ifty years between 1858 and 1908, including a strong trend toward regionalization
that began in the mid-1970s and a recent trend in specialized museum development that has
produced a number of interpretive sites and theme museums since the late 1990s. The
20th Century also witnessed a signiicant increase in museums of local interest incorporating
modern subjects and themes. The regionalization and specialization of cultural museums in
general and archaeological museums in particular has resulted in increased local as well as global
access to Egyptian heritage. Ethnographic exhibits are now represented in rural and frontier
regions, and with the Nubia Museum as a model, other major museums of archaeology are
integrating ethnographic themes into their exhibition and education programmes. Although
Egyptian museums by and large uphold professional and commercial interests in Egyptian
antiquity, they are gradually coming to address the public interests of Egyptian society.
Today, Egyptian museums operate under a centralized administration with oversight from
various public ministries and institutions (Table 3). At least 75% of all Egyptian museums
are centralized, and non-governmental, private, or shared museum administration is known
in only ifteen cases. The Ministry of Culture governs two-thirds of the museums in Egypt,
and that authority is split between the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and the Sector
of Fine Arts (SFA). Each of these groups oversees two museum sets: the SCA ‘antiquities’
and ‘historical’, the SFA ‘national-historical’ and ‘arts’ (Tables 4-6).
Within the Ministry of Culture, antiquities museums represent Egyptian culture up to the
era of Mohammed Ali (c.5500 BC-1805 AD), and historical museums represent Egyptian
culture during and following the era of Mohammed Ali (1805-present). Antiquities subsets
distinguish national or principal from regional or local museums. Arts museums include
both ine art and art historical/biographical collections, and national-historical museums
commemorate the making of modern Egypt. These categories represent oficial classiications
and provide a useful framework for discussing museum organization within the Ministry of
Culture. They do not, however, account for museums of ethnography or natural history,
or for those in atypical situations. The full range of Egyptian museums is more usefully
classiied by subject-type using the ive basic distinctions of archaeology (from prehistoric to
Islamic), history, art, ethnography, and natural history.
As indicated in Table 6, there are three administrative tiers within the Ministry of Culture
relevant to museum practice. Both the individual and national character of Egyptian museums
14
Note that this account excludes non-traditional museum forms, such as zoos, aquaria, planetaria, interpretive
sites or installations, living history, children’s, and outdoor museums.
8 DOYON BMSAES 10
is determined by their broad cultural administration within the SCA and SFA. Countrywide
centralization rarely distinguishes the individual museum standard from the national museum
standard, and generally encompasses everything from policy to programme.
The Egyptian curatorial tradition is absolutely fundamental to a broader understanding
of narrative in that the arrangement of personnel governs the museum process. Within
the SCA, staff curatorial appointments are classiied by material type, and for Dynastic
collections, by time period. Curatorial composition at the Coptic Museum, for example,
is based on twelve museum sections, which are 1- icons, 2- wood, 3- stone, 4- manuscripts,
5- metals, 6- textiles, 7- ivory and bone, 8- ostraca, 9- fresco, 10- pottery and glaze, 11- glass,
and 12- leather and reeds.15 The Islamic Museum has thirteen sections, which are 1- carpets
and rugs, 2- textiles, 3- metalwork, 4- woodwork, 5- ivory and bone, 6- arms and armor, 7-
ceramics and pottery, 8- marble, stone, and stucco, 9- manuscripts and bookbinding, 10- glass,
11- weights, stamps, and measures, 12- coins, and 13- jewelry.16 The Egyptian Museum has
seven sections, which are 1- gold, jewelry, and Tutankhamun, 2- Old Kingdom, 3- Middle
Kingdom, 4- New Kingdom, 5- Late Period and Graeco-Roman, 6- papyri and coins, and
7- ostraca, cofins, scarabs, and papyri. At the Egyptian Museum one head curator and four
or more assistant curators are assigned to each section, and the seventh section has two head
curators. Altogether, there are 8 head curators and 31 assistant curators, and of these 39, 30
are permanent and 9 are temporary.17 Permanent appointments are senior and temporary
contracts are provisional appointments renewed on an annual basis. Along with the curatorial
staff are 15 conservators (10 permanent and 5 temporary), 5 carpenters (1 permanent and
4 temporary), 17 object handlers (2 permanent and 15 temporary), 14 admissions staff (13
permanent and 1 temporary), 2 photographers, 4 public relations staff, over 90 security
oficers, and an undetermined number of technicians. The ofice of the director houses the
General Director, ive deputy directors, nine administrators, and three assistants. The café,
bookshop, gift shop, bank, and custodial services at the museum are private contracts for
which the administration is not responsible.
In the principal museum tradition, curatorial work consists of two roles referred to as
committee work and public relations. Committee work encompasses major projects of
collections management, conservation, study, and display, as well as routine tasks such as
object movement, photography, label revision, gallery preparation, lighting, and furniture
repair. Committees generally consist of three or more curators in addition to the technicians,
carpenters, object handlers, security personnel, and specialists required by a particular project.
The committee process determines the structure of daily activity and controls the movement
of objects and information within the museum. It is commonly a lengthy and formal routine
that occupies much of a curator’s time, though some curators also collaborate on contract
projects such as temporary and traveling exhibitions or ilm production.
The second main area of curatorial work, ‘public relations’, involves leading tours for
VIP and student groups and assisting foreign researchers (the latter may also come within
committee work). The ofice of public relations and its staff are responsible for coordinating
15
From www.copticmuseum.gov.eg.
16
From www.islamicmuseum.gov.eg.
17
From Egyptian Museum, pers. comm. April 2006.
and receiving special museum guests, who may be assigned a curator-guide for their visit. In
this context, the public does not include tourists, whose experience is determined by private
guides or guidebooks. The public relations ofice does not handle external and media relations,
which are the responsibility of the SCA, museum director, and senior curatorial staff.
Museum curators typically possess baccalaureate or post-baccalaureate training.
Professional tour guides on the other hand are certiied through foreign language training and
are regulated by the Ministry of Tourism. During peak tourist season, the Egyptian Museum
may receive over 6500 visitors per day, and in that time an independent tour guide can earn as
much as twenty times the monthly salary of a senior museum curator in just one week.18 The
lack of instructional standards or guidelines for tour guides and the limited public impact of
curators create a reciprocal tension that often adversely affects the museum experience for
tourists and non-tourists alike.
For recent years, Egypt’s top-visited cultural museums include the Egyptian, Solar Boat,
Nubia, Luxor, and Graeco-Roman Museums, which hosted a combined average of about 2.5
million people per iscal year from 2001 to 2004 (Table 7). The Egyptian Museum attracts
around 1.7 million visitors per year, twice the average admission to all other major antiquities
museums in Egypt combined. The Solar Boat Museum comes in at a distant second averaging
around 206,300 visitors per year. The recently opened Mummiication Museum in Luxor is
close behind the top ive in overall popularity and received just under half the number of
visitors to the Luxor Museum, with an average of 73,000 visits per year during this period.
By comparison with museums emphasizing Pharaonic and classical antiquity, the Coptic and
Islamic Museums of Cairo operate on a modest scale with pre-renovation averages of around
43,600 and 21,600 visitors per iscal year (2001-2003), respectively. The Aswan Museum
received less than a ifth the number of visitors to the popular Nubia Museum at this time,
however it still claimed much higher attendance than other local museums, with 29,500
visitors per year. Regionally, among the local antiquities museums of Beni Suef, Ismailia,
Kom Oushim, Mallawi, New Valley, and San el-Hagar, annual visitorship ranged from 19,900
at the Mallawi Museum to only 2500 at the New Valley Museum. In terms of archaeology
alone, rural museum attendance represented less than 2% of general museum admissions for
this period, with stronger attendance in the provinces of Upper Egypt than in the Delta or
frontier regions. Despite new trends in the tourist economy, with beach tourism on the rise,
admissions to the major archaeological museums of Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan
increased by over 60% from 2001 to 2004, and regional attendance rose by 20% in that
time.
The Luxor Museum is second to the Egyptian Museum in terms of earned income (Table
8), and like the Egyptian Museum attracts a predominantly international audience. Of the
200,000 visitors to the Luxor Museum in 2004, 31,000 were Egyptian residents (Table 9).
Compared with the previous calendar year, Egyptian attendance rose in pace with international
attendance, maintaining a steady 16% of total admissions, and followed a similar pattern of
seasonal highs and lows with peak local attendance from November through April and peak
tourist attendance from October to March (igs. 9–10). Although the Egyptian Museum
receives ten times as many visitors as the Luxor Museum, their audience proiles follow similar
trends.
18
From Egyptian Museum, visitor logs and pers. comm. January 2006.
10 DOYON BMSAES 10
In contrast, both the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Nubia Museum are local destinations
that secondarily support tourism. The Nubia Museum earns a much smaller percentage of
national museum revenue than the Luxor Museum, but on average receives more visitors. In
2005, 57% of the Nubia Museum’s total visitorship (179,951) was non-tourist and 40% of
those admissions were students from local schools, representing an average of 112 Egyptian
students per day.19
The new Library of Alexandria (Bibliotheca Alexandrina) is a self-directed public
institution governed by an elected Board of Trustees. With a founding mission ‘to be a
center of excellence for the production and dissemination of knowledge, and to be a place
of dialogue and understanding between cultures and peoples,’20 the Library is an institution
of means with a collection of over 400,000 books, an international advisory board, 1157 staff
members, and three permanent museums.21 Its revenue sources include government grants
and allocations (71%), cash donations (9%), operating revenue (7%), and interest income
(12%).22 The Library’s three permanent museums of archaeology, manuscripts, and science
form part of its Academic and Cultural Sector. The BA Antiquities Museum is a uniquely
cooperative administration in which the Library covers the museum’s operating expenses and
the SCA provides its staff and collections. The museum staff consists of 3 head curators, 9
assistant curators, 2 education coordinators, and 4 admissions staff appointed by the SCA,
as well as a number of technicians, security oficers, and digital guide managers appointed
by the Library.23 The museum director, with two administrators and three assistants, shares
responsibility to the Library and the SCA. Curatorial divisions are similar to the traditional
model, according to cultural period and material type, however in this case private tour
guides are not permitted in the galleries and instead the curators act as professional guides
and educators for the visiting public. In the iscal year 2004-2005, 57% of visitors to the
Library of Alexandria were local residents and its Antiquities Museum received 45,400 paid
visitors.24
Though economically signiicant, the earned income from Egypt’s destination museums is
culturally complex. Representing museums of archaeology, the local 16% of total admissions
to the Luxor Museum in 2003 and 2004 earned the museum under 2% of its annual income
from ticket sales (Table 10). Students represent a high percentage of Egyptian visitors and
are typically admitted free of charge. Of the Nubia Museum’s total admissions in 2005, 23%
were complimentary (22.8% students, 0.2% VIP). That the overwhelming majority of national
museum income is earned by foreign spending (over 70% of it at the Egyptian Museum
alone) underscores the role of tourism in sustaining cultural museums and programmes that
would otherwise be prohibitive for Egyptians, and highlights the responsibility of the SCA to
maintain and develop those programmes.25 Conversely, tourism itself may in some cases be
19
From Nubia Museum, visitor logs January 2006.
20
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Annual Report July 2004-June 2005, 5.
21
Ibid. 179, 188, 208.
22
Ibid. 159.
23
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, pers. comm. February 2006.
24
From Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Annual Report July 2004-June 2005, 183-4.
25
Note that in museums governed by the Ministry of Culture all museum revenue and its reallocation is
a deterrent to local museum interest.

Both practically and conceptually, the division between Culture and Tourism in Egypt has
a problematic effect on museum practice. There are effectively two separate museum publics
in Egypt — tourist and non-tourist — and its public proile in part determines a museum’s
operation (igs. 11–12). The non-tourist audience, what could be considered the cultural
audience, includes Egyptian citizens, students, researchers, and VIPs. Tourist-oriented
museums are generally well represented in tourist literature, located in popular tourist areas
along the Nile Valley, North Coast, and Red Sea, and attended by private tour groups, whose
visits are scarcely controlled or inluenced by a museum’s administration. Local museums (or
local programmes in high-proile museums) serve a predominantly Egyptian audience, often
rely on professional curator-guides, and are in some cases too remote or obscure for non-
native visitors to access.
The practical distinction between tourist and non-tourist museums however is not mutually
exclusive, and increasingly there are compromises to facilitate all types of visitor in every
type of museum. In general, there are far more museums of local or shared interest than
there are museums sustained by tourism alone. The Solar Boat and other site museums
(Imhotep, Merenptah) are almost exclusively dominated by tourism, however most of the
major museums that serve tourists (including the capital four) have an increasingly positive
local impact beyond the economic beneits of tourism.
In addition to tourist museums that double as cultural museums, there are three main types
of museum with local impact. These are traditional museums of history, ethnography, and
natural history in Cairo (particularly the Ethnographic and Agricultural Museums); newer
museums of art, history, and science in greater Cairo and northern Egypt (particularly 20th
Century national collections); and regional archaeological museums. Most of these routinely
host local families, students, and specialists and house a variety of cultural programmes.
In general, the number of museums that now house cultural venues and education
programmes is comparable to the number of museums that are limited to traditional display
and exhibition. Many arts and culture museums house libraries, cultural centers, auditoriums,
classrooms, and studios;26 several antiquities museums have developed courses and public
seminars in archaeology, gallery programmes and workshops for students, and classroom
outreach.27 These include the Egyptian Museum with its School and Library under separate
managements, the Luxor and Mummiication Museums, the Library of Alexandria, and a
number of regional museums. The Nubia Museum is a celebrated example of new museum
culture in Egypt, which integrates its traditional exhibition space aimed primarily at tourists
with its role as a local community center.28 In this capacity, the museum hosts extensive
school programmes and public events that encompass the art, archaeology, culture, and
environment of the region. In some cases, and with the aid of foreign funding, museum-
based programmes for tourists have grown to include lectures, ilms, interactive guides, theme
exhibits, and didactics; the National Museum in Alexandria stands out in this respects.
centralized, i.e. museum budgets are not proprietary.
26
See www.ineart.gov.eg.
27
See Baligh (Bulletin), Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Annual Report), Elmikaty (Museum International), Hawass
(Museum International), el-Mallah (Museum International), and el-Saddik (Bulletin).
28
See el-Meguid (Bulletin and Museum International).
12 DOYON BMSAES 10
With some very noteworthy exceptions, the museums with actual or potential local impact
tend to have the most limited resources. This is particularly so with natural history collections
in Cairo, which represent an extremely important but imperiled resource for Egyptian citizens,
students, and researchers. The Entomological Museum of Cairo for example serves a small
research community with a curatorial staff of four. Much like the nearby Egyptian Museum,
it retains the traditional architecture and character of its founding in the early years of the 20th
Century, but unlike the Egyptian Museum, its curators raise funds for the upkeep of collections
and publication of research. In this, there is an important contrast between museums outside
of the SCA, where barren of resources but free from the constraints of tourism and eager
to have an impact, and destination museums within the SCA, where crippled by the tension
between Culture and Tourism itself. It is telling that there are no dedicated museums of
ethnography governed by the Ministry of Culture.
The exceptions are a prosperous fourth class of local museums, which includes the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Nubia Museum, the Luxor and Mummiication Museums, the
Islamic Ceramics Museum, the Abdin Palace Museum, and a scatter of arts museums in
greater Cairo. Curators at these museums are involved in guiding and instructing the public
in their subjects, even without the infrastructure to study or publish their collections. With
these museums lies a discernible trend in the professionalization of museum curatorship and
education in Egypt, particularly as concerns art museums. The development of this trend to
include more advanced curatorial functions in Egyptology and to deepen public awareness
of the archaeological process in Egypt will depend on professional planning and evaluation
within the SCA or in collaboration with foreign missions.
All forms of archaeological representation, which is the production of meaning through
a visual language of communicating the past, rely on the repetition of certain themes to
establish social legibility. Museums are one of archaeology’s most important media, adding a
material dimension to the visualization of history. By observing patterns in the arrangement
and composition of archaeological displays, museum exhibition can be read as a visual
narrative that negotiates ideological associations with the past.29
As a product of the European imperial age, Egypt’s early museography presented a
segregated Oriental history to a metropolitan audience of European scholars and travelers.
Colonial museum forms physically discriminated Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman from Coptic
and Islamic, with the implication that a ‘pure’ Egyptian culture lay in its classical heritage.
Fundamentally, Egyptian museum display is part of an encyclopedic tradition that uses
visual conventions to transmit information and construct meaning. Add to this historical
condition a centralized administration, a short supply of curatorial resources, a high national
illiteracy rate, a diverse international audience representing a multitude of languages, and the
conlicting interests of culture and tourism. The result (foreign inluence notwithstanding) is
a continued dependence on the visual or taxonomic relationship of objects to relate the story
of Egypt’s past. However, in the postcolonial-national tradition the boundaries instituted by
early museum forms have faded. New museum forms merge the ancient Egyptian, Graeco-
Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic traditions into an overlapping Egyptian identity that lengthens
29
See Bal (in Greenberg, Thinking about Exhibitions and in Preziosi and Farago, Grasping the World), Bennett
(Birth of the Museum and in Macdonald, Politics of Display), Dias (in Macdonald, Politics of Display), and Moser
(Wondrous Curiosities and in Hodder, Archaeological Theory Today).
the indigenous characterization to include the full span of Egyptian history. The new forms
suggest that these cultural traditions are signiicant not in isolation from, but in relation to
one another, as they share an essential ‘Egyptian-ness’.
Relatively few museums in Egypt are devoted exclusively to Pharaonic antiquity, and for
the most part, these are highly commercial museums attached to popular archaeological
sites. Apart from these, the transformation of the traditional narrative takes three forms. In
museums of archaeology, multiple periods of Egyptian history are presented simultaneously
and a full order of Egyptian history from the Neolithic to the 19th Century is common; ancient
themes underpin all modern museum subjects; and new forms of ethnographic display now
appear in conjunction with archaeology.
In the long narrative, prehistoric, early to late Dynastic, late antique, and Islamic materials
are typically presented in identical and repetitive terms, sometimes in a space with little barrier
or transition from one to the next. Exhibit compositions are based on a formal order and
classiication consisting irst of age, then form, then material. Exhibit form is based on
distinctions between major object taxa (monumental architecture, relief, statuary, and stelae)
and minor object taxa (ceramics, lithics, textiles, jewelry, igures., ostraca, papyri, and coins),
which relect disciplinary distinctions between art history and material culture. Material
sub-categories include ceramic, glass, ivory, bone, metal, wood, stone, etc. Centerpieces of
exhibits typically include highly recognizable or iconic items such as decorated predynastic
pottery, Pharaonic offering tables, Coptic scripture, and Islamic lanterns. Mummiication is
the only ubiquitously thematic archaeological exhibit and as a theme it supersedes all other
historical contexts. Displays associated with death and burial in ancient Egypt are always set
apart from a museum’s main exhibition with little attention to chronology. Writing and papyri
is another common theme, but in general thematic exhibits are still far less common than
taxonomic exhibits.
At the National Museum in Alexandria there are three loors of exhibition leading from
early to modern Egypt (ig. 13). Inside the entrance hall, an Islamic lantern hangs above a
Roman statue that leads visitors into the Pharaonic area. The exhibits begin on the lower
level in the Old Kingdom and continue through the Middle and New Kingdoms, the Late
Period, and the ‘Tomb.’ The period displays closely resemble one another, with seated igures,
offering tables, stelae, and iconic statuary situated among groups of decorated pottery,
ceramics, igurines, and jewelry. Located in a cellar-type room with a dark interior and low
lighting, the tomb display includes a Late Period mummy and cofin group, a large statue of
Anubis, and groupings of canopic jars, shabtis, amulets, and cartonnage. The Graeco-Roman
displays on the main loor feature a similar coniguration with large statues and mosaics
in the central gallery, and groups of pottery, stone, and metal artifacts, coins, masks, and
igurines around the periphery. A similar pattern occurs in the Coptic, Islamic, and Modern
displays on the upper level. The Coptic galleries feature several stelae among pottery, metal,
and textile groups, while the Islamic galleries feature large decorative objects (textile, stone,
and wood) among groups of coins, weapons, ceramics, glass, and metal artifacts. Historical
photographs line the Modern gallery, where the cases contain groups of coins, jewels, glass,
metal, and china. The form of each permanent exhibit is indistinguishable from the others,
and it is important to recognize this form as distinct from other types of temporary/thematic
displays. It superimposes a very material relationship between native cultures over the episodic
14 DOYON BMSAES 10
expression of each individual period, and it is this pattern that establishes the legibility of
Egyptian history.
The Antiquities Museum at the Library of Alexandria comprises ‘1079 objects that tell
the story of Egypt from the predynastic through the Islamic periods’30 (ig. 15). The ancient
displays begin with a group of scribal artifacts (statues, igures, and tools), followed by a
group of Old Kingdom alabaster vessels and display of New Kingdom limestone reliefs. In
the ‘Afterlife,’ a Roman mummy is displayed with an assortment of burial equipment from the
predynastic, New Kingdom, Late Period, and Ptolemaic traditions, and opposite the mummy
in the center of the gallery is an offering table. In an arterial sequence the Pharaonic area
leads into the Graeco-Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic exhibits and ultimately back to the
Pharaohs. Here again, each period closely resembles the next in its composition. Classical
statues appear in the middle of a large hall, surrounded by groups of Greek and Roman
coins, jewels, urns, igurines, amulets, metal tools, wood tools, and masks. In the next hall
are a Coptic lectern, Islamic prayer rug, and mashrabiya surrounded by Byzantine and then
Arabic arrangements including oil lamps, ceramics, ostraca, textiles, ivory, bone, and wood;
manuscripts, textiles, architecture, coins, lamps, writing instruments, ceramics, glass, metal,
and porcelain. A small exhibit of Hieroglyphic, Coptic, and Arabic papyri completes the
permanent exhibition.
At the Luxor Museum, despite its primary focus on New Kingdom Thebes there is one
central exhibit that traces the region from the predynastic through the Islamic era. This
exhibit brings together decorated predynastic pottery, early Dynastic divine igures, Old
Kingdom stoneware, Theban tomb furniture, Third Intermediate Period burial items, Late
Period and Ptolemaic offering tables, Coptic bronzes, and Mameluke ceramics, as well as
groups of linens, papyri, and mummiication materials.
The Nubia Museum’s permanent exhibition is based on a long chronology from prehistory
to the modern period with an added emphasis on folk culture. Beginning with Paleolithic tool
groups, the course of this museum visits Neolithic and predynastic Nubia, the Pyramid Age,
the Middle Kingdom, the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom, the Late Period, the
Roman occupation, the Christian and Islamic periods, Nubia in the 20th Century, and inally,
contemporary folk life. Despite an emphasis on local chronology, the form is immediately
recognizable and as before each composition overlaps with the next. Major monuments and
cultural icons appear in the center of each gallery and analogous object classes line the edges.
With dioramas there is an effort to make the ethnographic tableaux more lifelike than the
preceding exhibits, but the themes and composition are consistent with the archaeological
displays. The overall effect is a loop in time, which blurs the difference between any given
“then” and now. Allegorically, there is no difference between a decorated jar from the 14th
Century AD and one from the 4th Millennium BC, or between a Middle Kingdom amulet and
one worn today, as they mirror each other across the galleries. Because the Nubia Museum
is both a tourist destination and a community-based museum, its ideological perspective is
signiicant. It suggests that the only way to view modern Egypt is by way of its past and
embodies the notion that Egyptian traditions, and thus identities, have less meaning apart
than together.
Other examples of this long narrative include the Beni Suef Museum (prehistoric to
30
From Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum, digital guide 2006.
Islamic), the new el-Arish Museum (prehistoric to modern, including folk), the Islamic
Ceramics Museum (Islamic, modern, and contemporary), the New Valley Museum (prehistoric
to late antique), and the Aswan Museum (prehistoric to Islamic). Ever more inclusive, this
narrative transposes the remote and recent pasts to create an identity that is larger than any
single part. To this end, the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization proposes to
integrate all Egyptian cultures from prehistory to the present into a shared space of meaning,
where ‘Egypt’s cultural unity precedes its political unity’.31
Representations of antiquity also grant an indigenous signiicance to secular history,
and in this they signify a national identity that draws its legitimacy from the ancient past.
Impressions of ancient Egypt appear in every modern museum subject from the military to
the arts. These typically include replicas, models, graphics, and other art forms, and in many
cases they include authentic objects; most focus on Pharaonic subjects and some include
classical and Islamic themes. Common representations of ancient Egypt focus on divinity
and kingship, writing, mummiication, agriculture, and military themes.
Some examples include the Railway and Postal Museums, which have historical sections
on communication and transportation stretching back to the First Dynasty (ig. 8). The
Geological Museum has an exhibit on minerals and their uses in ancient Egypt, and the
hunting museum at Manyal Palace displays a large illustration of prehistoric hunters in its
entryway. The Entomological Museum has a case of insects from the tomb of Tutankhamun
and the Military Museum in Cairo has one of his chariots, which is prominently displayed as
a point of origin for the Egyptian military.
The Agricultural Museum is a study unto itself, incorporating both true specimens and
casts from antiquity throughout its several museums and hundreds of exhibits, which cover
the arts and ethnography, lora, fauna, and history of Egypt. In spite of the disrepair of some
of its halls it is a relatively dynamic local museum that presents an encyclopedic history of
Egyptian agriculture from its origins in prehistory to the present day, including two dedicated
museums of archaeology and two neo-Pharaonic gardens. The irst and newer ancient
Egyptian museum is a complete and culturally sophisticated natural history covering the pre-
to late Dynastic, and the second deals with the agricultural traditions of late antique and
Islamic Egypt. The detailed execution of this museum in particular, with its emphasis on the
antiquity of the land and its agriculture, suggests something more actual than Pharaonism.
Among its various references to antiquity, the Abdin Palace Museum features a modern
king list that begins with Narmer and ends with Mubarak (ig. 14). The selection, dimensions,
and coniguration of leaders represented in this image are a local history of Egypt, wherein
the nation’s independence is aggrandized by its heritage. Sixty percent of the number,
and half the visual balance, of individuals chosen are indigenous Egyptian Pharaohs, and
Tutankhamun, who represents both ancient and modern Egypt, is the literal center of the
narrative. The history represented by this account poetically joins the independent present to
the indigenous past.
Representations of ancient Egypt have long been used to support the political agendas
of Western nations, and to provide a romantic and exotic counterpart to Western cultures
and societies. For the past two centuries Egypt’s indigenous history has issued from Western
disciplines and museums of Egyptology, which have traditionally neglected their subject’s
31
el-Moniem, Museum International 225-226: 25.
16 DOYON BMSAES 10
relationship to modern Egypt. In the various ways explored in this paper, the postcolonial
museum tradition in Egypt has itself deined that relationship as an inclusive identity that
replaces the exclusive ‘Egyptian-ness’ granted to Pharaonic Egypt by European colonial
interests. By allowing all Egyptian traditions to act as relections of one another rather than
disparate, linear segments, Egypt has redeined and reclaimed its indigenous heritage for a
diversiied and increasingly local audience.
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Table 1: An Egyptian chronology. To 642 AD, chronology follows Redford (Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient
Egypt).
PERIOD DATES
Prehistoric c.700,000-3050 BC
Paleolithic / Mesolithic c.700,000-5500
Neolithic / Predynastic c.5500-3050
Badarian 5500-4000
Naqada I 4000-3500
Naqada II 3500-3150
Dynasty “0” c.3150-3050
Pharaonic c.3050-333 BC
Early Dynastic (Dynasties 1-2) c.3050-2687
Old Kingdom (Dynasties 3-6) c.2687-2191
First Intermediate Period (Dynasties 7-11) c.2190-2061
Middle Kingdom (Dynasties 11-14) 2061-c.1665
Second Intermediate Period (Dynasties 15-17) c.1664-1569
New Kingdom (Dynasties 18-20) c.1569-1081
Third Intermediate Period (Dynasties 21-23) 1081-c.711
Late Period (Dynasties 24-31) 724-333
Graeco-Roman 332 BC-337 AD
Macedonian 332-305 BC
Ptolemaic 305-31 BC
Roman 30 BC - 337 AD
Byzantine (‘Coptic’) 337-641 AD
Islamic 642-1798 AD
Ummayyad Caliphate 661-750
Abbasid Caliphate 750-969
Tulunid Dynasty 868-905
Ikhshidi Dynasty 935-969
Fatimid Caliphate 969-1171
Ayyubid Sultanate 1171-1252
Mameluke Sultanate 1252-1517
Ottoman Rule 1517-1914
Modern 1798 AD-
French Occupation 1798-1801
Dynasty of Mohammed Ali Pasha 1805-1892
British Occupation 1882-1952
Semi-independence 1922-1952
Arab Republic of Egypt 1953-
20 DOYON BMSAES 10
Table 2: The museums of Egypt, 2006.
MUSEUM TYPE LOCATION FOUNDING

1) 23rd July Revolution Museum History Gezira, Cairo In development
2) Abdin Palace Museum History Abdin, Cairo 1998
3-9) Agricultural Museum Natural History, Doqqi, Giza 1938
Ancient Egypt 1 Archaeology 1938
Ancient Egypt 2 Archaeology c.1996
Arabic Parlor Ethnography n/a
Arts Collection Art n/a
Cotton History 1920
Plant Kingdom History 1938
Scientiic Collections Ethnography 1938
10) Ahmed Shawqi Museum History Giza 1977
11) El-Alamein Museum History (Military) El-Alamein, Matrouh 1956
12) El-Arish Museum Archaeology, Ethno. El-Arish, North Sinai In development
13-14) Aswan Museum Archaeology Elephantine, Aswan 1912
Original 1912
Annex (German- 1998
Swiss Excavations)
15) El-Bahariya Oasis Heritage Ethnography El-Bowait, el-Bahariya 1995
Museum
16) Bedouin Heritage Museum Ethnography Mersa Matrouh, Matrouh 1983
Matrouh
17-18) Beni Suef Museum Archaeology Beni Suef 1997
Original 1997
New In development
19-21) Bibliotheca Alexandrina Library, Chatby, Alexandria 2000
Antiquities Museum Archaeology 2000
Manuscripts Museum History 2002
Science Museum History 2002
22) Botanical Museum (Herbarium) Natural History Kitchener, Aswan 1898
23) Carriage Museum History Salah el-Din, Cairo 1982
24) Cavafy Museum History Central Alexandria 1992
25) Chariots Museum History Boulaq, Cairo 1984
26) Coptic Museum Archaeology Old Cairo 1908
27) Dar el-Kutub Museum History Boulaq, Cairo n/a
28) Denshoway Museum History Denshoway, Monoiya 1999
29) Education Museum History Central Cairo n/a
30) Effat Nagy and Saad el-Khadem Art Zaytoun, Cairo n/a
Museum
31) Egyptian Museum (Boulaq/Giza Archaeology Tahrir, Central Cairo 1858/1890/
/Tahrir) 1902

32) Enji Alatoun Museum Art Helwan 2002
33) Entomological Museum Natural History Ramsis, Central Cairo 1907
34) Ethnographic Museum Ethnography Central Cairo 1895
35) El-Farafra Museum Ethnography El-Farafra 1985
36) Gawhara Palace Museum History Salah el-Din, Cairo c.1982
37) Gayer-Anderson Museum (Beit History Sayeda Zeinab, Cairo 1945
el-Kiritliya)
38) Geological Museum (Tahrir/ Natural History Athar el-Nabi, Maadi 1904/1982
Maadi)
39) Gezira Art Museum Art Gezira, Cairo 1957
40) Graeco-Roman Museum Archaeology Central Alexandria 1892
41) Grand Egyptian Museum Archaeology Giza In development
42) Hassan Heshmat Museum Art Ain Shams Gharbiya, 1960
Cairo
43) Hassan Tobar Museum History Manzalah, Dakahliya n/a
44) Hurghada Museum Archaeology Hurghada, Red Sea In development
45) Hygiene Museum History Abdin, Cairo 1927
) Imhotep Museum Archaeology Saqqara 2006
47) Islamic Museum (Bab el-Futuh/ Archaeology Bab el-Khalq, Cairo 1884/1903
Bab el-Khalq)
48) Islamic Ceramics Museum Archaeology/Art Gezira, Cairo 1998
49) Ismailia Museum Archaeology Ismailia n/a
50) Kafr el-Sheikh Museum Archaeology Kafr el-Sheikh In development
51) Kom Ombo Museum (Sobek) Archaeology Kom Ombo In development
52) Kom Oushim Museum Archaeology Kom Oushim, Fayyum n/a
53) Luxor Museum of Ancient Archaeology East Bank, Luxor 1975
Egyptian Art
54) Mahmoud Khalil Museum Art Giza 1962
55) Mahmoud Said Museum Art Janaklis, Alexandria n/a
56) Mallawi Museum Archaeology Mallawi, el-Minya 1973
57) Mansoura Museum Archaeology Mansoura, Dakahliya In development
58) Manyal Palace Museum History Manyal el-Roda, Cairo c.1901
59) Marine Life Museum Alexandria Natural History Anfoushi, Alexandria n/a
60) Marine Life Museum Hurghada Natural History Hurghada, Red Sea n/a
61) Merenptah Temple Site Museum Archaeology West Bank, Luxor 2002
62) Military Museum Cairo (National) History Salah el-Din, Cairo n/a
63) Military Museum Port Said History Port Said n/a
64) El-Minya Museum Archaeology El-Minya c.1937
65) Modern Art Museum Alexandria Art Moharram Bey, Alexandria c.1948
(Hussein Sobhi)
) Modern Art Museum Cairo Art Gezira, Cairo 1927
22 DOYON BMSAES 10

67) Modern Art Museum Port Said Art Port Said 1995
(el-Nasr)
68) Mohammed Abd el-Wahab History Ramsis, Central Cairo c.2003
Museum
69) Mohammed Nagy Museum Art Giza 1968
70) Mohammed Waheed-Eddin Selim History Matariya, Cairo n/a
Museum
71) Mostafa Kamel Museum History Salah el-Din, Cairo 1956
72) Mukhtar Museum Art Gezira, Cairo n/a
73) Mummiication Museum Archaeology East Bank, Luxor 1997
74) National Museum Alexandria Archaeology Central Alexandria 2003
75) National Museum Mansoura (Dar History Mansoura, Dakahliya 1960
Ibn Loqman)
76) National Museum of Egyptian Archaeology Fustat In development
Civilization
77) Naval Museum Alexandria History Stanli, Alexandria 1950
78) New Valley Museum (Kharga) Archaeology New Valley 1974
79) Nubia Museum Archaeology/ Aswan 1997
Ethnography
80) Nubian Heritage Museum Ethnography Belana Awal, Aswan In development
81) October 1973 War Panorama History Heliopolis n/a
82) People’s Assembly Museum History Central Cairo 1986
83) Police Museum Cairo (National) History Salah el-Din, Cairo 1987
84) Port Said Museum Archaeology Port Said 1987
85) Postal Museum Cairo (National) History Ataba, Cairo 1934
86) Qasr el-Aini Museum History (Medicine) Qasr el-Aini, Cairo 1998
87) Qena Museum Archaeology Qena In development
88) Quseir Fort Visitors Center Archaeology/ Quseir, Red Sea c.1999
Ethnography
89) Railways Museum Cairo History Ramsis, Central Cairo 1933
(National)
90) Rashid Museum History Rashid, el-Buheira n/a
91) Rokn Helwan Museum History Helwan 1954
92) Romel’s Cave History Mersa Matrouh, Matrouh n/a
93) Royal Jewelry Museum History Zizinia, Alexandria 1986
Alexandria
94) Saad Zaghloul Museum (Beit el- History Mounira, Cairo n/a
Umma)
95) San el-Hagar Museum Archaeology San el-Hagar, Sharqiya n/a
96) Seized Museum (Coniscations) Archaeoloy/History Salah el-Din, Cairo 1992
97) Sharm el-Sheikh Museum Archaeology Sharm el-Sheikh, South In development
Sinai

98) Shoubra Palace Museum History Shoubra el-Kheima, Cairo n/a
(Mohammed Ali)
99) Sinai Heritage Museum Ethnography El-Arish, North Sinai 1990
100) Siwa House Museum Ethnography Siwa 1990
101) Sohag Museum Archaeology Sohag In development
102) Solar Boat Museum (Cheops) Archaeology Giza 1982
103) Suez Museum Archaeology Suez In development
104) Taba Museum Archaeology Taba, South Sinai n/a
105) Taha Hussein Museum History Giza 1997
106) Tanta Museum Archaeology Tanta, Gharbiya n/a
107) Tell el-Amarna Museum Archaeology Amarna, el-Minya In development
(Akhenaten)
108) Tor Sinai Museum Ethnography El-Tor, South Sinai 1994
109) Umm Kalthoum Museum History Manyal el-Roda, Cairo n/a
110) University Museum Cairo History Giza 1989
111) Wax Museum History Helwan 1934
112) Zagazig Museum (Heria Rezna) History Zagazig, Sharqiya 1973
24 DOYON BMSAES 10
Table 3: Egyptian museum administration.
MUSEUM ADMINISTRATION
1) 23rd July Revolution Museum Presidential (governing)/Ministry of Culture SFA (curatorial)
2) Abdin Palace Museum Presidential (governing)/Ministry of Culture SCA (curatorial)
3-9) Agricultural Museum(s) Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Museums Supervisor
10) Ahmed Shawqi Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
11) El-Alamein Museum n/a
12) El-Arish Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
13-14) Aswan Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
Annex German Institute of Archaeology (curatorial)
15) El-Bahariya Oasis Heritage Museum Private
16) Bedouin Heritage Museum Matrouh Association of Visitors to the Cultural Houses in Matrouh
17-18) Beni Suef Museum(s) Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
19-21) Bibliotheca Alexandrina Board of Trustees
Antiquities Museum Ministry of Culture SCA (curatorial)
Manuscripts Museum Library
Science Museum French Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
(curatorial)
22) Botanical Museum Ministry of Agriculture, Horticultural Research Institute
23) Carriage Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
24) Cavafy Museum Greek Embassy in Cairo
25) Chariots Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
26) Coptic Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
27) Dar el-Kutub Museum n/a
28) Denshoway Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
29) Education Museum n/a
30) Effat Nagy and Saad el-Khadem Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
Museum
31) Egyptian Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
32) Enji Alatoun Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
33) Entomological Museum Ministry of Social Affairs (governing)/Entomological Society
of Egypt (curatorial)
34) Ethnographic Museum n/a (governing)/Geographical Society (curatorial)
35) El-Farafra Museum Private
36) Gawhara Palace Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
37) Gayer-Anderson Museum Ministry of Culture SCA (governing)/British Mission to the
Gayer-Anderson (curatorial)
38) Geological Museum Ministry of Petroleum, Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority
39) Gezira Art Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
40) Graeco-Roman Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
41) Grand Egyptian Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
42) Hassan Heshmat Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
43) Hassan Tobar Museum n/a
44) Hurghada Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
45) Hygiene Museum Ministry of Public Works
) Imhotep Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
47) Islamic Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
48) Islamic Ceramics Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
49) Ismailia Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
50) Kafr el-Sheikh Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
51) Kom Ombo Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
52) Kom Oushim Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
53) Luxor Museum of Ancient Egyptian Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
Art
54) Mahmoud Khalil Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
55) Mahmoud Said Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
56) Mallawi Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
57) Mansoura Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
58) Manyal Palace Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
59) Marine Life Museum Alexandria n/a
60) Marine Life Museum Hurghada n/a
61) Merenptah Temple Site Museum Ministry of Culture SCA (governing)/Swiss Institute for
Archaeology (curatorial)
62) Military Museum Cairo Ministry of Defense
63) Military Museum Port Said n/a
64) El-Minya Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
65) Modern Art Museum Alexandria Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
) Modern Art Museum Cairo Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
67) Modern Art Museum Port Said Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
68) Mohammed Abd el-Wahab Museum Ministry of Culture, Cairo Opera House
69) Mohammed Nagy Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
70) Mohammed Waheed-Eddin Selim Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
71) Mostafa Kamel Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
72) Mukhtar Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
73) Mummiication Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
74) National Museum Alexandria Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
75) National Museum Mansoura Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
76) National Museum of Egyptian Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
Civilization
77) Naval Museum Alexandria Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
(Museums Sector Directorate)
78) New Valley Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
79) Nubia Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
26 DOYON BMSAES 10
80) Nubian Heritage Museum Nubian Heritage Preservation Association
81) October 1973 War Panorama n/a
82) People’s Assembly Museum Egyptian People‘s Assembly
83) Police Museum Cairo Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
84) Port Said Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
85) Postal Museum Cairo Ministry of Communications, National Mail Service
86) Qasr el-Aini Museum Cairo University, Faculty of Medicine
87) Qena Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
88) Quseir Fort Visitors Center Ministry of Culture SCA (governing)/
American Research Center in Egypt (curatorial)
89) Railways Museum Cairo Ministry of Transport
90) Rashid Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
91) Rokn Helwan Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
92) Romel’s’ss Cave Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
93) Royal Jewelry Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
94) Saad Zaghloul Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
95) San el-Hagar Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
96) Seized Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
97) Sharm el-Sheikh Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
98) Shoubra Palace Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
99) Sinai Heritage Museum Sinai Heritage Museum Association
100) Siwa House Museum n/a
101) Sohag Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
102) Solar Boat Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
(Museums Sector Directorate)
103) Suez Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
104) Taba Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
105) Taha Hussein Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
106) Tanta Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
107) Tell el-Amarna Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
108) Tor Sinai Museum n/a
109) Umm Kalthoum Museum n/a
110) University Museum Cairo University
111) Wax Museum Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts
112) Zagazig Museum Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities
Table 4: Egyptian museum sets (SCA).
ANTIQUITIES MUSEUMS
National (Principal) 14) Qena Museum
1) Coptic Museum 15) San el-Hagar Museum
2) Egyptian Museum 16) Sharm el-Sheikh Museum
3) Graeco-Roman Museum 17) Sohag Museum
4) Islamic Museum 18) Suez Museum
5) National Museum Alexandria 19) Taba Museum
6) National Museum of Egyptian Civilization 20) Tanta Museum
Regional (Local) 21) Tell el-Amarna Museum
1) El-Arish Museum Site / Other
2) Aswan Museum 1) Aswan Museum, Annex
3-4) Beni Suef Museum(s) 2) Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum
5) Hurghada Museum 3) Grand Egyptian Museum
6) Ismailia Museum ) Imhotep Museum
7) Kafr el-Sheikh Museum 5) Kom Ombo Museum
8) Kom Oushim Museum 6) Luxor Museum of Ancient Egyptian Art
9) Mallawi Museum 7) Merenptah Temple Site Museum
10) Mansoura Museum 8) Mummiication Museum
11) El-Minya Museum 9) Nubia Museum
12) New Valley Museum 10) Quseir Fort Visitors Center
13) Port Said Museum 11) Solar Boat Museum
HISTORICAL MUSEUMS
1) Abdin Palace Museum 9) Rashid Museum
2) Carriage Museum 10) Rokn Helwan Museum
3) Chariots Museum 11) Romel‘s Cave
4) Gawhara Palace Museum 12) Royal Jewelry Museum
5) Gayer-Anderson Museum 13) Seized Museum
6) Manyal Palace Museum 14) Shoubra Palace Museum
7) Naval Museum 15) Zagazig Museum
8) Police Museum
28 DOYON BMSAES 10
Table 5: Egyptian museum sets (SFA).
ARTS MUSEUMS
Biography 3) Mahmoud Khalil Museum
1) Effat Nagy and Saad al-Khadem Museum ) Mahmoud Said Museum
2) Enji Alatoun Museum 5) Modern Art Museum Alexandria (Hussein Sobhi)
3) Hassan Heshmat Museum ) Modern Art Museum Cairo
4) Mohammed Nagy Museum 7) Modern Art Museum Port Said (el-Nasr)
Fine Arts 8) Mohammed Waheed-Eddin Selim Museum
1) Gezira Art Museum 9) Mukhtar Museum
2) Islamic Ceramics Museum
NATIONAL-HISTORICAL MUSEUMS
1) 23rd July Revolution Museum 5) National Museum Mansoura
2) Ahmed Shawqi Museum 6) Saad Zaghloul Museum
3) Denshoway Museum 7) Taha Hussein Museum
4) Mostafa Kamel Museum 8) Wax Museum
Table 6: Typical structure of Egyptian museum administration.
MINISTRY OF CULTURE
|
CULTURAL ADMINISTRATION
Director General Secretary General
SECTOR OF FINE ARTS SUPREME COUNCIL OF ANTIQUITIES
|
MUSEUMS ADMINISTRATION
Technical Support for Museums and Exhibitions Museums Sector
|
MUSEUM MANAGEMENT
Arts Museums (13) Antiquities Museums (38)
National Historical Museums (8) Historical Museums (15)
Table 7: Museum visitors (SCA museums, iscal years 2001-2004). Egyptian Supreme
Council of Antiquities, Statements 2002, 2003, 2005
MUSEUM VISITORS VISITORS VISITORS TOTAL

2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004 2001-2004
1) Egyptian Museum 1,238,602 1,761,541 2,087,947 5,088,090
2) Solar Boat Museum 162,762 188,537 267,621 618,920
3) Nubia Museum 153,027 178,700 204,484 536,211
4) Luxor Museum 122,249 117,123 218,494 457,866
5) Graeco-Roman Museum 148,143 115,083 168,693 431,919
6) Mummiication Museum 49,075 54,344 115,713 219,132
7) Manyal Palace Museum 67,550 63,399 73,279 204,228
8) Royal Jewelry Museum 118,112 83,651 -- 201,763
9) Coptic Museum 40,749 46,456 2,828 90,033
10) Aswan Museum 23,989 33,209 31,374 88,572
11) Mallawi Museum 20,179 19,629 19,884 59,692
12) Zagazig Museum 12,462 16,137 17,412 46,011
13) Islamic Museum 24,189 19,138 -- 43,327
14) Romel’s Cave 21,090 20,970 -- 42,060
15) Gayer-Anderson Museum 11,547 10,872 18,735 41,154
16) Beni Suef Museum 6,747 8,220 11,197 26,164
17) San el-Hagar Museum 6,319 2,400 5,797 14,516
18) Ismailia Museum 4,097 3,718 5,367 13,182
19) Kom Oushim Museum 3,462 3,845 4,148 11,455
20) New Valley Museum 2,095 2,939 2,727 7,761
21) Rashid Museum 3,984 1,354 94 5,432
30 DOYON BMSAES 10
Table 8: Museum revenue (SCA, iscal years 2001-2004), in USD (estimated at LE 5.75 = 1 USD). Egyptian
Supreme Council of Antiquities, Statements 2002, 2003, 2005.
MUSEUM REVENUE REVENUE REVENUE TOTAL

2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004 2001-2004
1) Egyptian Museum 5,464,588 6,650,779 6,718,379 18,833,746
2) Luxor Museum 537,273 2,018,144 766,373 3,321,790
3) Solar Boat Museum 363,919 454,995 755,717 1,574,631
4) Nubia Museum 163,857 198,340 269,787 631,984
5) Graeco-Roman Museum 141,959 174,366 279,122 595,447
6) Mummiication Museum 157,074 156,559 257,945 571,578
7) Coptic Museum 74,420 84,322 3,807 162,549
8) Manyal Palace Museum 32,141 32,183 60,327 124,651
9) Royal Jewelry Museum 57,643 42,329 -- 99,972
10) Gayer-Anderson Museum 24,497 23,630 41,672 89,799
11) Aswan Museum 25,541 27,233 36,036 88,810
12) Islamic Museum 25,218 23,865 560 49,643
13) Kom Oushim Museum 1,765 19,903 2,485 24,153
14) San el-Hagar Museum 5,877 7,125 8,808 21,810
15) New Valley Museum 3,533 4,993 7,355 15,881
16) Romel’s Cave 2,217 2,412 -- 4,629
17) Zagazig Museum 1,268 1,531 1,823 4,622
18) Beni Suef Museum 917 986 1,448 3,351
19) Ismailia Museum 910 802 996 2,708
20) Mallawi Museum 635 624 581 1,840
21) Rashid Museum 144 107 8 259
Table 9: Luxor Museum visitor proile (2003-2004). Luxor Museum, visitor records January 2006.
MONTH EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL

2003 2004 2003 2004
January 4,246 6,478 12,358 16,877
February 2,679 7,099 11,981 18,971
March 2,513 6,337 9,432 19,190
April 1,036 3,982 7,754 18,492
May 419 580 4,176 10,208
June 357 587 2,731 4,828
July 558 748 4,688 8,571
August 681 656 8,219 11,862
September 538 738 7,797 11,726
October 736 630 11,851 17,343
November 1,229 1,220 11,709 16,576
December 6,020 2,001 12,337 14,228
YEAR 21,012 31,056 105,033 168,872
Table 10: Luxor Museum revenue proile (2003-2004), in USD (estimated at LE 5.75 = 1 USD). Luxor
Museum, records January 2006.
MONTH EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL

2003 2004 2003 2004
January 2,156 2,902 61,550 84,929
February 1,347 3,178 58,857 94,690
March 1,104 2,537 47,181 97,925
April 500 1,668 37,576 90,892
May 271 374 20,632 51,697
June 208 352 13,057 23,755
July 339 1,491 22,135 41,301
August 408 585 38,797 57,683
September 333 455 38,491 59,337
October 429 388 58,977 85,450
November 624 1,341 59,264 155,462
December 2,379 2,047 59,862 129,424
YEAR 10,098 17,318 516,379 972,545
32 DOYON BMSAES 10
Fig. 1: Salle du centre (nef principale) at the Boulaq Fig. 2: Salle du centre (nef latérale) at the Boulaq
Museum in Cairo, 1872 [Délié and Béchard Museum in Cairo, 1872 [Délié and Béchard
from Travelers in the Middle East Archive, from Travelers in the Middle East Archive,
http://hdl.handle.net/1911/10225]. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/10226].
Fig. 3: Plan of the Boulaq Museum in Cairo, 1883 Fig. 4: Gallery of Egyptian gods at the Egyptian
[Maspero from Travelers in the Middle East Museum in Cairo, 2006.
Archive, http://hdl.handle.net/1911/9182].
Fig. 5: Funerary gallery at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, 2006.
Fig. 6: Graeco-Roman gallery at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, 2006.
34 DOYON BMSAES 10
Fig. 7: Gallery of tools and implements at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, 2006.
Fig. 8: Historical section at the Postal Museum in Cairo, 2006.
Fig. 9: Local visitor trends at the Luxor Museum, 2003, 2004.
Fig. 10: International visitor trends at the Luxor Museum, 2003, 2004.
36 DOYON BMSAES 10
Fig. 11: Private museum tour at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, 2006.
Fig. 12: Public museum tour at the Abdin Palace Museum in Cairo, 2006.
Fig. 13: Introductory panel at the National

Museum in Alexandria, 2006.
Fig. 14: [Left] Panel of Egyptian rulers at the
Abdin Palace Museum in Cairo, 2006.
Fig. 15: Plan of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Antiquities Museum, 2006 (image
courtesy of the museum).

The Poetics of Egyptian Museum Practice

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The Poetics of Egyptian Museum Practice

British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan 10 (2008): 1–37

Without the intellectual framework of archaeology to guide the presentation of the

building on Mohammed Ali Street in Bab el-Khalq, ‘medieval’ Cairo, in 1903.5

The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Institut Impérial de France) has

enlightened zeal for the progress of the Sciences. (7 October 1859)11

Methods of museum presentation directly relect the conceptual development of their

Beni Suef, Mallawi, New Valley, and Port Said.

a deterrent to local museum interest.

Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, ‘Annual Statement of the Arrangement of Principal

Polity Press, 2001, 262–83.

Table 2: The museums of Egypt, 2006.

MUSEUM TYPE LOCATION FOUNDING

MUSEUM TYPE LOCATION FOUNDING

MUSEUM TYPE LOCATION FOUNDING

MUSEUM TYPE LOCATION FOUNDING

Table 3: Egyptian museum administration.

Table 4: Egyptian museum sets (SCA).

Table 5: Egyptian museum sets (SFA).

Table 6: Typical structure of Egyptian museum administration.

MUSEUM VISITORS VISITORS VISITORS TOTAL

MUSEUM REVENUE REVENUE REVENUE TOTAL

MONTH EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL

MONTH EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL

Fig. 5: Funerary gallery at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, 2006.

Fig. 6: Graeco-Roman gallery at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, 2006.

Fig. 8: Historical section at the Postal Museum in Cairo, 2006.

Fig. 9: Local visitor trends at the Luxor Museum, 2003, 2004.

Fig. 13: Introductory panel at the National

Fig. 15: Plan of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina

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