the egyptian museum
The Egyptian Museum (http://www.egyptianmuseum...) officially, the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, on the northern edge of Midan Tahrir, is one of the world's great museums. An extensive building and massive collection of Egyptian antiquities, the museum also commonly referred to as the "Cairo Museum" is truly a destination in its own right,with at least 136,000 items on display; hundreds of thousands of additional items languish in the museum's basement storerooms and are added to each year with ongoing excavation and discovery.
Plans are now well advanced for the transfer of the main collection to a new Grand Egyptian Museum within the vicinity of the Giza Pyramids. Hopefully the new building will be more user friendly, instead of the current poorly-labeled and documented nature of many prime exhibits.
The museum is an outgrowth of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, established by the Egyptian government in 1835, in an attempt to limit the looting of antiquities sites and artefacts. The museum first officially opened in 1858 with a collection assembled by Auguste Mariette Pasha, the French archaeologist employed by Isma'il Pasha to organise the collection. After residing in an annex of the Bulaq palace of Ismail Pasha in Giza from 1880, the museum moved in 1900 to its present location, a neoclassical structure on Tahrir Square in Cairo's city centre. More than a million and half tourists visit the museum annually, in addition to half a million Egyptians.
There are seven sections within the museum that are arranged in chronological order:
Tutankhamen's treasures.
Pre-dynasty and Old Kingdom monuments.
First intermediate period and Middle Kingdom monuments.
Monuments of the Middle Kingdom.
Monuments of the late period and the Greek and Roman periods.
Coins and papyri.
Sarcophagi and scarabs.
General admission is adults LE 60, students LE 30, not including the mummies room but including Tutankhamun's mask don't let the touts convince you otherwise!. Recently, rules have been posted that no photography whatsoever allowed within the museum for the protection of the ancient art. There are three separate checkpoints that have x-ray machines. There is one outside the courtyard, then there is one before the steps of the museum and a third right inside the doors.
