The Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Cairo - is the capital of Egypt and one of the largest cities in both Africa and the Middle East; it is also the 13th-largest city in the world. Cairo is a city of ancient buildings, rich Islamic mosques and colourful bazaars. Beautiful 19th-century European architecture forms the setting for typically Eastern street life. At the heart of the modern city we find the remarkable Egyptian Museum, which is a must-see.
Cairo is full of attractions. One of them is the Coptic Christian quarter, whose highlights are the Hanging Church and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, where scrolls of the Old Testament are kept. The coexistence of typically Islamic architecture with grand mosques, ancient buildings and modern skyscrapers makes it one of the most surprising capitals in the world.

The Egyptian Museum of Antiquities
The Egyptian Museum should be a priority on the list of things to see during a visit to Cairo. It would take at least a week to see all the contents, but a short visit can at least give a glimpse of the largest repository in the world, with more than 120,000 ancient Egyptian artefacts. It has been calculated that if you spent one minute looking at each exhibit, it would take three months to see them all.
The collecting of Egyptian antiquities began in 1830, in an attempt to stem the tide of theft of the treasures of Egypt. The present collection was begun by Auguste Mariette, originally sent to Egypt by the College de France to collect Coptic papyri. Mariette supervised many important excavations during his thirty years in Egypt, becoming a dominant force in the development of egyptology and a guardian of the monuments. He was appointed the first Director of Antiquities in Egypt and head of the new national museum at Bulaq in 1863 - the first national museum of antiquities in the Middle East.

The collection was then briefly moved to an annex of the palace of Ismail Pasha in Giza when the Bulaq Museum was flooded, and later stored in a building in the Citadel. The present museum was officially inaugurated on 15 November 1902, in a building designed by the French architect Marcel Dourgnon.
Gaston Maspero, a former student of Mariette, became Director of the Antiquities Service. He continued the work of Mariette at the museum, editing 50 volumes of museum material for the "Catalogue". Maspero was the first director of the new museum of antiquities, from its inauguration until his death in 1916.
The contents of the museum range from the prehistoric period of Egypt to the end of the Roman era. The exhibits are arranged in chronological order, on two floors, with 42 rooms on the first floor and 47 on the second, plus annexes at the entrance. The ground floor consists of a large vestibule that highlights the largest of the exhibits, including the colossal statue of Ramesses II and the huge pair of statues of Amenhotep III and his wife Tiye. The best view is from the rotunda, looking down from the upper gallery.
Every visitor will probably want to come at least twice. I recommend a visit at the start of a stay in Cairo and again at the end, when our knowledge has been enriched by visits to the monuments; there is also a good bookshop at the entrance and a cafe to the right of the museum.
The museum also has a library specialising in the ancient Egyptian civilisation, considered one of the most important egyptology libraries in the world.