Museum sights in Egypt
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Egyptian Museum
Don’t hope to see everything in the Egyptian Museum in one go. It simply cannot be done. Instead, plan on making at least two visits, maybe tackling one floor at a time, or decide on the things you absolutely must see and head straight for them. In peak season (much of winter and all public holidays), there’s no best time to visit as the museum heaves with visitors throughout the day; lunchtime and late afternoons can be a little quieter.
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Alexandria National Museum
The excellent Alexandria National Museum sets new benchmarks for summing up Alexandria’s past. With a small, thoughtfully selected and well-labelled collection singled out from Alexandria’s other museums, it does a sterling job of relating the city’s history from antiquity until the modern period. Housed in a beautifully restored Italianate villa, it stocks several thousand years of Alexandrian history, arranged chronologically over three cryogenically air-conditioned floors.
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Luxor Museum
This wonderful museum has a beautifully displayed collection, from the end of the Old Kingdom right through to the Mamluk period, mostly gathered from the Theban temples and necropolis.
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Abu Ruins
A path through the garden behind the Aswan Museum leads to the evocative ruins of ancient Abu. Swiss and German teams, excavating here since the early 20th century, have made the site into an outdoor museum. Numbered plaques and reconstructed buildings mark the island's long history from around 3000 BC to the 14th century AD.
The largest structure in the site is the partially reconstructed Temple of Khnum (plaque Nos 6, 12 and 13). Built in honour of the God of Inundation during the Old Kingdom, it was added to and used for over 1500 years before being extensively rebuilt in Ptolemaic times. Other highlights include a small 4th-dynasty step pyramid, thought to have been…
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Museum of Modern Egyptian Art
Across from the Cairo Opera House, the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art houses a vast – perhaps too vast – collection of 20th- and 21st-century Egyptian art. It can be difficult to appreciate the work given the cramped rooms, collected dust and lack of signage. The museum’s prize items are all on the ground floor: Mahmoud Mukhtar’s deco-elegant bronze statue Bride of the Nile is here, along with Mahmoud Said’s Al Madina (The City, 1937). Though Said has a slew of kitschy imitators, he was one of the first artists to depict folk life in vivid colour, and his commitment inspired Naguib Mahfouz to pursue his own career in writing. Throughout the museum, it is…
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Monastirli Palace
Set in a peaceful Nileside garden, Monastirli Palace was built in 1851 for an Ottoman pasha whose family hailed from Monastir, in northern Greece. The salamlik that he built for public functions is now an elegant venue for concerts, while the other part is now the Umm Kolthum Museum (%2363 1467; Sharia al-Malek as-Salih, Rhoda; admission around £E2; h10:00-17:00).
Dedicated to the most famous Arab diva, the small museum is more like a shrine, given the reverence with which the singer's signature rhinestone-trimmed glasses and glittery gowns are hung under spotlights in display cases. There's a multimedia room where you can listen to her music, and a short film shows key…
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Gayer-Anderson Museum
This quirky museum gets its current name from John Gayer-Anderson, the British major and army doctor who restored the two adjoining 16th-century houses between 1935 and 1942, filling them with antiquities, artworks and knick-knacks acquired on his travels in the region. On his death in 1945, Gayer-Anderson bequeathed the lot to Egypt. The puzzle of rooms is decorated in a variety of styles: the Persian Room has exquisite tiling, the Damascus Room has lacquer and gold, and the Queen Anne Room displays ornate furniture and a silver tea set. The enchanting mashrabiyya gallery looks down onto a magnificent qa’a (reception hall) which has a marble fountain, decorated ceiling…
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Mummification Museum
Housed in the former visitors centre on Luxor’s Corniche, the small Mummification Museum has well-presented exhibits explaining the art of mummification. On display are the well-preserved mummy of a 21st-dynasty high priest of Amun, Maserharti, and a host of mummified animals. Vitrines show the tools and materials used in the mummification process – check out the small spoon and metal spatula used for scraping the brain out of the skull. Several artefacts that were crucial to the mummy’s journey to the afterlife have also been included, as well as some picturesque painted coffins. Presiding over the entrance is a beautiful little statue of the jackal god, Anubis, the…
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Museum
Since the discovery of the Golden Mummies in the 1990s, growing interest in Bahariya’s ancient past has led to the opening of this new museum.This is where the mummies come to rest. Some of the 10 mummies on show are richly decorated and while the motifs are formulaic and the work is second-rate, the painted faces show a move away from stylised Pharaonic mummy decoration towards Fayoum portraiture. Underneath the wrappings, the work of the embalmers appears to have been sloppy: in some cases the bodies decayed before the embalming process began, which suggests that these mummies mark the beginning of the end of mummification. Sadly, the exhibit embodies that spirit, and…
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Mahmoud Mukhtar Museum
From the rear entrance of the Gezira Exhibition Grounds near the Galaa Bridge, you’ll see a modest gate across the road, which leads to the Mahmoud Mukhtar Museum. Mukhtar (1891–1934) was the sculptor laureate of independent Egypt, responsible for Saad Zaghloul on the nearby midan and the Egypt Reawakening monument outside the Giza Zoo. His collected work ranges from tiny caricatures (look for Ibn al-Balad, a spunky city kid) to life-size portraits. Mukhtar’s tomb sits in the basement. Egyptian architect Ramses Wissa Wassef (1911–74) designed the elegant building – originally open, to capture natural light, but this was changed presumably to keep the cleaning budget…
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Oasis Heritage Museum
You can’t miss Mahmoud Eed’s Oasis Heritage Museum, about 2km east of the town’s edge on the road to Cairo: this hilltop bastion is announced by massive clay camels gazing longingly onto the street. Inspired by Badr’s Museum in Farafra, its creator wishes to capture, in clay, scenes from traditional village life, among them men hunting or playing siga (a game played in the dirt with clay balls or seeds), women weaving and a painful-looking barber/doctor encounter. There is also a display of old oasis dresses and jewellery. Look for the sign saying ‘Camel Camp’, which is the plain and overpriced accommodation that’s also offered here.
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Manial Palace Museum
One of Cairo’s most eccentric tourist sites, the palace was built by the uncle of King Farouk, Prince Mohammed Ali, in the early 20th century. Apparently he couldn’t decide which architectural style he preferred, so he went for the lot: Ottoman, Moorish, Persian and European rococo. The palace contains, among other things, Farouk’s horde of hunting trophies and the prince’s collection of medieval manuscripts, clothing and other items. The gardens are planted with rare tropical plants collected by the prince on his travels. If you don’t want to walk to the museum, a taxi from Midan Tahrir should cost E£4. Note that the museum was closed at the time of research, though it’s…
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Open-Air Museum
Off to the left (north) of the first court of the Amun Temple Enclosure is Karnak’s open-air museum. This museum is missed by most visitors but is definitely worth a look. The well-preserved chapels include the White Chapel of Sesostris I, one of the oldest and most beautiful monuments in Karnak, which has wonderful Middle Kingdom reliefs; the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut, its red quartzite blocks reassembled in 2000; and the Alabaster Chapel of Amenhotep I. The museum also contains a collection of statuary found throughout the temple complex.
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Ismailia Museum
More than 4000 objects from Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman times are housed at the small but interesting Ismailia Museum. The collection includes statues, scarabs, stelae and records of the first canal, built between the Bitter Lakes and Bubastis by the Persian ruler Darius. The highlight of the museum is a 4th-century-AD mosaic depicting characters from Greek and Roman mythology. At the top Phaedra is sending a love letter to her stepson Hippolytus, while below Dionysus is riding a chariot driven by Eros. The bottom section recounts the virtues of Hercules.
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War Museum
A few kilometres west of the Commonwealth War cemetery is the War Museum. It has a collection of memorabilia, uniforms and pictorial material of each country involved in the Battle of El Alamein and the North African campaigns, and maps and explanations of various phases of the campaign in Arabic, English, German and Italian complement the exhibits. There’s also a 30-minute Italian-made documentary that you can watch. The turn-off to the museum is along the main highway; just look for the large tank in the middle of the road.
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Agricultural Museum
It may sound dull, but the Agricultural Museum is far from it. Spread over several buildings, the displays tell you all you’ve ever wanted to know about agriculture in Egypt, from Pharaonic times onwards, and so much more: dioramas depict traditional weddings, glass cases are packed with wax cucurbits, and in one mothball-scented wing, a specimen of every bird in Egypt has been stuffed and pinned to a board. Dusty and a bit spooky, it’s a true hall of wonders. It’s about 1km from the Doqqi metro station.
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Mr & Mrs Mahmoud Khalil Museum
A noted politician during the 1940s, Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil amassed one of the Middle East’s finest collections of 19th- and 20th-century European work. The wonderful Mr & Mrs Mahmoud Khalil Museum includes sculptures by Rodin and paintings by the likes of Delacroix, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, Monet and Pissarro. There are also some Rubens, Sisleys and a Picasso. The paintings are housed in Khalil’s former villa, later taken over by President Sadat. It’s just a few minutes’ walk south of the Cairo Sheraton.
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Umm Kolthum Museum
Dedicated to the most famous Arab diva, the small museum is more like a shrine, given the reverence with which the singer’s signature rhinestone-trimmed glasses and glittery gowns are hung under spotlights in display cases. There’s a multimedia room where you can listen to her music, and a short film shows key moments of her life, from the beginning when she performed disguised as a Bedouin boy, to her magnetic performances that brought Cairo to a standstill, to her funeral, when millions of mourners flooded the streets.
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Nubia Museum
The Nubia Museum is a showcase of the history, art and culture of Nubia and is a real treat. Established in 1997, in cooperation with Unesco, the museum is a reminder of the history and culture of the Nubians, much of which was lost when Lake Nasser flooded their land after the building of the dams. Exhibits are beautifully displayed in huge halls, where clearly written explanations take you from 4500 BC through to the present day. As it is not on the tour-group circuit, the museum is little visited.
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October War Panorama
Built with help from North Korean artists, the October War Panorama is a memorial to the 1973 ‘victory’ over Israel. A large 3D mural and diorama depicts the Egyptian forces breaching of the Bar Lev Line on the Suez Canal, while a stirring commentary (in Arabic only) recounts the heroic victories. Interestingly it skips over the successful Israeli counterattacks. Both sides accepted a UN-brokered ceasefire, and Sinai was returned by negotiation six years later.
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Solar Barque Museum
South of the Great Pyramid is the fascinating Solar Barque Museum. Five pits near the Great Pyramid of Khufu contained the pharaoh’s solar barques (boats), which may have been used to convey the mummy of the dead pharaoh across the Nile to the valley temple, from where it was brought up the causeway and into the tomb chamber. The barques were then buried around the pyramid to provide transport for the pharaoh in the next world.
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Museum
This museum, founded in 1908, houses Coptic art from Graeco-Roman times to the Islamic era in a collection drawn from all over Egypt. It is a beautiful place, as much for the elaborate woodcarving in all the galleries as for the treasures they contain. These include a sculpture that shows obvious continuity from the Ptolemaic period, rich textiles and whole walls of monastery frescoes. There’s a pleasant garden out front.
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Rommel's Museum
German commander of the Afrika Korps Erwin Rommel is said to have used the caves here as his headquarters during part of the El Alamein campaign. The rather scarce Rommel's Museum contains a few photos, a bust of the Desert Fox, some ageing German, Italian and British military maps, and what is purported to be Rommel's greatcoat. The museum is about 3km east of the town centre, out by the beach of the same name.
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Rock Inscriptions
One of the most impressive collections of Rock Inscriptions, many of which date to prehistoric times, is found in the barren tracts fringing the Marsa Alam-Edfu road, beginning close to Marsa Alam, where the smooth, grey rock was perfect for carving. They include hunting scenes with dogs chasing ostriches, depictions of giraffes and cattle and hieroglyphic accounts of trade expeditions.
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Midan Ataba
In Midan Ataba, 'modern European' Cairo runs up against the old medieval Cairo of Saladin (Salah ad-Din), the Mamluks and the Ottomans. It seems like one big bazaar, with all its traders and hawkers. In the southwest corner, the domed main post office has a pretty courtyard and an attached Postal Museum on the 2nd floor, whose collection tells the history of Egypt's postal service.
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