ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI
UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN MACEDONIA
Interuniversity Postgraduate Programme
“Museology - Cultural Management”
School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering
Academic Years 2014-2016
Master Thesis
Access to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities:
Cultural policy, Challenges and Development Proposals
Ayman Said Sayed Abdelmohsen
Conservator
Thessaloniki
2016
ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI
UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN MACEDONIA
Interuniversity Postgraduate Programme
“Museology - Cultural Management”
School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering
Academic Years 2014-2016
Master Thesis
Access to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities:
Cultural policy, Challenges and Development Proposals
Ayman Said Sayed Abdelmohsen
Conservator
Thessaloniki
2016
Supervisor:
Matoula Scaltsa, Professor of History of Art and Museology at the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (A.U.Th) and Director of the Interuniversity Postgraduate Programme (IPP) “Museology” of the A.U.Th and the University of Western Macedonia, Greece.
This thesis is the intellectual property of authors and supervisors. The written consent is required for any use of the work by third parties. Authors and supervisors can publish their work on scientific grounds, as far as they provide the reporting of all agents. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Allah that I have been able to finish my dissertation. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Prof. Matoula Scaltsa for the continuous support of my thesis study and related research, for her patience, motivation and immense knowledge. Her guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis.
Besides my advisor, I would like to thank the rest of coordinators of MA Museology- Cultural Management programme: Prof. Panos Tzonos, Prof. Kostas Kotsakis, Dr. Lia Yoka, Prof. Patroklos Georgiadis and Dr. Kostas Kasvikis for their valuable and outstanding lectures which were guiding me for the past year and helping me to develop my background in Museology, cultural studies, Museum Education and history.
Many thanks to IKY Foundation for providing me by Master Scholarship to obtain this degree and Prof. Scaltsa for accepting me to pursue my postgraduate studies at Museology-Cultural Management programme, School of Architecture, Aristotle university of Thessaloniki.
I would like to thank also the secretary of MA Museology-Cultural Management programme Mrs. Afroditi Bousoulenga for her cooperation and support during my postgraduate studies and my sincere thanks to my Greek friends for being beside me as my family here in Greece.
Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family: parents, brothers and friends for supporting me spiritually but my overwhelming thanks go to my lovely wife and my son who were always there cheering me up and stood by me through the good times and bad in writing this thesis and my life in general.
Ayman Abdelmohsen
Thessaloniki, 2016
I
CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I
ABSTRACT IV
LIST OF FIGURES V
CONTENTS II
CHAPTERS:
1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Aims of the Study 1
2. THE EGYPTIAN MUSEUM IN CAIRO 2
2.1. Historical background 2
2.2. Museum planning and architectural design 8
2.3. Collections 13
3. THE CULTURAL POLICY TOWRDS EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES IN 19th & 20th CENTURIES 16
3.1. Egyptian antiquities under the Colonialism Rule 16
3.2. Egyptian antiquities under the Military Rule 1953 – 2011 20
4. PRESENT CHALLENGES OF THE MUSEUM AND THE SURROUNDINGS – PRINCIPLES PROBLEMS 23
4.1. Existing area 23
4.1.1. The Modern Transformation - Urban Development around the Museum 24
I. The pre-first Transformation Point 1950 King Farouk 24 II. The first Transformation Point Nasser 1952 25 III. The second transformation Point Sadat 1970 26
4.1.2. The Museum at the Center of Egypt’s Revolution 29
4.2. Political trespassing 33
4.3. Present condition of the premises 34
4.3.1. As a building 34
4.3.2. Security 35
4.4. The collections: Exhibition areas and reserves 37
4.5. Interviews: 41
II
4.5.1. General Manager of Conservation Department, Egyptian Museum 42
4.5.2. General Manager of technical preparations Unit for Exhibitions and Storages, Egyptian Museum 47
5. DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS 54
5.1. Extension the Museum 54
5.2. Evacuation the Museum to the opening state 1902 57
5.3. Temporary and travelling exhibitions 58
5.4. Paintings of the museum 58
5.5. Environmental Control 58
5.5.1. Controlling RH and Temp. 59
5.5.2. Controlling Light 60
5.5.3. Controlling Air pollutants 61
5.5.4. Controlling biological activity and pets attack 61
6. CONCLUSION 62
BIBLIOGRAPHY 65
III
ABSTRACT
The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, with its burnt-orange, neo-classical façade, has stood out as one of the most famous landmarks of Cairo city since its construction in 1902. It is home to 300,000 of the nation’s most important artefacts, from a long and unique span of Egypt’s history. Egypt with its wealth of ancient artefacts, European powers to profit from Egypt’s cultural heritage. This dissertation examines the history, problems and development of the Egyptian Museum in contextual setting that includes the Egyptian antiquities under Colonialism and nationalism as well, their roles and temptations. The thesis highlights the significant deterioration over several decades, due to cultural policies in Egypt since 19th and 20th centuries especially, the recent government interventions from Military forces in the field of Museology without any rights or experience to interfere. Cairo’s heavy vehicular traffic and pollution problems and generally inharmonious surroundings around the museum have significantly contributed to its decline. Many of the objects on display are now in urgent need of conservation, a problem that is compounded by the alarming lack of environmental monitoring and security systems in addition the exhibition galleries have been crammed with thousands of artefacts to accommodate an ever-growing number of new discoveries. It investigates and analyses whether Egyptians Managers at the Egyptian Museum the challenges faced by Egyptian museum today in an independent Egypt. The last chapter suggests possible and practical proposals for the development of the Museum can be easily applied.
IV
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Label Page Show Boulak Museum Entrance, the Courtyard, and the Museum’s 1, 2&3 4 Collection. Memorandum cancellation of the school of Egyptology 29 December, 4 5 1885, Egypt. 5 Tahrir Square, with the Egyptian Museum, circa 1940s Cairo. 7 6, 7&8 Construction process of the Egyptian Museum from 1897 to 1902 10 Show the museum entrances and the façade includes the European 9: A, Egyptologists as contributors to the Egyptian Museum, the texts on the B, façade are written in the Latin language, two Ionic columns decorated with 12 C&D a head of the goddess Isis and two high-relief female figures representing Upper and Lower Egypt (the Nile Valley and the delta) Map Show Egyptian Museum in Cairo Map, the left photo is the Ground floor 13 1& 2 and the right is the first floor. 10, General view of the Great Hall and the Ground Floor exhibits including old 14 11&12 and middle kingdoms and Greco Roman period, Egyptian Museum in Cairo. 13 Some of the displayed objects at first Floor as King’s Tutankhamun 15 &14 collections and portraits of Fayum, Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Aerial photo shows the surrounding area around the Egyptian Museum in Map 3 23 Cairo. 15 Shows the Mogamma building and traffic Jam in Tahrir Square in front of 24 the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. 16 Formal Gardens dominate the Egyptian Museum and the square, Nasser’s skyline, with the Arab League building on the left, the Nile Hilton in the 27 middle and the NDP-building on the right 1956. 17& Two photos showing the urban development of the surrounding areas 28 18 around the EM for 113 years. 19 Egyptians protesters making a human wall protecting the Egyptian 29 Museum. 20& Show the NDP-building during/after the fire and the Egyptian Museum side 21 by side on 25th Revolution as well show millions of Egyptian protesters in 30 Tahrir Square in front of the Museum 22& Zahi Hawass, together with the Director of the Museum, Tarek El Awady, 23 during checking damage sat the EM on January 31, 2011. 32 Head of a mummy, recovered in the garden in the morning of 29, January 2011. 24&25 Show the back gate of Egyptian Museum in Cairo from 2 sides and the polluted environment that surrounding the museum as bus station, 33-34 parking, 6th of October Bridge and vibrations because of crowded means of transportations. 26& Shows the inefficient security system at The Egyptian Museum in Cairo by 27 using normal small lockers. 36 Shows the careless of Tourism and Antiquities Policemen at the main gate of the EM having their breakfast over the X-ray machine
V
Figure Label Page Museum member and cleaning service staff using commercial product for 28 39 cleaning inside and outside the display cabinets. Show inappropriate display of the collection (placing and positioning the 29&30 39 objects inside and outside the cabinets too high with no descriptions. Show random Display and interpretations of the collections (old labels 31&35 have poor description since 1902 in English and French, others only in 40 English, and others in Arabic and English. Display large papyri collections on the walls of the stairs due to space 36 43 limitations without any labels and description. King Tutankhamun’s cloth (leather and textile objects) suffering due to 37& poor display which carbonized the organic material and the textile stacked 43 38 to the glass. Display according to chronological order (new Kingdom) as an example for 39 out of standards vitrines, no macro, no micro environment control and 44 mixed materials. 40 The golden mask of King Tutankhamun after the conservation 46 Shows the current condition of the roof which is broken, unsecure and 41 49 needs complete overhaul. (Left photo) shows the new paintings which have been applied in 2004 42 after 102 years over the original paintings (right photo) which still painted 50 on other exhibitions halls. Shows the current methods which are used in exhibitions of EM to secure 43 the objects inside the vitrines by hanging a jar from a weakness point (the 51 neck) using steel wire. 44& The booths and the chariots of King Tutankhamun which will be moved to 53 45 the Grand Egyptian Museum. 46 The NDP-building after the fire, with the Egyptian Museum in the back. 54 group of photos show street graffiti in Cairo, An Egyptian graffiti showing a mummy shouting I am freedom embodies 60 years of the military control, 47-49 56 Nefertiti in a gas mask and Unity of Muslims & Christians in Egypt - 25 January Revolution 50 RH ranges for potential collection threats 59
VI
1. Introduction
Museums in Egypt have traditionally been storage places for artefacts. Until now, no real philosophy or strategy has been put forward to guide their development. Institutions have been built all over the country to house artefacts from prehistory, the Pharaonic periods, the Greek and Roman eras, the Coptic and Islamic periods, and from modern Egypt until the era of Muhammad Ali. However, the precious objects they contain have been either hidden away in basements or poorly displayed in ways that fail to interest or inform the public and destroy the object itself by the time. Many methods and materials that may seem suitable for storage or display purposes can cause serious damage to museum collections. They can cause decomposition and discoloration or deterioration of objects, either because they give off harmful vapors or because they are in direct contact with the museum object.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo was in a purely western neo-classical style and continued to be managed by Europeans until the 1950s. Then with the nationalism the museum started to face other aspect of problems as political trespassing by taking part form its land, neglect and inefficient management thus, the problems started to be increased from bad to worse with slow development and involving the military forces in the cultural heritage field especially, from 90s till now.
The Egyptian National Museum in Cairo, Egypt, which houses the most extensive collection of Pharaonic antiquities and treasures in the world, needs much higher standards of maintenance, more organized placement of items, climate controlled display cabinets, better lighting for its treasures and much more careful cleaning methods. Display cases and cabinets which were placed there when the museum opened over a century ago, many with no descriptions of the objects and not as well maintained as Egyptian artifacts in museums in New York, London and Berlin, for example.
Ideally, museums should be secure locations to display and preserve artefacts and also educational institutions to teach the public about ancient cultures, with a focus on the ways in which they can learn from and protect our common history. This situation needs to be rectified and should be addressed now.
1.1. Aims of the study
This study aims to:
Highlighting the cultural policy towards the Egyptian antiquities from the Colonialism to the Nationalism. Understanding the problem of urban development around the Egyptian museum and its results especially during Military rule 1952 to 2011. Highlighting the political trespassing against the Egyptian antiquities in the past and present. Clarifying the inefficient management of Museology field in Egypt. Presenting proposals towards development of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.
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2. The Egyptian museum 2.1. Historical background
The Egyptian Museum is like an open book on the history of ancient Egypt and a repository of the nation’s memory of that important historical period. The world’s largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities is housed in the wings of the museum.1 Dr. Zahi Hawass previous Minister of antiquities mentioned at his website that “The Museum has its own history. Mohamed Ali Pasha, who ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1848, recognized the many dangers facing Egypt’s antiquities. In 1826, he prevented the British from taking a pharaonic lintel that had been reused as a building stone in the mosque near Bab El-Nasr. Mohamed Ali gave orders to Hussein Bek Hieder to excavate the area of Kaliubia, where he knew antiquities would be found—he did not want the Europeans to obtain them. Some objects from this site, he had heard, had already left the country through the port of Alexandria. But Mohamed Ali Pasha was not entirely opposed to foreign excavation. In 1828, he permitted Champollion, the decipherer of the hieroglyphs, to excavate because he knew that Egypt would benefit. He made an order to help the French scholar and gave him all the protection that he needed. Champollion explored many sites during the 19 months he was in Egypt, and he recorded painstakingly recorded Egypt’s antiquities and geographical and environmental landmarks in the famous book Description de l’Egypte between 1809 and 1828, including the destruction of antiquities. He suggested to Mohamed Ali that a law should be issued to control excavation. Mohamed Ali agreed but did not want to give this responsibility to a foreigner, so he appointed Sheikh Rifaa El Tahtawy to the job. Tahtawy had studied in France as part of a group of students Mohamed Ali had sent there from 1826 to 1831. Tahtawy became the first Egyptian responsible for the preservation and excavation of Egyptian monuments, and he took measures against the theft of antiquities. He also took the first early steps that would eventually lead to the creation of the Egyptian Museum.2
Foreigners are destroying ancient edifices, extracting stones and other worked objects and exporting them to foreign countries. If this continues, it is clear that soon no more ancient monuments will remain in Egypt. . . . It is also known that the Europeans have buildings dedicated to the care of antiquities; painted and inscribed stones, and other such objects are carefully conserved there and shown to the inhabitants of the country as well as to travelers who want to see them. . . . Having considered these facts, the government has judged it appropriate to forbid the export abroad of antiquities found in the ancient edifices of Egypt . . . and to designate in the capital a place to serve as a depot. . . . It has decided to display them for travelers who visit the country, to forbid the destruction of ancient edifices in Upper Egypt, and to spend the greatest possible care on their safekeeping. Decree of Muhammad Ali, 15 August 1835, quoted in Gaston Wiet, Mohamed
1 Wafaa El-Saddik, The Egyptian Museum, heritage landscape of Egypt, Museum, No 225-226 (Vol LVII, n° 1, 2 2005, p.31. 2Zahi Hawass, The Egyptian museum and the looters, http://www.drhawass.com/wp/the-egyptian- museum-and-the-looters-by-zahi-hawass/, accessed on November 2015.
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Ali et les Beaux-Arts.3 In 1835, Mohamed Ali established the first government department to protect and serve antiquities Three years later, Khedive Abbas Helmi I, moved the objects that had been collected to a hall inside the Citadel, which sits atop Mokattam hill in the center of Cairo. Four years after that, Khedive Mohamed Said Pasha granted a large portion of the collection to Duke Maximilian of Austria, as an official gift. This was a common practice at the time.” said Hawass.
In 1858, Khedive Said Pasha established the Antiquities Service and appointed Auguste Mariette as its first Director. Mariette, who had worked at the Louvre for several years, created a program to document the objects and discoveries, and we can also credit him with renewing Mohamed Ali’s project to establish an Egyptian Museum. Although he wished to have the Museum at Giza, Mariette restored an old mosque at the area of Bulaq as a temporary museum. He collected many objects from different sites and put them on display here. (Figure 14, 25&36)
3 Donald Macolm Reid, whose pharaohs? Archaeology, museums, and Egyptian national identity from Napoleon to World War I, Part One: Imperial and National Preludes, Rediscovering Ancient Egypt: Champollion and al-Tahtawi, Berkeley: University of California Press, c2002, p. 21. 4 Gerard Degeorge. Boulak Museum Entrance, Private Collection, Bridgeman Art Library. Publisher: McAllister, T.H, gift of Edward Lennert. 5 French School, Courtyard of the museum, Bulaq, from 'L'Egypte' of Georg Moritz Ebers. 6 Bechard, E. and Mariete, A. Album du Musée de Boulaq Comprenant Quarante Planches. Le Caire: Mourès & Cie, 1872.
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Figure 1, 2&3: show Boulak Museum Entrance, the Courtyard, and
the Museum’s Collection.
Auguste Mariette is remembered for having spearheaded the establishment of Egypt’s first state museum to rescue the country’s cultural heritage. He is buried in a marble sarcophagus in the garden of the present Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square. A bronze statue commemorates his iron will in serving Egypt’s antiquities.
The flood of 1878 reached the museum in Bulaq, damaging the building and the artifacts in it. Mariette then asked for a safer, more permanent place for a museum. A month before his death in 1881, Mariette wrote that no Egyptian artifact should be given to any foreign power. But foreigners were still important within the Antiquities Service. Another French Egyptologist, Gaston Maspero took Mariette’s place. At the same time, another great Egyptian personality in antiquities appeared, Ahmed Kamal Pasha, Egypt’s first
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Egyptologist. Trained by Brugsch, he belonged to a group documenting antiquities and preparing a new catalog of the Museum’s collections. Kamal opened a small school of Egyptology inside the Museum, but lack of funding forced it to close in 1885.7 (Figure 4)
Figure 4: Memorandum cancellation of the school of Egyptology 29 December, 1885, Egypt. Photo credit: The Ministry of Antiquities
By 1887, the Bulaq Museum was overcrowded with antiquities. It looked like a shop, not a museum. To resolve the situation, the khedive, Tawfiq Pasha, donated one of his palaces at Giza, which opened as a museum in 1890. But even this was not big enough to contain all the objects in the growing collection. After several calamities in the Boulaq and Giza Museums resulting in huge damages and even losses of invaluable artefacts, the construction of a new Egyptian Museum building became urgent.
In March 1893, the supervisors of the Public Works Council met to discuss the issue of whether to establish a new museum of antiquities, or simply to keep the collections in the Giza Palace after undertaking some renovations to the building. It was Jacques de Morgan, at that time Director of the Antiquities Service, who urged for the construction of a new museum of antiquities. The approval came from the Board of Supervisors, headed by the Khedive and his entourage, on the 6th of May, 1894. After that meeting, the location on which the new museum would be built was identified.
Zahi Hawass states that “An announcement for a competition for the best architectural design was made, granting a prize award of one thousand Egyptian pounds. It was the first time that a competition of this kind was held on this side of the Mediterranean Sea, between 80 and 116 design proposals were submitted, only 73 of which were presented to the public.” In 1895, the winning prize went to the French architect Marcel Dourgnon for
7 The archives of Ministry of Antiquities, 1885.
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his Beaux Arts, neo-classical design. The Egyptian Museum, in Arabic “El Antikkhana”, was established in the newly designed Cairo Ismailiya quarter (or just Ismailiya for short), Cairo’s European district, named after Khedive Ismail, who launched an ambitious urban development plan for the modernization of Cairo between the 1860s and 1870s. According to an official document written by Nubar Pasha, Egypt’s Prime Minister at the time of the competition for the new Egyptian Museum, the land for the Egyptian Museum was located between the Nile and the British military barracks of Kasr El Nil. The document refers to a plot situated behind the military’s existing horse stables in this area. The order was given to remove part of the stables for the purpose of expanding the land on which the new Egyptian Museum was to be constructed. This was actually not a very convenient site for the museum, given the number of existing buildings around it, but it had the advantage of being available, being close to the Nile and located in the modern area of Cairo established by Khedive Ismail.
The cornerstone of the Egyptian Museum was laid on the 1st of April, 1897 and construction began in 1898 by the Italian company Guiseppe Garozzo & Francesco Zaffrani. Upon completion of the construction works, the artefacts were transferred from the Giza Museum and other storage facilities to the new building in around 5000 boxes. 8 The opening of the Egyptian Museum was a major event. Dia Abu Ghazi states that “15 November 1902 is an unforgettable day in the history of the Museum in which it was opened to the public and thus the hope of the generations since Mohamed Ali became a real fact, a Museum for the day and for tomorrow. It has all means of work: a library, laboratory, security, and an extra land that extends to the Nile-bank for all future extensions, beside foundations for more wings.”9 with 36,000 objects during the reign of Khedive Abbas Helmi II, The museum was formally opened by the Khedive in front of 500 invited Egyptian and colonial dignitaries moreover, The Egyptian Museum was the first museum in the world to be originally constructed as a museum instead of being a transformed palace or other building.10
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo “was in a purely western neo-classical style” and continued to be managed by Europeans until the 1950s, when Mahmoud Hamza became the first Egyptian Director. By 1949, the British military barracks to the southeast of the museum were removed, creating a larger public space within the museum’s grounds. Five years later, in 1954, the Cairo Governorate took a large section of land west and south of the museum to construct the headquarters of the Arab League, the Nile Hilton Hotel and a building for the Cairo Municipality, where, in the early 1960s, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser established the headquarters of his Arab Socialist Union. The Union was converted in 1978 to the National Democratic Party by Nasser’s successor, Anwar El Sadat. The Nile Hilton, which was opened in 1958, is now the Nile Ritz-Carlton Hotel. 11(Figure 5)
8 Zahi Hawass, The Egyptian museum and the looters. 9 Dia Abou-Ghazi, The Journey of the Egyptian Museum from Boulaq to Kasr el-Nil, Annales du Service des antiquités de l'Égypte, vol. 67, 1988, p.15-18. 10 Kuppinger, Petra, Globalization and Exterritorialy in Metropolitan Cairo, the Geographical Review, vol. 95, no. 3, July 2005, p.361. 11 Sherif, Lobna, Architecture as a System of Appropriation: Colonization in Egypt, 2002. p.5.
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12 Figure 5: Tahrir Square, with the Egyptian Museum, circa 1940s Cairo. Photo Credit: Egypt streets
12Egyptian Streets News, http://egyptianstreets.com/2013/09/27/egypt-through-time-photographs- from-1800-2013/, accessed on November 2015.
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2.2. Museum planning and Architectural design
Inaugurated in 1902, Egypt’s first state museum owes its fame not only to its rich contents, but also to its splendid architecture, which provides a marvelous backdrop for Pharaonic antiquities. Based on European architectural models, the museum is typical of the large public and institutional buildings - libraries, theatres, and city halls - built at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century all over Europe and America. Such buildings were most of the time isolated, monumental, and designed in a classical style, known as the "Beaux Arts Style", that triumphed during this period. The French architect Marcel Dourgnon, winner of the competition, was among those applicants whose proposal closely met the requirements outlined in the competition programme. His architectural design of the Egyptian Museum was wise and simple, reminiscent of the neo-classical style, combined with Greek and Roman decorative ornaments on the façade. The museum’s main entrance is flanked by two columns in Ionic order and two female sculptures in Greek style personifying the goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt. The museum’s portal is decorated with the head of the Pharaonic mother goddess Hathor. An inscription above it commemorates the opening of the Egyptian Museum by Egypt’s ruler Abbas Hilmi II.
The building features a symmetrical and T-shaped composition along a main and perpendicular north-south axis with the Grande Galerie Centrale in its middle, accentuated by rows of arches and columns on its longitudinal sides. The Galerie d’Honneur runs perpendicular to it and parallel to the museum’s south facade. It is designed as a sequence of double-height rectangular and circular spaces from east to west, with a Rotunda in the centre, located right after the museum’s main entrance. Along each side of the Grande Galerie Centrale is a series of seven rooms, the Atriums. These are double-height rooms topped by a skylight and connected by an outer and inner ring gallery on both floors which surround the whole edifice. It seems that the proposal for this type of room, which offered a brilliant solution in terms of natural lighting, was decisive in the final choice of the jury.13
The facade is approximately 115 meters long and 22 meters high. There are identical openings on both sides of the entrance, as well as two other entrances on the far right and left, one for staff and the other leading to the library. Lying on either side of the main entrance are a reception room for important visitors, a public relations room and various stands selling models, gifts and academic books. The visitor then arrives at the distribution and guidance room, which is covered by a semi-spherical dome containing apertures to let in natural light. This dome is supported by four pillars which extend to the highest part of the museum, thus making a vertical connection between the ground and first floors. Reaching the full height of the museum, the midsection of the ground floor is approximately 45 x 16m2 and sits low on a number of steps leading up from the floor. On the ground floor, the height of some of the galleries and rooms ranges between 7 and 8 meters. It reaches 15 meters in various other rooms and a maximum of 22 meters in the main hall mentioned above, which contains objects of immense size. The museum has 107
13 Ministry of Antiquities, etal, The revival of the Egyptian museum, 2012, p 11-12, Available from http://egyptianmuseum.tumblr.com, accessed on December 2015
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rooms in all. In constructing the museum, attention was paid to ensuring ease of movement and smooth access between the various sections. Stairways were built in the four corners in order to facilitate access between the ground and upper floors. The museum also has three large and secured side doors through which large heavy objects can be brought in and out. These doors remain closed and are only opened when necessary.14
The whole architectural composition is very impressive, with its succession of low and high spaces, which were originally, and are still, lit by natural light through the impressive dome above the museum’s Rotunda at the entrance, the glass panes of the Grande Galerie Centrale, the skylights of the Atriums and the many windows on the ground and first floor. The project presented by Dourgnon for the competition in 1895 was a bit different from the one that was subsequently built. Two phases were scheduled: the first for the construction of the museum itself, and the second for further extensions located along the western and eastern sides of the building, which included extra exhibition rooms, the housing quarters of the Director, and the administration offices. The Director’s house and the administration were designed as independent. Furthermore, Dourgnon had to improve the design and a second, somewhat simplified, project was presented. In this new design, the building was more compact, and the Grande Halle in the centre of the museum, which would have had a rather industrial aspect, was replaced by the Grande Galerie Centrale, intersecting the Galerie d’Honneur.
The Egyptian Museum at Ismailia Square, now Tahrir Square presented from the outset a series of architectural and construction challenges for the building contractors. These problems were mainly related to the complex nature of the design made by Dourgnon. According to available documents, they had not been resolved by the time of the museum’s inauguration in 1902. Thus, from 1907 to 1909, the roof of the building was modified for ventilation, lighting and structural purposes. Repair works had to be realized to ease the weight burden off the concrete roof, as the reinforced concrete construction system, pioneered by the French engineer François Hennebique, had not been mastered at the time.
The terrace had to be almost completely reconstructed, and the original glass skylights covering the double-height Atriums, which allowed too much sun and heat inside the rooms, were transformed into skylights used in the traditional houses of Cairo, in Arabic “shoukhshekha”. The top most horizontal glass panes of the skylights were replaced by wood covered with thin metallic sheets. Furthermore, it was decided to lower the ground floor level of the Grande Galerie Centrale, which was not high enough and its floor too
weak to accommodate the monumental sculptures and artefacts. (Figure 6, 7&8)
The architect made a point of installing an iron mesh beneath the glass windows of the skylights, both to secure the roof from illegal entry and for aesthetic reasons, to hide the metallic structure of the skylight. Unfortunately, however, due to lack of funding, their installation was not completed in the northern part of the building. The only part where
14 Wafaa El-Saddik, The Egyptian Museum, heritage landscape of Egypt, Museum, p. 34-35
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the mesh still remains today is in the southern wing of the Galerie d’Honneur and in the Grande Galerie Centrale. 15
Figure 6, 7&8: Construction process of the Egyptian Museum from 1897 to 1902 Photos credits: Conservation works
15 Ministry of Antiquities, etal, The revival of the Egyptian museum, 2012, p 11-12.
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Regarding the cultural policy during the construction of the Egyptian museum Imperialists not only managed Egyptian archaeological sites and museums but also decided to re- design Cairo city according their western style. Since the designer of the main museum in Egypt, the Egyptian Museum, was French, he enforced the massage of the neo- classical style with a façade that included statues of all the European Egyptologists who worked in the museum. Though it is necessary to consider the architecture in the urban environment in terms of regeneration, cultural tourism, memorialization, symbolism, metropolitanization, and so on, the designer overlooked these facts.16 First, the museum design did not consider the surrounding urban environment when it came to enforce mainly European elements of architecture. Second, the museum façade includes the European Egyptologists as contributors to the Egyptian Museum. Third, the texts on the façade are written in the Latin language. Consequently, the outer design of the museum did not reflect the collections exhibited inside. Thus, the design of the museum is Neo- classical and the exterior reflects not one Egyptian contribution17.
As Egyptologist Francesco Tiradritti has observed, Dourgnon's two-story edifice was constructed entirely in reinforced concrete, a material whose potentials were then just beginning to be realized. The building is a rectangle with an area of 14,330 square yards. The visitor enters the museum through a handsome porch in the center of the main facade. A well-proportioned archway is flanked by two Ionic columns and decorated with a head of the goddess Isis (Figure 9). Set into the wall on either side are two high-relief female figures representing Upper and Lower Egypt (the Nile Valley and the delta). Likewise adorning the facade are marble panels inscribed with the names of prominent Egyptologists and other individuals who contributed to the preservation of Egypt's antiquities. In front of the museum is an impressive sculpture garden with a central pool of papyrus. At one end of this garden, an elegant Neoclassical hemicycle with a life-size bronze statue of Mariette (wearing a fez; he was dubbed pasha in 1879) honors the Egyptologist's memory.18
16Suzanne Macleod, Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 55. 17Abd El-Halim Nur El Din, Matahef Al Athar Fi Misr we Al Watan Al AArabi:Dirassa Fi Aalm El Matahef (Al Qahira: Al Aqsa Press, 2009), p. 10. 18 Edward Brovarski, The Egyptian Museum at 100, World & I, vol. 17, no. 11 (November, 2002): 82, available MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost, accessed December, 2015.
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A
B
C D
Figure 9: A, B, C&D show the museum entrances and the façade includes the European Egyptologists as contributors to the Egyptian Museum, the texts on the façade are written in the Latin language, two Ionic columns decorated with a head of the goddess Isis and two high-relief female figures representing Upper and Lower Egypt (the Nile Valley and the delta). Photos credits: the researcher November 2015.
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2.3. collection
As much as the Ancient Egyptians were preoccupied during their lifetime with getting ready for the hereafter, they enjoyed life tremendously and did everything they could to make their stay on earth as pleasant as possible. Objects of daily use, displayed in great quantities in the Egyptian Museum, were produced with the same diligence applied to the manufacture of funerary items and also reveal an incredible level of luxury and taste. It is because the Ancient Egyptians clung to life so much that they wanted to take everything they possessed on earth with them to the afterlife. For this reason, their worldly life within nature and their familiar surroundings was captured on the walls of tombs and temples and reanimated by magic formula.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo contains the world's most extensive collection of pharaonic antiquities when it was opened to the public in 1902, 35,325 objects were recorded in the museum register book, the Journal d’Entrée. 19 Today, houses approximately 160,000 objects covering 5,000 years of Egypt's past and more in its basement storage rooms. The Egyptian museum is divided into seven sections: Relics of Tutankhamun; Antiquities from the Predynastic period, the Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom; Antiquities from the first intermediate period and Middle Kingdom; Antiquities from the New Kingdom; Antiquities from the Late and Graeco-Roman periods; Ancient coins and papyri; Sarcophagi and scarabs.20 Numerous objects are exhibited in beautiful wooden showcases, many of which originate from the Boulaq and Giza Museums and evoke 19th and early 20th century museum display. The conditions set by the local authorities in the programme for the competition for the architectural design of the new Egyptian Museum in 1894 defined the purposes of the museum’s ground and first floors. The collections are displayed in 89 exhibition halls on two floors.21 (Map 1& 2)
Map 1& 2: show Egyptian Museum Map, the left photo is the Ground floor and the right is the first floor. Photo credit: ETSY 19 Supreme council of antiquities, Museums, The Egyptian museum, available from http://www.sca- egypt.org/eng/MUS_Egyptian_Museum.htm, accessed on December 2015. 20 Hawass, the Egyptian museum and the looters. 21 Ministry of Antiquities, etal, The revival of the Egyptian museum, 2012, p 16.
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The ground floor of the Egyptian Museum has an exhibition area of 5,400m2 dedicated to the chronological display of Egyptian antiquities. The first floor is set aside for the display of ancient objects of Egyptian civilization, arranged by topic, and also holds complete archaeological collections, all in an area covering 3,500m2. The display in this section has been made to resemble ancient Egyptian temples, and consists of huge portals and statues, such as those of Amenhotep III and his wife Tiy. This part of the museum has a gabled ceiling covered by glass panels, which let in some of the soft light needed to create the awe-inspiring atmosphere of Egypt’s ancient temples. This is the center of the museum, with galleries and rooms on all sides; beginning to the left of the entrance, continuing round until again reaching the entrance in a historical sequence that starts with the pre and early dynastic periods and continues on to the Old, Middle and Modern Kingdoms, as well as objects from the Late and Greco-Roman Periods are grouped based on type and function or on archaeological discovery (Figure 10, 11&12).
Figure 10, 11&12: General view of the Great Hall and the Ground Floor exhibits including old and middle kingdoms and Greco Roman period, Egyptian
Museum in Cairo. Photos credits: the researcher, November 2015. 14 | P a g e
The second floor is devoted to collections of sarcophagi from different eras according to tomb or category exhibits here include the treasures of Tutankhamun, wooden models of daily life, statuettes of divinities, and a rare group of Faiyum Portraits. On display on the second floor are also many of the New Kingdom royal mummies. Most of the upper floor rooms overlook those below to afford visitors a detailed view of the upper parts of the huge statues, thus dynamizing the display. Glass cabinets labeled with descriptions of each object and details of its period, origin and the material used in its manufacture. Not displayed in glass cabinets are some of the large heavy objects, which are also labelled with explanations. 22 (Figure 13 &14)
Figures 13 &14: Some of the displayed objects at first Floor as King Tutankamun’s
collections and portraits of Fayum, Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Photos credits: the researcher, November 2015.
22 Wafaa El-Saddik, The Egyptian Museum, heritage landscape of Egypt, Museum, p. 35
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3. The cultural policy towards Egyptian antiquities in 19th & 20th centuries
3.1. The Egyptian antiquities under the colonialism Rule
France and Britain were competing to have control over Egypt. However, they had to strengthen their ties against their common enemy, Germany. Britain and France commenced to align and signed the Entente Cordiale of 1906. This reconciliation between France and England affected the development of Egyptian antiquity policy: the Entente Cordiale ratified England’s political and economic control of Egypt but recognized France’s traditional cultural power over Egyptian antiquities. Even though England approved France’s privileges over Egyptian antiquities, the English continued to collect antiquities through their officials and permitted expeditions.
The political situation in the nineteenth and early twentieth century made it difficult for Egyptians to develop their own antiquities policies. Collection policy was randomly operated as James Breasted states, “Excavation and exploration have now long since ceased to be treasure-hunting. Mariette and Schliemann dug for treasure only. The conscientious scientist of today knows that an exhaustive record of everything stationary or movable found on the spot is the supremely important thing, including especially all inscriptions, reliefs, decorations, and the like, in facsimile. The search for fine museum pieces is mere commercial treasure-hunting.” The early European excavators cared only for collecting treasures, later excavators saw themselves as more scientific but they still delighted in spectacular finds and were not always conscientious about preserving lesser discoveries. Andrzej Niwinski. describes how the unsystematic collecting policy caused the loss of rare coffins dated back to the 21st dynasty. According to Niwinski, such coffins have never been inventoried because of the lack of any record of those days. In addition, the coffins of the 21st dynasty have been sent to the European museums, but in the course of the preparation of sending the coffins off, some errors were committed and pieces which originally were parts of one coffin were in some instances sent off to different museums. Gaston Maspero, the successor of Mariette states, "the whole collection which reached Boulaq was without any other classification than the size and the nature of objects."
European excavators were not necessarily interested in the development of a coherent collection policy for the benefit of the Egyptian people, since the museums and universities which funded excavations had a vested interest in securing artifacts for themselves. In order to have complete control over Egyptian archaeological sites and museum, Europeans continuously reported that Egyptian officials were impeding the development of the collecting process. Consequently, Egyptian officials were marginalized and disregarded as European-dominated Egyptology developed.
In short, Egypt possessed the first museum in the ancient world which is comparable to our today's museums. Although the museum was destroyed as a result of the civil war, a tradition of public display continued in Egypt during the Coptic and Islamic periods. French
. Andrzej Niwinski is a polish Archaeologist a specialist in the iconography of religious and mythological period XXI - XXII dynasty. He is also the founder and president of the Association of Lovers of Egypt Herhor.
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expedition had a real impact on the development of the field of Egyptology. However, the field remained European and the Egyptians were kept away from their field.
In the nineteenth century world, modern museums developed in parallel with the colonial expansion. Museums were among the newly designed public services that were constructed to help manage and educate growing populations. The museum is understood as an instrument for the fabrication and manipulation of cultural heritage. In the colonial world, colonizers could exercise their power through the accumulation and interpretation of antiquities. By the reconstruction of monuments, they conveyed a message to the natives they have always been or have become incapable of either greatness or self-rule. Tony Bennett in the Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics states, “The public museum, as is well known today, acquired its modern form during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The process of its formation was as complex as it was protracted, involving most obviously and immediately a transformation of practices of earlier collecting institutions and the creative adaptation of aspects of other new institutions. However, the museum’s formation—whether understood as a developmental process or as an achieved form—cannot be adequately understood unless viewed in the light of a more general set of developments through which culture, in coming to be thought of as useful for governing, was fashioned as a vehicle for the exercise of new forms of power.”
Egypt offers a case study of how the development of museums could be intimately linked to the development of colonial power. Its museums were developed and promoted and controlled by European powers. This chapter will show how the museum came to serve as an instrument of colonization which supported European interests in Egypt and as has been illustrated in the previous chapter which examines the first museum initiatives in Egypt and the advent of French dominance over Egyptian antiquities preservation; the creation of the Egyptian Museum, and it examines some problems presented by European dominance. Nevertheless, despite these problems, museums became an enduring part of the national identity of modern Egyptians. 23
During the twentieth century, the Egyptian government controlled certain archaeological sites such as the Valley of Kings in Luxor. The excavations at Luxor were supervised by the senior inspector of Luxor who was usually European and the finds from the excavations were sent to the Cairo Museum at the Egyptian government’s expense24. Although the policy of the Egyptian government was to keep the rarest objects in the Cairo Museum, the selling of many precious items persisted. Both Maspero and De Morgan did not effectively control the buying and selling of antiquities by collectors and museum curators. Competition to acquire Egyptian antiquities continued among European Egyptologists who were in the charge of excavation in the different archaeological sites, which caused hatred
23 Shadia Mahmoud, The development of archaeological and historical museums in Egypt during the ninetieth and the twentieth centuries: imperialism, nationalism, UNESCO patronage and Egyptian museology, May 2012, p. 14:61. .ممحرم كمال. المنقب اإلنجليزي في مصر. مجلة الهالل. 1 فبراير1941.ص1:7.
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between the English and the French on one hand and the French and other nationalities on the other25.
The competition of archaeologists in the field led scholars such as Arthur Weigall* to object to the selling policy that foreign Egyptologists and Egyptian dealers would enforce through the sale room in the Cairo museum. Weigall did not object to the actual selling of antiquities: in fact he suggested that “the sale of antiquities by the Cairo Museum should be vastly extended and that the work should be put on business lines.” Weigall wanted to prevent the plundering of Egyptian antiquities by foreign curators from Egyptian dealers. However, he wanted to “make … [their] surplus stock of important … [Egyptian] antiquities accessible to the public all over the world by selling historic or artistic objects exclusively to public museums or large collections, and selling only unimportant objects to private collectors or tourists.” Weigall advocated the selling of antiquities through legal professional channels to public museums all over the world in order to protect the Egyptian antiquities and to provide them a secure and safe place. Selling Egyptian antiquities was essential, according to Weigall, “to relieve the Cairo Museum of its surplus stock which takes up much room and is badly looked after owing to the vast size of the collection.” Weigall’s proposal affirmed the foreigners’ opinion that the Egyptians were unqualified and unprepared to manage their antiquities. Instead of assisting the Egyptians to construct new museums and to train a reasonable number of Egyptians to manage and preserve their cultural heritage, Europeans preferred to enrich their own public museums and keep the Cairo museums as “storehouses.” 26
To facilitate the export of the Egyptian antiquities, French directors of the Cairo Museum did not allow the Egyptian curators to learn about or get access to their antiquities. Hence, “the European director of Cairo’s Egyptian museum ordered guards to eject Egyptians found copying hieroglyphic text.” Ahmed Kamal (1881-1923) was the only Egyptian who was working in the museum. However, his job was limited to classifying artifacts and transferring the collections to the new museum. Maspero had his own management policy that would serve both his personal and national missions, and he had some artifacts boxed and stored in a locked room that was only shown to a few select people. In the Egyptian Museum that was controlled by Western archaeologists, Ahmed Kamal was striving to break down the barriers that kept Egyptians out of archaeology. The museum had several European senior curators who were responsible for researching and studying the Egyptian antiquities, usually for their own ends. However, there are no surviving records that document the exact number of these curators.27
25 Fayza Haikal, Egypt’s Past Regenerated by Its Own People, in Consuming Ancient Egypt, ed. Sally MacDonald and Michael Rice, London, UCL, 2003, p. 124. * Arthur Weigall (1880 – 3 January 1934) was an English Egyptologist, stage designer, journalist and author whose works span the whole range from histories of Ancient Egypt through historical biographies, guide-books, popular novels, screenplays and lyrics. 26 Arthur Weigall, Formal Proposal to the Advisory Department of Public Works, letter dated 31 July 1909, AW Archive; in Weigall, Tutankhamen and Other Essays, p. 33. 27 Muhammad Jamal al-Din Mokhtar, Ahmad Kamal Al-Athari Al-Awwal fi Misr, MTM 12 (1964-1965) 43-57.
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According to Arthur Weigall, in 1923, “the staff at Cairo Museum … [was] too small and too hard-worked to deal with the rapidly increasing mass of antiquities, and ruinous confusion grows ever more confused.” The chief curator was responsible for checking the finds of the excavations in order to determine what needed to stay in the museum and what could be sent abroad. However, although the Cairo Museum was built to control the plundering of the important Egyptian antiquities by foreign expeditions and although Maspero and his successors hired inspectors in the excavation fields to be sure that all finds were sent to the Cairo Museum, “inspection was not regular or common and it could not be doubted that many important antiquities passed through the hands of dealers without the knowledge of the Cairo Museum.”
When Mariette had suggested the construction of the Cairo Museum, he had planned to use the museum for his ambitions in the world of Egyptology. He had decided that the “antiquities for export from Egypt were to be shown to the authorities at the Cairo Museum and passed or confiscated with compensation.” The museum was the central administration that managed and supervised all the excavation works in Egypt. Maspero formulated what was called partage—the division of collection between the excavators and the Cairo Museum. However, this system was never implemented until the directorship of Pierre Lacau. Later on, Howard Carter proposed to work in El-Amarna, an archaeological site located in Upper Egypt in the new governorate of El-Minyia, and asked Murdoch Macdonald (1866-1957), Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Public Works in Egypt to take partage from his excavation. Carter tried to get Macdonald’s permission to circumvent the authority of Pierre Lacau (1873-1963). However, Lacau opposed Carter’s proposal and expressed his worries saying: “what if all excavators did the same?” Lacau added that the Antiquities Service and the Cairo Museum would grant portage to scientific institutions but not to private individuals.28
The Egyptian Museum played a major role in helping Europeans to control Egypt's antiquities. The actual management of the museum focused on the preparing of objects to be shipped abroad. The museum exhibits remained the same for many years. The museum basement was used to store excavated finds in closed boxes: most of them were not even registered and no one of the museum curators knew the location of the objects. This was despite the fact that according to the French School of Egyptology, which managed the Antiquities Service and Cairo Museum until the second half of the twentieth century, all finds must be reported and all excavations must be licensed.29
28 James, T. G. H, Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun. London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2001.p. 177-224&225. 29 John Henry Merryman, Imperialism, Art, and Restitution, Cambridge University Press. 2006, p. 141.
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3.2. Egyptian antiquities under the Military rule 1952-2011
The politics of Egyptian archaeology and the Museum—where newly discovered objects were stored or displayed —was complex as al-Shahed30 mentioned that Elliott Colla* expounded in his 2007 book, Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity. "European explorers dominated Egyptian archaeology, as well as the processes by which found items were catalogued, studied, and displayed. After the 1952 coup (known as 23th revolution), Gamal Abdel Nasser established an Egyptian Ministry of Culture. For a few years, Pharaonic Egypt captured the national imagination, until Nasser’s regime fully focused on Pan-Arabism. During those brief early years, the state directly manipulated Egypt’s cultural history and material legacy to fit a nationalist narrative. Certain personalities and episodes were celebrated, such as Mena, the first king who unified Egypt three millennia BCE. Celebrating the heritage of Ancient Egypt was further illustrated in 1955 by the placement of Ramses II’s colossal statue at the heart of Cairo’s main square just outside the train station. Films, exhibitions, photography books, home decorations and fashion were inspired by Ancient Egypt. Tahrir Square was the centre of Nasser’s Cairo, and the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities was at the heart of Tahrir Square.
With Anwar Sadat’s “liberal economy” and series of privatizations after 1970, the state was no longer the primary patron of culture. Privatization came at the same time as the rebirth of mass tourism in Egypt. By then, the economic gap between Egyptians and international tourists had widened. Also, the number of tourists able to travel had increased dramatically from the previous decade; travel was made easier with more accessible air travel. Five-star hotels began to line the Nile, and tour operators bused flocks of tourists between Cairo’s main attractions. In 1979, when Jehan Sadat hosted a three-day fundraiser headlined by Frank Sinatra who performed beside the Great Pyramids and Sphinx, guests were promised unrestricted access to ancient Egyptian sites, and the Museum was closed to the public to allow their private visit. Few Egyptians were invited to this event, which included a fashion show at the Pyramids, visits to other historical sites, and five-star accommodations. These were the features of Egypt’s refashioned tourism industry. The Egyptian Museum became a destination for package tourists to indulge in their fantasies about mummies and the Boy King. From the start, the Museum fulfilled touristic and cultural functions for different audiences. However, by the 1970s it had lost its cultural orientation towards Egyptian audiences and had become more exclusively touristic. The erection of a high iron fence around the building that was once directly accessible from Tahrir Square further isolated it from Egyptians. In the following decades,
30 Mohamed al-Shahed. The Case against the Grand Egyptian Museum: A Modern Museum for an Ancient Nation, Day Press. July 2011. Available from http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2152/the-case-against-the-grand-egyptian-museum. Accessed on December 2015. * Elliott Colla: is an American scholar of the Middle East, specializing in Arabic literature and culture. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. Jehan Sadat: is the widow of Anwar Sadat, and was First Lady of Egypt from 1970 until Sadat's assassination in 1981.
20 | P a g e the Egyptian Museum became heavily guarded and functioned more as a storage facility rather than as one of the most important public museums in the world.
The Egyptian state has been firmly in control of archaeology and of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities for several decades. Egypt’s first and only Minister of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, personifies the notion that Egyptians are in control of their ancient heritage, previously dominated by Europeans. This control has translated into security-oriented policies that claim to protect artefacts from theft and vandalism. In reality, this has meant protecting artefacts from Egyptian masses, while making them available to tourists. The government has not capitalized on Egypt’s material legacy as a cultural resource central to discourses on national identity and heritage. The Supreme Council of Antiquities’ main goals have been security not accessibility and mass tourism not culture. The Egyptian Museum displays neither tell a story nor convey a coherent narrative, national or otherwise. Instead, the organization of displays is sometimes by theme, such as the famous room of mummified animals, by a period or by a person such as King Tut and his objects. What is lacking is not a manipulation of objects for a nationalist narrative, but rather evidence of a central component of any successful museum: curation.
At present, the Museum’s organization is a priori. Egypt’s top public museum demonstrates not only the greatness of ancient Egyptians but also the near absence of the fields of public history, museum studies, and art history in today’s Egypt. Even the most studious visitor will not leave the Museum with a better understanding of the historical evolution of ancient Egyptians’ lives. Nor do displays confront the modern history associated with the exploitation of ancient Egyptian art and its fluctuating position in the formations of national and colonial identities in Egypt and in Europe. Because Egyptian tourism is dominated by the package tour variety, most visitors experience the Museum as part of a larger group herded around by a tour guide who is trained to showcase certain pieces, while breezing by the rest. The antiquities authorities fail to realize that the majority of tourists who visit the Museum have been to museums in their own countries, which are probably better maintained and curated. This means that most visitors leave the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities distraught by its poor state and out-of-date displays and organization. When it comes to Egypt’s museums and cultural sites, few visitors will be inclined for a return visit.
Most importantly, the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, like others around the country, has little or no connection to the general public. During the uprising in Tahrir Square, when Egyptians formed a human shield around the museum, it was to protect it from other Egyptians. Those who see the historical and national value of museums are a minority due to state policies that have disenfranchised the public and reduced Egyptian culture into easy-to-consume clichés that target foreigners. Since Hawass’ rise to international stardom, his power has reached far beyond his area of expertise to include Egypt’s entire historical heritage from the pre-Pharaonic period to the twentieth century and everything in between. Yet, he is the Director of all of Egypt’s museums and historic sites. These museums and their organization, linked to a particularly Eurocentric understanding of Egyptian history, have not been reconfigured to fit an alternative narrative beyond the neat four-part division conceived a century earlier. The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities
21 | P a g e became known as The Egyptian Museum, as if the Greco-Roman, Coptic, and Islamic Museums are any less Egyptian. A native has colonized Egyptian heritage.
Adding insult to injury, during the Tahrir protests of 9 March, the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities became known as salakhana: the torture chamber. Military police used the museum as a command centre, due to its secure location, where they held, interrogated, and tortured protesters. The single most important museum in the country with Egypt’s most valuable artefacts was transformed into a place where Egyptians were beaten and humiliated.
There is no excuse for Cairo’s Museum of Egyptian Antiquities’ current condition with peeling paint and missing artefacts replaced by hand-written notes saying in Arabic “under restoration” or “in a traveling exhibition.” The decision to move to a far-flung location, despite the availability of a large swath of land in the heart of Tahrir Square is mysterious. The area in front of the Museum was the athletic field of the Army Barracks that once occupied the site of the former Nile Hilton and the Arab League. The area became public land and was transformed in 1954 into a public garden at the heart of Tahrir Square. Parts of it were taken away and made into a bus station, then a parking lot, under Sadat. And for much of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency, a large area had been fenced off and made into a site of permanent construction supposedly for an underground parking facility with little progress to show after over a decade. It would be ideal to build the modern extension of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities directly adjacent to the existing building in the heart of the city, but this does not fit into Mubarak era anti-urban policies. For decades, Mubarak’s governments favoured exclusive gated developments over integrated urban projects. The earliest example of those policies was the 1985 decision to build Cairo’s new Opera in a gated campus in Zamalek, rather than rebuild it in its original location at the heart of Opera Square.
In the last sixty years, most Egyptians experienced heritage either as it was fed to them by the state or as a tertiary, unimportant element of life given that over half of the population lives under the international poverty line. It will be difficult to bring those who have been disenfranchised back to Egypt’s museums and cultural institutions. And this will be made even more difficult as museums continue to function with a security-minded, tourist- centric approach that incorporates no programs and initiatives to attract the public after they move their buildings to inaccessible, gated desert locations. Egyptian museums are in the hands of a few persons, in collaboration with companies such as Discovery and National Geographic. Egypt’s heritage has been monopolized, commercially packaged, and exported.
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4. Present condition of the museum and the surroundings – Principle problems 4.1. Existing area
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is located Tahrir Square the heart of the crowded downtown Cairo, Khedive Ismail (1863–1879) decided to build a new city adjacent to the old Cairo as it existed in his day, the awkward swath of land between his new city and the Nile has captured the attention of Egyptians. This area became today’s Tahrir Square. The upkeep and development of the museum and its surroundings was borne by Europeans until the 23rd July, 1952 Revolution, after which it was transferred to the Egyptians. The museum was soon swept by a wave of neglect, as its management became increasingly bureaucratic, treating it like nothing more than another government building. Nowadays, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is surrounding by many buildings which are considered obstacles towards the development of the museum area as following some of governmental authorities were established as The modern transformations of Tahrir square 31 for example National Democratic party “NDP”, League of Arab states, Mogmaa Al-Tahrir “Municipality”, Magls Al-Shaab “Egyptian parliament”, 6th of October bridge and public buses station and private parking (Map 2).
Map 3: Aerial photo shows the surrounding area around the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Photo credit http://souvenirchronicles.blogspot.gr
31 Nezar Alsayyad. A history of Tahrir Square. Available from http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2011/04/a-history-of-tahrir-square.html. accessed on December 2015.
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4.1.1. The Modern Transformation - Urban Development around the Museum
Cairo is the largest city in Egypt and the country's capital and it is located close to the Nile Delta. Cairo has an estimated 2014 population of 12 million, with a metropolitan population of nearly 22 million, which makes it the largest city in Africa and the Middle East, and the 16th largest metropolitan area on earth. Cairo is an example of a third-world mega-city, with a population that is growing rapidly due to natural growth despite insufficient services32. The modern transformations of the surrounding area around the Egyptian Museum viewed two major turning points; the Nasser's era and the notion of modernity, and the Sadat era and the notion of infitah (Globalization).
I. The pre-first transformation Point 1950 King Farouk
also spelled Mugamma) is a government building ,مجمع التحرير :The Mogamma (Arabic constructed in the late 1950s in front of the Egyptian Museum, which is an administrative governmental building. It was intended for 4,000 employees only, where all paper work is done by government agencies. For example, one can go there to process documents, get a driver's license, or issue a visa. The governmental agencies that are located in the building include the Tax Evasion Investigations Offices, the Fire Fighting Organization, and the Passport Offices. Today the building is home to 14 government departments which built on 5,000 sq.m and rising up to 13 floors, it houses 1,365 rooms with some 18,000 employees, and receives an average of 25,000 visitors a day. The complex known as centre of bureaucracy and blamed for traffic jams, among other things.33 (Figure 15)
Figure 15: shows the Mogamma building and traffic Jam in Tahrir Square in front of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Photo Credit: Faris El-Gwely, April 2015.
32 World population review, Cairo population 2015. available from http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/cairo-population/,accessed on December 2015. 33 Amira El-Noshokaty. A Resilient Complex, Alahram weekly, 10 May 2007, available from http://www.masress.com/en/ahramweekly/10449, accessed on December 2015.
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II. The first Turning Point Nasser 1952 Nasser's first set of alterations for Cairo included the remaining of downtown streets and squares, this included Ismail square where the barracks and the museum were located. The new square would be called Midan el Tahrir (liberation square) and Kasr el Nil barracks building was torn down in 1952 to figuratively liberate the square of its occupation. The building could have remained and been reused as was the fate of many downtown buildings, however the choice to remove the building was a necessary symbolic act. And Ismail once quickly built his modern city, Nasser quickly constructed concrete blocks the modest Arab League Building, housing an organization that clearly fitted Nasser’s pan-Arab ambitions, was the first to open in 1956. The final addition to the square was another overtly modernist construction, built just behind the Egyptian Museum in 1958. Originally designed to house the Cairo Municipality, it was at completion quickly occupied by Nasser’s Arab Socialist Union (ASU), the only legal political party at the time.34 The fact of these buildings would soon showcase an alliance with the east, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) whose notorious soviet modernist architecture was spread as far as its economics arm reached.
The Nile Hilton: Nasser opened the zone of Tahrir square for modern hotels to develop along the east bank of the Nile. The proximity to the museum and the famed downtown made the southern tip of the district a prime location for tourist accommodations. The Semiramis, le meridian, Sheraton and Hilton hotels quickly took advantage of the opportunity to establish new business in the center of the world's oldest tourist destination and birth place of western civilization. The Hilton on Tahrir square was Nasser's attempt at attracting foreign currency, tourism and advertising an interest in capitalism. The hotel opened in February 1959 and the modern form of the structure was the materialization of the modern social practices that it housed. The building rendered public certain aspects of Nasser's new Egypt. It monumentalized Egypt's ambition to acquire international political status through modernization. The architecture of the hotel and its white façade is a twelve-story high blank billboard on Tahrir showcasing Nasser's vision for the city. The Nile Hilton was a new façade associated with a new era' however, what was behind the façade was a familiar institution: Zigzagging up its side appears to be a new departure from the classical architecture of the museum next door or even the recently opened Mogamma.
The Results of the first transformation Point 1. After the 1952 revolution was fully affected, the cosmopolitan ethnically non Egyptians population of downtown along 4000 wealthy Egyptian families began their exodus from the city. Nasser would officially rid the city of its outsider’s residents and confiscate their property in the name of revolution. In the immediate months after the revolution, the once prestigious but now abandoned downtown flats, buildings and shops were quickly taken over by the government companies,
34 Boer Rene. Erasing the remnants of a revolution, failed architecture, June 2015, available from http://www.failedarchitecture.com/erasing-the-remnants-of-a-revolution/, accessed on December 2015.
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revolutionary military personnel and their families, a significant transformation in the socio-cultural makeup of the district. 2. Shifting demographics of the area and the transformation of downtown roofs into squatter settlements for the poor, the core of downtown will be replaced by taller apartment blocks. The southern end of downtown around the Ismailia square is where dramatic Nasser era change will take place in this part of the city. 3. The view of downtown as a distinctly different district from its surrounding has been dissolved and blurred as it deteriorated and its surroundings modernized in up- dated style. Most importantly, the previously European associated customs and behaviors have been so absorbed into the popular psyche of the Egyptian middle class which inhabits the city in all directions around downtown. 4. Downtown no longer was the stage of certain behaviors or codes of dress, for better or worse, it has lost any signs of alienation and it has been fully integrated. Greater Cairo has lost its center, and in the coming decades as the city expands into the desert in government planned cities such as Nasr city, Cairo will be multi-center fragmented city with zones catering to three economically divided social groups: lower strata, intermediate strata of Cairo's social space. By the second half of the twentieth century downtown's density was slightly declining residents left it and it increasingly was becoming lower class. 5. Cairo new modern, luxury quarters in the 1960s were diffused in Zamalek or Dokki while the primary streets of downtown falling into disrepair are more active than ever before with ordinary goods replacing luxury items in store. III. The second transformation Point Sadat 1970 A few years after Nasser’s death in 1970, the role of the ASU was succeeded by the National Democratic Party (NDP), founded by Egypt’s second president Anwar Sadat. Despite Sadat’s aversion of the ASU, its politics and Tahrir premises, he moved the NDP into the building, where it would remain to the end of Hosni Mubarak’s thirty year reign. The 1970s with Sadat's globalization policy, downtown buildings witnessed their worst deterioration. By the mid-1970s development has ceased to exist in downtown for over thirty years with major catastrophic events such as Black Saturday and the migration of residents by 1956, the central district grew increasingly popular with bargain shoppers and professionals establishing more businesses in the upper floors of downtown buildings transforming the area into a fully commercial zone that is swarming with activity during the day and abandoned by night. Except for the occasional news about razing of belle époque buildings to be replaced by multi-level garage structures or high-rise office blocks, the area was for the greater part of the 70s, 80s and 90s forgotten by the general public. (Figure 16)
The Results of the Second Turning Point 1. Downtown Cairo is contested space, between the rich and the poor, government agencies and private interests, pedestrians and motor traffic, streets vendors and shopkeepers and most importantly between promoters of visual rehabilitation and promoters of tactile rehabilitation. 2. Downtown is losing its role as a cultural node for the city with the moving of the Egyptian museum.
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3. The American university in Cairo also left its urban campus in the contested space of downtown Cairo for a garden campus on the periphery. The American university expansion is another missed opportunity that could have transformed downtown Cairo into vibrant, expansive urban injecting money and resources into the center. 35
Figure 16: Formal Gardens dominate the Egyptian Museum and the square, Nasser’s skyline, with the Arab League building on the left, the Nile Hilton in the middle and the NDP-building on the right 1956. Photo credit: Failed Architecture
35 Ahmed Zaazaa. El Tahrir Square: A Multi Layered History Urban Space, 1 November 2009, available from http://cairomsc.blogspot.gr/2009/11/el-tahrir-square-multi-layered-history.html, accessed on December 2015.
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Two photos showing the urban development of the surrounding areas around the EM for 113 years Figure 17: Aerial view 1904 from a balloon where the Egyptian Museum appears to the right side.
Photo Credit Eduard_Spelterini) Figure 18: Aerial view of modern Cairo nowadays from the right bank of the Nile. In the center, the red bricks of the famous Egyptian Museum To the left of the museum are the Arab League and the Nile Hilton Hotel and in the background, Zamalek Island. Photo Credit (Stéphane Compoin)
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4.1.2. The Museum at the Center of Egypt’s Revolution
The Egyptian Museum became an improbable backdrop to Egypt’s ongoing revolution when on 25thJan2011 pro-democracy protestors first occupied Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, Friday, 28 January 2011. One of the most enduring events of the Egyptian uprising occurred late one night when local citizens formed a human chain to protect the Egyptian Antiquities Museum on Tahrir Square from those seeking to damage or steal its priceless contents. Sadly, three days after the start of mass demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, protesters called for a ‘day of rage to invigorate the demands of a nascent revolution. After midday prayers, up to a million people descended on Tahrir square from all corners of the city, resulting in a long day of bloody fighting with the police. As the evening fell, the police seemed to be losing control in most places and started to retreat from the streets. While protesters entered Tahrir square, news agencies made their first reports about a fire at the headquarters of former president Hosni Mubarak‘s leading National (NDP). The building, located between the Nile and the Egyptian Museum, had become a symbol of 30 years of oppression and was suddenly burning spectacularly, lightening up Cairo’s evening sky36. (Figure 19, 20&21)
Figure 19: Egyptians protesters making a human wall protecting the Egyptian Museum. (Photo Credit: Dedmaxopka live journal)
36 Jean Newman Glock. Cairo's Egyptian Museum after the Looting, 26 November 2012, available from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jean-newman-glock/the-egytian-museum-in-cai_b_1909684.html, accessed on December 2015.
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Figure 20& 21: Show the NDP-building during/after the fire and the Egyptian Museum side by side on 25th Revolution as well show millions of Egyptian protesters in Tahrir Square in front of the Museum
(Photos Credits: Dedmaxopka live journal)
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At the center of the Tahrir Square, in the center of Cairo, sits the EM museum. Looters entered the museum apparently raided the museum shop for jewellery, smashed display cases and ransacked the ticket office. it was at first unclear exactly what had been taken, with varying reports emerging suggesting different accounts of the damage caused and scale of loss of cultural objects. At the time of the break-in itself, nine individuals were reportedly arrested as they tried to make their way out of the museum via fire exits with the heads of two mummies that they had attempted to steal (but that had subsequently broken up into pieces) Jean Newman Glock states that “Other early reports emerged, primarily via the website of the Minister of Antiquities Dr Zahi Hawass that while there had been damage caused to up to seventy objects apparently nothing had been stolen. A later statement from Hawass indicated that a number of objects had in fact been stolen and the looters entered from the museum roof” As well, Glock mentioned that “During the tumultuous days of late January 2011, Hawass, the swashbuckling Minister of Antiquities and international face of all that was Egypt, announced that though the museum security had been breached, no antiquities had been stolen and that 10 small artifacts and two mummies that were damaged had all been recovered. He noted that the biggest threat to the Museum was from fire at the headquarters of Mubarak's ruling party next door. The world was not to fear that Egypt would be an Afghanistan, a comment referring to the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha’s by the Taliban. Egypt would protect her treasures.”
As well as Hawass declared about the state of the Museum today (2011) stating ‘the museum is in dire need of funding for everything from infrastructure to preservation efforts to security improvements. It was virtually empty on a Thursday and Friday, so little revenue is coming from entrance fees. The museum shop remains boarded up, and that's much needed revenue gone. The security guards, though always friendly, are too few to begin to protect every hall. Many critical conservation projects are on hold. Egypt's economy is in dire need of huge financial aid and injections of capital if it is to resume growth. Museum and archaeological needs will not be top of this list. As the world watches and hopefully moves to help, much more will be needed’.37 (Figure 22& 23)
Protesters succeeded in capturing a number of people who had broken into the museum, confiscating stolen artefacts and handing them over to the police. Some of the stolen objects were recovered within days of their robbery. A statue of King Akhenaten was discovered amid garbage close to Tahrir Square and a number of other artefacts, including part of a broken wooden sarcophagus, were found lying on the ground to the east of the museum. Other collections, including an ancient Egyptian flute and gilded statuette of King Tutankhamun were found in a bag at the Tahrir metro station in March, a final report was issued stating that 54 artefacts were still missing. Copies of the list were submitted to both Interpol and the International Council of Museums. Meantime, former minister of antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim described the burned-out NDP building as “a time bomb and a real threat to the museum and its priceless collection.”
37 Suzei Thomas, Egyptian Museum in Cairo – Thefts and Recoveries in 2011, trafficking culture, 21 Aug 2012, available from http://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/case-studies/egyptian-museum- cairo-thefts-and-recoveries-in-2011/, accessed on December 2015.
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The repeated eruption of protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where the museum is located, has scared away visitors. Over the summer, there were the giant rallies that led to the July 3 military coup ousting Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
Figure 22: Zahi Hawass, together with the Director of the Museum, Tarek El Awady, during checking damage sat the EM on January 31, 2011. Figure 23: Head of a mummy, recovered in the garden in the morning of 29, January 2011. Photos Credits: Sandro Vanneni
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4.2. Political trespasses
The Egyptian Museum was managed by foreign directors until 1950, when Mahmoud Hamza became the first Egyptian director. By 1949, British military barracks to the southeast of the museum were removed, creating a larger public space within the museum’s grounds. Five years later, in 1954, Cairo Governorate took a large section of land west and south of the museum to construct the headquarters of the Arab League, a hotel and a building for the Cairo Municipality where, in the early 1960s, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel-Nasser established the headquarters of the Arab Socialist Union. The ASU was converted to the National Democratic Party in 1978 by Nasser’s successor, Anwar Al- Sadat. In the late 1970s, a number of transport infrastructure and tourism development projects were established on the northern side of the museum. The 6th of October Bridge and Ramsis Hilton Hotel in Abdel-Moneim Riad Square were constructed without taking into consideration the development of the museum and its general layout.
The All Saints’ Cathedral was demolished to make way for these works. The garden on the eastern side of the museum was reduced to broaden the adjacent thoroughfare. To the south, the gardens were removed and replaced by a bus station, which itself was demolished in the 1980s during the construction of the Tahrir metro station. Another constant problem is construction being carried in the vicinity of the museum, which has affected its structure. The vibrations caused by tunnel during construction of metro lines and from traffic passing nearby Tahrir Square and over the 6th of October bridge caused cracks in the museum’s walls, as well as in some of the artefacts and environmental pollution inside and outside the Museum which is totally dangerous especially for the organic artefacts. 38 (Figure 24& 25)
38 Nevine El-Aref, Museum reclaims its Nile view, weekly ahram, issue No.1275, 17 December, 2015.
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Figure 24& 25: show the back gate of Egyptian Museum in Cairo from 2 sides and the polluted environment that surrounding the museum as bus station, parking, 6th of October Bridge and vibrations because of crowded means of transportations. Photos Credits: Demotix.com 4.3. Present condition of the premises 4.3.1. As a building
The Egyptian Museum at Ismailia Square, now Tahrir Square presented from the outset a series of architectural and construction challenges for the building contractors. These problems were mainly related to the complex nature of the design made by Dourgnon. According to available documents, they had not been resolved by the time of the museum’s inauguration in 1902. Thus, from 1907 to 1909, the roof of the building was modified for ventilation, lighting and structural purposes. Repair works had to be realized to ease the weight burden off the concrete roof, as the reinforced concrete construction system, pioneered by the French engineer François Hennebique, had not been mastered at the time.
The terrace had to be almost completely reconstructed, and the original glass skylights covering the double-height Atriums, which allowed too much sun and heat inside the rooms, were transformed into skylights used in the traditional houses of Cairo, in Arabic “shoukhshekha”. The topmost horizontal glass panes of the skylights were replaced by wood covered with thin metallic sheets. Furthermore, it was decided to lower the ground floor level of the Grande Galerie Centrale, which was not high enough and its floor too weak to accommodate the monumental sculptures and artefacts.
The architect made a point of installing an iron mesh beneath the glass windows of the skylights, both to secure the roof from illegal entry and for aesthetic reasons, to hide the metallic structure of the skylight. Unfortunately, however, due to lack of funding, their installation was not completed in the northern part of the building. The only part where the mesh still remains today is in the southern wing of the Galerie d’Honneur and in the Grande Galerie Centrale.
One of another challenge is the breakdown of a natural ventilation system and the high fluctuations of humidity due to the absence of a system for air control. Because of this,
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windows are often left open, especially in the summer, to get fresh air inside the museum but which has caused damage to many artefacts. Missing window panes in the skylights on the roof also contributed to the deterioration of objects, in addition to the ease by which thieves could break into the museum, as shown during the January 2011 Revolution.
In other instances, wholly inadequate protective measures have been used. For example, following Egypt’s defeat in the 1976 Six-Day War with Israel, the government decided to build concrete covers on top of the skylights to protect the museum from potential air raids. This was done without taking into account the increased load on the roof.39
4.3.2. Security
Museums in Egypt appear to have little in the way of disaster plans. Security at the Egyptian Museum has been poor, with its 1902 building allowed to deteriorate and antiquated display cases still in use. Security for Egypt's treasures is under scrutiny after the Aug. 21 theft of a van Gogh painting from another museum in Cairo revealed some alarming gaps, and the minister of culture told a newspaper he lies awake at night, fearing for the safety of the country's relics.
Hadeel Al-Shalchi describing the security system at the EM on her article on NBC news “A tourism police officer guarding the entrance leaned back in his chair as his subordinates tried to handle the hundreds of visitors filing in. Inside, a guard talked on his cell phone as he leaned against a stone statue of an ancient Egyptian. He ignored a Russian couple touching the carvings on a huge black sarcophagus in the middle of the room; another guard dozed while sitting on the edge of a railing, his head jerking to the side. He snapped to attention only when a tourist asked directions” then she is continuing a dialogue between her and the guard about security system at the museum stating “An Egyptian Museum guard who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his job said much of the security relied not on computers but on humans, who had to constantly pay attention.
"A controller may be very alert for two or three hours of the shift, but then he'll slip," he said. Asked what would happen if a worker missed something or believed that a room wasn't worth monitoring, the security guard shrugged and said: "It doesn't get recorded." He also said the equipment wasn't able to record 24 hours a day. "In Egypt, we say, 'it’s OK; God will take care of it.' Then we do nothing," he added.40
The Egyptian Museum houses some of the world's prized antiquities, including the gold mask of King Tut that draws millions of tourists a year. But it also has an outdated video surveillance system that doesn't work around the clock and guards, who snooze or are seemingly too bored to pay attention. (Figure 26(
Many people entered the museum's gift shop, and stole modern jewelry. Later, some people entered the exhibition rooms, broke artefacts and attempted to steal two
39 Sherif, Lobna, Architecture as a System of Appropriation: Colonization in Egypt, p. 5. 40 Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Security problems abound in Egypt’s museums, NBC news, 8 July 2010.
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mummies. The real shock when the ICOM published a report due to the robbery of the EM on 28th January 2011 which announcing who were the looters?
Wafaa El-saddik the former director of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (2004 – 2010), told the German Newspaper “Die Zeit” in an interview as below:
Die Zeit: Who did it?
El‐Saddik: Those (looting the gift shop) were the guardians of the museum, our own people. Some of the policemen had apparently pulled out their uniforms not to be recognizable as policemen. A second group of offenders then came from the back: climbing a fire escape and then entering through the skylight. The destructions happened all on the first floor, where there is also the treasure of Tutankhamun.
Die Zeit: And why do you believe the guards, who protect some of the most valuable objects in our global heritage, did it?
El‐Saddik: They are paid very poorly. I wrote the fingers crooked and asking for more money for these people. All for free. A security guard earns about 250 Egyptian pounds, or 35 € a month. We have about 160 security guards plus several dozen police officers who are basically conscripts in police uniforms. These policemen earn even less …41
The strange that Hawass the Egyptian Minister of Antiquities at this time was always saying that “the Egyptian Museums and archaeological sites are under control”!!! Moreover, during my survey at the EM about security systems I have noticed that the security system is too poor and all the vitrines are out of standard made of glass and wooden frame, which can be broken or damaged by force and the locking system that is very easy to overcome and there is no electronic system at all. (Figure 27)
Figure 26: shows the careless of Tourism and Antiquities Policemen at the main gate of the EM having their breakfast over the X-ray machine. Photo Credit: Amr Elkhady December 2015. Figure 27: shows the inefficient security system at The Egyptian Museum in Cairo by using normal small lockers, Photo Credit: The researcher, November 2015.
41 ICOM, Preliminary report on museums in Egypt, Working document — International Council of Museums and its Disaster Relief Task Force, 3 February 2011.
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4.4. The collections: Exhibition areas and reserves
The Collection has grown considerably since it was installed in the present building in 1902, when there were 36,000 objects in chronological order starting from the pre- dynastic till the end of the Pharaonic period, including the treasures of King Tutankhamen and the collections represent also one certain culture in particular: Pharaonic—although some Greco-Roman artifacts are exhibited to complete the chronological order however, no evidence that the objects were numbered or registered. Today, the Egyptian Museum’s collection comprises more than 160,000 objects recovered from archaeological sites all over Egypt and displayed for more than 112 years and more than exhibited and displayed objects number are have gradually transformed the museum into a packed curiosity chamber (storerooms).
The ground floor was to serve for the exhibit and storage of heavy and large scale objects, such as sarcophagi, colossal statues and stelae, and would include a hall for the public sale of antiquities considered to be of no use to the museum. It is hard to imagine that, one hundred years ago, official authorities offered original artefacts for sale. The first floor was to be reserved for less heavy objects and those in need of drier air, as well as for storage facilities, a hall for numismatics, and laboratories. Originally, the Egyptian Museum was perceived by its planners as a building with vast exhibition areas that would present an aesthetic display of objects and allow for an easy visitation route through the different periods of Ancient Egypt. The artefacts exhibited on the ground floor are arranged in chronological order clockwise around the Grande Galerie Centrale, including objects from the Pre-dynastic Period, the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom, as well as objects from the Late and Greco-Roman Periods. Objects on the first floor, on the other hand, are grouped based on type and function or on archaeological discovery. This systematic object display was deliberately chosen to convey historic information and enable the visitor to visualize the history of Ancient Egypt in the clearest possible way.
Over time, however, with the increasing need for display space, this strict arrangement has been interrupted, and now and then objects are placed at random, wherever free space is available. Indeed, the Egyptian Museum has been converted into a large warehouse crammed with objects, and only specialists in Ancient Egyptian art and culture can find their way. The layman or one-time visitor, on the other hand, may feel completely overwhelmed by the thousands of artefacts squeezed into limited space and the lack of sufficient labelling to provide information on these objects and their archaeological and historical context.
The overcrowded exhibition galleries and storage facilities pose some serious challenges. The collections are displayed in 89 exhibition halls on two floors, as well as in the museum’s garden under unfavorable and often dangerous circumstances, or stored in the basement and the first, second and third floors. While researchers appreciate the Egyptian Museum as the study institution of the Ancient Egyptian civilization par excellence, conservators are alarmed at the critical state of preservation of the majority of objects. The Egyptian Museum has literally run out of space and its collection has been exposed to
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serious threats, prompting the responsible local authorities to launch a vast programme for the construction of new museums and renovation of existing ones.
The Egyptian Museum was a storehouse that would receive thousands of objects to be cleared through the museum and sold to famous museums in the west. It remained as a storehouse providing a home for thousands of Pharaonic artifacts. Many of the collections that belonged to the Cairo Museum remained unidentified until recent times. Dr. Hawass stated “Over the past hundred years, the basement of Cairo Museum has been, for most people, a mysterious maze of dark, narrow corridors. For many decades’ objects excavated by both Egyptian and foreign missions at sites all over Egypt were brought to the Egyptian Museum and stored in the basement. Thousands of artifacts ended up here, and over 80% were never registered or documented”42
Also Chaker Khazaal is a writer who recently visited the Egyptian Museum on September 2015 stated on his article that “Out of huge love to Egypt and its exceptionally rich history, I have to point out that the National Museum needs much higher standards of maintenance, the more organized placement of items, climate controlled display cabinets, better lighting for its treasures and much more careful cleaning methods. It was sad to see that many of the treasures are in the original display cases and cabinets which were placed there when the museum opened over a century ago, many with no descriptions of the objects and not as well maintained as Egyptian artifacts in museums in New York, London and Berlin, for example. I also witnessed staff members cleaning the inside and outside of the display cabinet windows using commercial products right next to ancient objects which could affect the treasures through spillage and could cause potential damage if the cleaner slipped.” (Figure 28)
And he is continuing his misbelieving about the careless at the Egyptian Museum saying “I was alarmed to see that windows were left wide open in the Conservation room while the restoration staff attended to an ancient panel. It is no secret that air pollutants cause museum artifacts to deteriorate and given Cairo's infamous pollution problem, I was shocked to see them allow the panel to be exposed to the open air. Throughout the museum, there are old windows and wide entrances and exits that allow in the very dusty air in Cairo which accumulates on the many ancient treasures -- from boats that are several thousand years old, onto famous statues, painted panels, and everyday objects from the distant past43’’. (Figure 29& 30)
Museums make a unique contribution to society by preserving the natural and cultural wealth of heritage that our society has accumulated throughout our storied history. Every ancient artifact you find in a museum is available for your viewing pleasure as a result of generations of painstaking restoration and care. The International Council of Museums' Code of Ethics says that the governing bodies who oversee museums "have a primary responsibility to protect and promote this heritage as well as the human, physical and financial resources made available for that purpose.”
42 Zahi Hawas, Sandra Vannini, Inside the Egyptian Museum with Zahi Hawass Cairo: American University Press, 2010, p. 15. 43 Chaker Khazaal, We need to protect Egypt's treasures, the worlds post, September 2015.
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Figure 28: Museum member and cleaning service staff using commercial products for cleaning inside and outside the display cabinets. Photo credit: Chakar Ghazaal Figure 29&30: Show inappropriate display of the collections (placing and positioning the objects inside and outside the cabinets too high with no descriptions. Photos credits: the researcher November 2015.
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Figure 31&35: show random Display and interpretations of the collections (old labels have poor descriptions since 1902 in English and French, others only in English, and others in Arabic and English. Photos credits: The researcher November 2015.
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4.5. Interviews
In order to determine the problems and the challenges which facing the museum or suffering it was necessary to conduct some outstanding conservators who played and still playing important roles in the field. Moreover, they are working in the Egyptian museum tens of years, cooperated with many foreign institutions to develop the EM, had worked and studied with members of the older generation who had. This selection ensured they had had close relationships with older generations of Egyptologists and conservators.
Interviews were used as the main data gathering instrument for this study. It consisted of two generally questions to examine opinions regarding the management of the Egyptian Museum and Museum’s Problems after the colonialism. Most of the respondents depended on their own memory, readings and direct interactions in answering the questions. Everyone has a story to tell about momentous historical events they experienced. I consider myself fortunate to be able to interview them, and I thank both of them who gave me this opportunity.
Question one: What are the main problems and challenges that recently facing the Egyptian Museum generally and the Conservation Department especially?
All respondents thought that we do not have the right management of cultural heritage, museum now is overcrowded with antiquities and needs much higher standards of maintenance, lack of conservation materials and workforce, environmental control for the museum, display cabinets, better lighting for its treasures, the political policy nowadays towards the Egyptian museum and financial problems.
Question Two: How important were factors such as the architectural style, the nature of the collections selected, and the role of the Egyptian curators and conservator in designing the museums?
Almost all the respondents believed that the architectural style did not fit the collections.
Question Three: Do you see the Grand Egyptian Museum a solution for the Egyptian Museum?
All respondents believed that The Grand Egyptian Museum is a solution however; there were another ways more practical than building a new museum since 2002 and not completed yet.
Question Four: In your opinion, what is your priority for developing the Egyptian Museum?
All the responds believed that the museum should have risk management plan for the museum as a building and the collections in the display or storerooms.
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4.5.1. Interview: Moamen Othman, Conservator (1970-)
One of the outstanding conservators in Egypt, recently he is a General Manager of Conservation Department at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo since May 2015, he was head of organic laboratory at conservation centre of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM CC) after working at the Egyptian Museum for 10 years as head of papyrus conservation. He studied comprehensive museology in Japan as well he worked at The Graeco-Roman Museum of Alexandria in Egypt and many archaeological sites and museums.
Question one: What are the main problems and challenges that recently facing the Egyptian Museum generally and the Conservation Department especially?
Generally speaking, the museum is suffering from careless. The main problem in the Museum is that the area is too small to allow proper display and storage. Due to space limitations, the museum administration is obliged to display a large papyri collection on the walls of the stairs, keep certain halls closed in order to use them for other functions, and to store in the reserves many pieces which should be presented to the public. Many display areas are too crowded. Presently, it is impossible to install “temporary rooms” or to present architectural and decorative elements in conjunction with objects with objects of the same origin and, there is no space for educational supportive materials to help the visitor better understands the collection. (Figure 36)
Showcases are no longer attractive (out of standard) since 1902 made of wood which is unused anymore because of harm and moreover, do not guarantee the preservation and conservation of the objects. Dust and air pollution can pass through and this no protection against theft. Frequently too many objects are packed into one showcase.
Lighting and climate control must be dramatically improved in order to enhance viewing of the objects, and an overall conservation policy must be implanted. Lighting, relative humidity and air should be perfectly controlled in the halls which contain organic objects (papyri, parchment, textile, wood, feather and plant materials) we don’t have even air conditioning inside the museum generally so the macro and micro environment are out of control. Additionally protection against theft and vandalism must be installed, as human surveillance is insufficient.
We are losing the organic collection of King Tutankhamun because of inappropriate display. Daylight produces approximately the same amount of damage in one year as a weak light one-tenth the strength will produce in ten years so imagine that the Museum is depending on natural light which has ultra violet component which is particularly damaging and must be eliminated by using UV-absorbent filters. Daylight and fluorescent lamps emit high levels of UV radiation which are used recently at the museum. (Figure 37, 38)
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Figure 36: Display large papyri collections on the walls of the stairs due to space limitations without any labels and description. Photo Credit: The researcher, November 2015.
Figure 37& 38: King Tutankhamun’s clothes (leather and textile objects( suffering from poor display which carbonized the organic material and the textile stacked to the glass. Photos Credits: the researcher, November 2015.
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The origin of the collection, and thus its constant growth, is essentially the result of continuing archaeological excavations. Today, the collections are presented, as they have since 1952, according to criteria, with few exceptions by chronological order and by material. The chronological order including pre dynasty through old kingdom till Greco roman period, thus the visitor has difficulty understanding the evolution of artistic creation and the interrelation of the styles or different periods if Egyptology was not his discipline due to lack of illustration materials, banners and labels. Exhibits presented according to material are interested into the historical presentation, are dispersed even not the same materials (as ivory objects with stone and metal objects in the same showcase, for example) or are simply fully exhibited and crowded showcases or not fully exhibited as the rest of King’s tut collection due to lack of space.(Figure 39)
In addition the following points are noted:
- The conservation department workforce is thirty conservators and the museum exhibition halls are 89 with more than 160.000 objects thus, it too difficult to carry out the cleaning process and taking care of a massive number of artifacts thirty conservator only plus doing their work at the laboratory. - The cultural policy now towards the museum always complaining of financial support after 25th revolution 2011, recently while requiring some conservation materials or glass sheets for rehousing the papyri, the ministry answering that we don’t have the sufficient fund so several times we are buying by ourselves.
Figure 39: Exhibits presented according to chronological order (new Kingdom) as an example for vitrines out of standards, no macro, no micro environment control and mixed materials. Photo credit: the researcher, November 2015.
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Question Two: How important were factors such as the architectural style, the nature of the collections selected, and the role of the Egyptian curators and conservator in designing the museums?
Architectural style was very important as the Europeans were careful to make it different from the ancient Egyptian style and Greek style, so they enforced the neo-classical style. Yes, for instance when the Greco-Roman museum was built, it was decided to exhibit in it the collections that represent the Greco-Roman civilization, so building came to show the Greco-Roman architectural features. Recently, also the Egyptian curators and conservators rarely when they get involved in the designing of the museum because the cultural policy from the government doesn’t allow us to express our opinion freely.
Question Three: Do you see the Grand Egyptian Museum a solution for the Egyptian Museum?
Definitely yes, but when it will be finished since 2002 we are waiting. As was announced 2018 it will be the soft opening with King Tutankhamun’s collections only.
Question Four: In your opinion, what is your priority for developing the Egyptian Museum?
Recently, we are making a survey for the Museum collections to evaluate the current condition of each object to have a risk plan for the most sensitive objects which require first aid and quickly intervention. Moreover, the mummies room because the showcases have a problem in their ventilation system, there no circulation inside the vitrines so if you checked the mummies you can see on the skin like sweat because of humidity thus the system should be changed.
Finally, 6-week restoration of King Tutankhamun’s golden mask will be successfully completed and the artifact will be once again on display in Cairo's Egyptian Museum. The mask's elongated beard snapped off while museum staff worked on the display in August 2014. An attempt to restore the royal beard with epoxy followed. The latest conservation efforts began in October 2015. The objective was not only to reattach the beard, but also to undertake a full-scale study of the mask using the museum archives as reference, which hasn’t been done before.
The 2014 damage was exaggerated, since the beard was previously detached as the examination showed. Now the restoration process started with a full 3D scan with a light pattern projection scanner to record and documents the mask’s status, followed by the removal of the inadequately applied glue. No chemicals were used to remove the resin— instead, the team worked millimeter by millimeter with wooden tools after raising the temperature of the mask. This step alone took more than four weeks.
The process has uncovered two surprises, the first is that beard has an internal tube that connects it to the mask's face, and the second is that the 1946 reattachment of the beard was done using soft solder. Ancient techniques were implemented in the restoration process; the team has used beeswax as an adhesive since it was a common material in ancient Egypt, and because it's an organic material that poses less risk of damaging the metal of the mask. (Figure 40)
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Figure 40: The golden mask of King Tutankamun after the conservation, December 2015.
Photo credit: Ministry of antiquities
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4.5.2. Interview: Ahmed Orabi, Conservator (1962-)
Originally, he is conservator at the Egyptian museum since 1987, recently is General Manager of technical preparations for Exhibition Unit. Studied comprehensive museology in Japan and he was General Manager at the Grand Egyptian Museum as technical support. Mr. Orabi asked to put the whole interview with him as it is in English with no modification and all his answers were only about the museum problems and challenges. The interview lasted two hours approximately at his private Gallery in Giza which is called “Hermitage”
Question one: What are the main problems and challenges that recently facing the Egyptian Museum?
After 29 years working at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, in my opinion the main problem of EM is the national policy towards the cultural heritage in Egypt as involving the military forces in the field of Egyptian antiquities with no experience or need. I started as junior conservator on 1987 and I would prefer to mention the problems starting by system service.
Finishes (Cleanliness, painting and floor finish)
In 80s the state were hiring service employees as system services, workers for cleaning artifacts and floors, workers for moving artefacts, carpenters, glass workers, plumber, painters and electricians. For example cleaning services were about 25 workers responsible for cleaning the Museum floors and toilets, the museum was opening at 7.30 am they were starting cleaning the whole museum to be ready for receiving the visitors at 8.45 a.m. Moreover, because the museum is in the center of the polluted Cairo all the inner areas were painted yearly.
By the end of 90s the State started to stop hiring on the governmental sector for fifteen or twenty years, the problem started to appear through the lack of these professions. These workers started to get elder and getting their pension as a result the care about the museum collections and the standards of maintenance became less. Then, the state started to make deals with private companies as cleaning services companies and security own to previous military generals. In 2015 the workers who are responsible for cleaning the museum don’t take their salaries since nine months ago so they were 45 workers month by month they started to leave now we have only 4 workers are responsible for the cleaning of the whole Museum.
Imagine, the museum has 12 toilets, offices and conservation department should be cleaned daily and the wastes should be thrown in safe way because it contains flammable chemical materials. Now it is hardly to clean it one time per week, the exhibition halls full of dust, unclean toilets and even we didn’t paint the museum since 10 years ago because we have only two old painters who cannot do their work anymore.
Museum visitors started to complain firstly from the toilets cleanliness because the visitor spending at least 3 hours at the museum if he was in hurry thus, the complaint arrived to the Minister of Antiquities, he brought new manager to the Egyptian Museum to solve
47 | P a g e these problems. The ministry provided the new manager with one million Egyptian pounds 117595 Euro approximately, to make a new contract with new cleaning services company. Once the new manager came to the museum he made a meeting to listen to our demands we informed him that “since five years ago we do not have any materials to work and we are buying on our own account moreover, we are using expired materials in conservation from these materials was the epoxy material which had been used in wrong conservation of King Tutankhamun’s mask”
Orabi continues saying “the museum does not have a guidance panels and last guidance panels I made them since 1998 and the majority had been damaged.” We had glass worker who was checking daily the glass of the museum and the basement was full of glass sheets in case of usage, the plumber and electrician were checking the museum daily too and fixing the problems at once, but now we don’t have them because the state stopped hiring for a long time so we don’t have the second generation who will follow up what the previous have already started. The state started to depend on previous companies which controlled by the pensioned military men since 90s.
The worst problem is that when the minister changed the previous manager due to careless, he brought the new one with one million Egyptian pound as financial support who was obligated to sign new contract with new cleaning services company which is belongs to the Military Forces directly not with the previous companies which were controlled by the pensioned military men too.
Dr. Khaled Elanany the new manager of the EM has been ordered to sign the contract with a company belongs directly to the Army. The contract includes that The Ministry of antiquities should paying 160.000 Egyptian pounds (L.E) monthly as cleaning service cost. Meanwhile, if the ministry of antiquities hired the 25 employees to clean the museum, they will not cost it 160.000L.E monthly. When Dr. Khaled sent to the financial department to pay the money to the company, the financial department refused to pay because they should review the item and the paragraphs of the signed contract but Dr. Khaled does not have a copy of the signed contract thus, no one could inforce the financial till now to pay the money to the company. So the museum doesn’t have cleaning Services Company yet till now, the new manager decided to change the job description of the museum’s employees to be cleaning services employees. He asked every department to clean part of the museum in fact, first week he bought on his own account towels and cleaning equipment and materials. It was a visible change on the museum walls and exhibition halls but the challenge that who will clean the floor, the toilets and will throw the wastes?!! Definitely, no one from the museum staff accepted.
Recently, we still have the four employees from the old services company because he doesn’t cancel the contract with them till the staff of the military company come, now the Ministry of antiquities is obligated to pay for two services companies the old which doesn’t take their money since 9 months and the new company which the financial department refusing to pay till reviewing the contract. This the disaster that we have at the Egyptian museum, the maintenance is worse than before unclean toilets, museum’s windows broken, normal lamps that we are using at our homes have been installed instead of the
48 | P a g e original lamps. I am one of the employees who refused to clean at the museum because it is not temporary situation, I am leaving every day from my home as conservator or responsible for display not for cleaning toilets and floors” Orabi said.
The museum is always full of dust because the demolition of the national Democratic Party (NDP) where side by side to the museum, last year was the digging and construction of underground parking in front of the museum, before the restoration and renovation of Ritz Carlton hotel where is next to the museum. Last 6 years we are early morning for one hour cleaning the museum beside the staff of the cleaning service company because there are some artifacts need certain treatment as the artifacts which are made from sandstone and limestone they don’t know how to clean them they are using water so the dirties get attached to the objects and make the edges get darker and black so we are cleaning them by ourselves using alcohol and water. We are spending the whole day on cleaning the objects and cannot handle our time for the rest treatment and care of the collections.
The critical point about contracting with companies belongs to the military forces that you cannot negotiate your contract items with them, hiring untrained and unqualified staff because you don’t have the right to choose them and in case damaging artefact the ministry does not have the right to judge them, the ministry does not have any powerful to control the safety of the artefacts. Even in case of careless or uncommitted the ministry doesn’t have any rights. - Rain water The glass of the museum’s roof is broken, has not been maintained since 15 years ago and the wooden frames of the glass since 1902. It is clear from the deteriorated condition of the roof that a complete overhaul is necessary for new protection by a new layer of waterproofing material, we are using plastic sheets to cover these holes and gaps because when it’s raining, we found the rainwater inside the museum and over the cabinets. (Figure 41)
Figure 41: Shows the current condition of the roof which is broken, unsecure and needs complete overhaul. Photo credit: the researcher, November 2015.
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- Paints The museum exhibition halls have been painted many times but unfortunately, in 2004 Dr. Wafaa Elsedik, General manager of the Egyptian Museum at this time approved an experiment to repaint some exhibition halls with new paintings recommended by American researcher in return for financial support. The applied new paints do not match with rest of the museum’s exhibitions at all, are too dark colours as well during the painting they removed the original lights units and repainted over the original paintings which have been since 102 years. According to the law any building after 100 years became artefact and it is forbidden to carry out any changes on this building so what happened is a trespassing from the Egyptian Museum management against the culture heritage in Egypt. (Figure 42)
Figure 42: (Left photo) shows the new paintings which have been applied in 2004 after 102 years over the original paintings (right photo) which still painted on other exhibitions halls. Photos credits: the researcher, November 2015.
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- Environmental Control Regarding the environment control, generally the museum does not have air conditioning, and the objects are not well distributed in the showcases however, till 2002 we were opening the showcases putting silica gel and pesticides especially for the organic collection and monitoring the vitrines but lately, due to lack of financial support we hardly do. Moreover, the museum does not has risk management for example the objects are not secured inside the vitrines against robbery, during 25th revolution there was Molotov bombs which caused vibrations and movements for the objects inside the vitrines as well, the looters entered to the museum brook the vitrines and took statues from bronze not to steal them but using them as hammers to open the vitrines. So we are losing the artefacts not due to robbery only but using them as tools for rubbery too. There is no object at the museum is well secured or secured in appropriate way except the heavy statues which fixed in the walls by iron poles since the opening 1902. (Figure 43)
I remember when the looters entered to the EM, we discussed with the previous Minister of antiquities to put iron windows in front of the museum’s glass windows to secure it against rubbery and moloves bombs because the political situation is not stable at these days. The minister answer was a shock for me (Orabi) “I think if we put these iron windows the museum will not look so good from outside” the minister said. Orbai then continuing saying ” …the answer of the minister explains you how the government dealing towards it’s heritage so I am not wondering about the current situation of the museum as much as the state is controlled by this mentality”.
Figure 43: Shows the current methods which are used in exhibitions of EM to secure the objects inside the vitrines by hanging a jar from a weakness point (the neck) using steel wire. Photo credit: the researcher, November 2015.
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- Handling and Moving the artefacts from the Egyptian Museum to The Grand Egyptian Museum Now the Military Forces started to be involved in the cultural policy also by taking deals for projects from the ministry of Antiquities by direct order without having rights to refuse or discuss the items of the contracts.
One more example, the current minister gave a deal of handling and moving the selected artefacts from the Egyptian Museum to the Grand Egyptian Museum to the Military Forces instead of contracting with experienced company which are specialized in moving artifacts. When the military came to check the selected artifacts which will be transferred to GEM, they said “we will provide the process of moving the artefacts only by cars that can afford tons and heavy weights as big statues but the ministry of Antiquities will be responsible from moving and handling the statues from inside EM to outside the EM”. Orabi saying “The problem is not the experience, the problem is that what will happened if an artefact was broken during moving process, Orbai continuing saying “no one will be able to judge or accuse the army of damaging the artefacts, but if you have civil specialized company the service of moving the artefacts will be better and guaranteed 100% because the company will pay insurance in case of damage not as the military service the contract with no insurance.
He said too “according to the new law, the state gives the right to the manager of any governmental organization to make a deal by direct order as we said before instead of making announcement on the national newspaper and choosing the best offer (tender) and in case of figuring out any something illegal works on the deal the state can make a pay settlement. For example the Manager of the Museum can agree with the Military to move the artefacts from EM to GEM for return 150Million Egyptian pounds (L.E) but in fact it costs 130 Million and the Manager will take 20 Million if the government figured out this fraud, he will not enter to the jail even for one hour on the contrary, he will send the 30 Million back and then he can back to his work as he was.
Now the majority of governmental sectors making deals with the Military to be away from searching behind them about their frauds. Then the Military in particular, the engineering sector of the Military forces offering tender to the companies of the market and the companies making their offers to the Military directly as we are saying “work under the table” because the Military taking the project with a certain budget and giving it to another company with less budget because the Military doesn’t have enough workers to implement this project as a result of all these works the state affording the double as earnings to the Military and the companies as well affecting of the quality of the accomplished work.
By the way, on 80s also the Museum was hiring workers for moving the artefacts, these workers majority of them were well experienced from Upper Egypt (Luxor and Aswan) and were using the ancient ways to move the heavy artefacts which have been used by the Ancient Egyptians. I saw them lifting a statue of Ramsess II over than 7 tons in so easily and safety way. Unfortunately, now we have only two of them at the Museum and they will get pension 2016.
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Moreover, till now there is no vision or philosophy has been discussed about how the gilded Chariots and Booths of King Tutankhamun will be moved especially, these artefacts have been installed since their discovery 1922 by Howard Carter. These artefacts require deep thinking, high standard of preparations and strategies, not even one study has been applied how will move the booths from the museum completely installed or in pieces? If will be in pieces they should make sure that they can reinstall them again and if the booths will be installed how will be carried from second floor to outside the Museum.(Figure 44& 45)
Recently, the team who are responsible for packing and moving the artefacts from EM to GEM are just moving medals, coins and small statues to submit a report to the Ministry that 4000 objects have been moved but in fact these objects are coins and medals have been moved in two wooden boxes 1mX2mX80 cm height. Finally, as the current Egyptian government as big example does not has any strategies or philosophy to lead Egypt after the 25th revolution and Muslims brotherhood rule even after five years how Egypt will be? As a ministry of antiquities we don’t have any strategies or philosophy and the Grand Egyptian Museum will be opened August 2018.
Figure 44& 45: The booths and the chariots of King Tutankhamun which will be moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum. Photos Credits: The researcher November 2015
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5. DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS
5.1. Extension the Museum
To address the issue of lack of space, one of the major developments proposed for the upgrade of the whole area will be the construction of several new buildings/facilities immediately west of the existing museum premises, on the land currently occupied by the burnt NDP building. (Figure 46)
Demolition of National Democratic Party (NDP)
The dock continued to welcome the museum’s visitors from the banks of the Nile until the 1952 Revolution, when the land was sequestrated by the government from the Egyptian Antiquities Authority, now the Ministry of Antiquities, and used by various departments of the regime. The last tenant was the NDP, which shared the large Nile-side premises with the National Council for Women, various national agencies and the Arab Bank. On the evening of 28 January 2011, the building was gutted by fire in the midst of fierce fighting between security forces, demonstrators and thugs during demonstrations in Tahrir Square. On the same day, the Egyptian Museum itself was partly looted despite attempts to protect it by protesters who formed a human chain around the site. Thieves raided the museum’s shop for jewelry, smashed display cases, and ransacked the ticket office. Protesters succeeded in capturing a number of people who had broken into the museum, confiscating stolen artefacts and handing them over to the police. Some of the stolen objects were recovered within days of their robbery. Meantime, former minister of antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim described the burned-out NDP building as “a time bomb and a real threat to the museum and its priceless collection.” The former NDP headquarters was considered unsafe and could collapse at any time.
There are several proposed ideas plans of transforming the building into a national human rights watch headquarters, the building has great view of the Nile by turning it into a hotel, become a politically historical museum, January 25 Revolution Museum and Cultural Centre to document the dictatorship of the old regime and how the Egyptians made it to freedom44.
Figure 46: The NDP-building after the fire, with the Egyptian Museum in the back.
44 Farah Montasser. NDP headquaPhoto rtersCredits: building Dedmaxopka,- what will it livebe, Ahram journal. Online , August 2011.
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In early October 2015, a ministerial decree was issued ordering the demolition of the abandoned NDP building. The job was given to the Engineering Department of the Armed Forces. Clearly, the demolition will offer great land opportunities that should be used for implementing cultural programs and museum activities rather than for the construction of another governmental building or a shopping mall and hotels that will add no value to the museum as following:
Incorporating this land within the Egyptian Museum’s grounds will reconnect the museum with the River Nile. This idea is routed in the fact that The Nile is as important to Egypt today as it was in ancient times, when its banks witnessed the founding of a great ancient civilization. The construction of extension buildings on the western side of the existing museum will profit the museum and would be related to its current cultural and scientific activities including temporary and permanent exhibition halls, new restoration laboratories, administrative offices and other museum facilities. The building that will help to redistribute the EM collections in appropriate, modern and scientific way for better display and meeting the visitor’s needs. Holding a special permanent exhibition documenting the 25th of January Revolution, along with photos, films and artefacts documenting Egypt’s old revolutions, and a graffiti museum. The 25th of January Revolution sparked a wave of street art, which until then, had barely been visible. During the 18 days of mass revolts that toppled the regime, people began to further explore various art forms. Photographers and painters, writers, poets and artists will exhibit their works to celebrate the revolution.(Figure 47- 49)
Egyptians are struggling to ensure the success of their revolution. When protesters returned to Tahrir on multiple occasions, after sectarian violence and after certain political powers, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, tried to dominate the political conversation, protesters in the square as Egyptians, not as Muslims, not as Christians, and not belonging to one party or another. This Egyptian identity has been built on a shared and diverse historical heritage, including our ancient Egyptian heritage.
Supporting the ancient Egypt should be in parallel with supporting the modern Egypt for example presenting the unified Ancient Egypt and unified modern Egypt during revolutions and wars. It is very important to focus on the unity of the Egyptians without discrimination to religion, political view or profession all of these can be only achieved through establishing exhibitions about the revolution where all the Egyptians were one row equal. Egypt’s diverse museums are not only essential for Egyptians as potential recreational spaces but also as cultural nodes where citizens can contemplate the past, discover shared history, reclaim and reconfigure national identity, and develop critical views of the objects and the institutional settings in which they are placed. For a country at a transitional and critical moment in its history, museums can function as places of artistic and political inspiration.
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Figures 47-49: group of photos show: An Egyptian graffiti showing a mummy shouting I am freedom embodies 60years of the military control, Nefertiti in a gas mask, Muslims & Christians in Egypt Unity - 25 January Revolution. Square in Cairo. Photos credits: Pinterest.com
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5.2. Evacuation the Museum to the opening state 1902
“The Ministry of Antiquities has long recognized the importance of building great museums. However, until now, there has been no written philosophy to set out a vision for the future. No coherent plan was made to create engaging displays or develop cultural or educational messages for visitors. Until recently, only the Nubia Museum in Aswan and the Luxor Museum fulfilled any of these requirements” Said Zahi Hawass, Minister of antiquities (2000-2011) 45
The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir houses 300.000 objects approximately in display and storerooms which has traditionally been storage places for artefacts not a museum anymore. As part of this proposal, The Egyptian Museum will has a message along with a written proposal of action for the education of children and adults. Traditionally, Egyptian museum has displayed its artefacts in ways that focused only on death and the afterlife, but we now need to have civilization museum elucidating our culture as whole and specialized museums revealing specific aspects of life in ancient times. Reinstating the museum to the opening state in 1902 since 113 years with 36.000 objects will has a great profit to the Egyptian museum and will help in the development of the national cultural policy in Egypt generally and EM especially as following:
The Egyptian Museum will display the history of art in the Pharaonic period and will also have exhibitions dedicated to the history of Egyptology instead of the current exhibitions which have been installed since many centuries ago with no interpretation and satisfaction of visitor’s needs. The museum from inside became like a maze; it is so difficult to get a clear message or understand the aim from the displayed objects. Egypt has 300 museums; Ministry of Antiquities has 52 only which is too small number in comparison to the number of artifacts which are already on museums, storerooms and daily being excavated from Egypt’s lands. New museums will be established for these artifacts which will be moved from the Egyptian Museum for example the Grand Egyptian museum (GEM) near the Giza pyramids will receive from The Egyptian Museum 20.000 objects among these artifacts will be the 5,000 artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun. GEM will be organized around five themes: The Land of Egypt, which will focus on the geography and landscape of the country; Kingship and the State, which will focus on the activities and responsibilities of the king, his family, and his highest officials; Man, Society, and Work, depicting the lives of ancient Egyptians; Religion, dealing with gods, their state and folk cults and also including mortuary beliefs; and Culture, Scribes and Knowledge. The Civilization Museum in Fustat will depict the entire historical landscape of Egypt and will also house the royal mummies which are displayed at the Egyptian Museum. Establishing regional archaeological and sites museums for example the collection in EM which belongs to an archaeological site outside Cairo for example Ismailia* it
45 Zahi Hawass, A New Era for Museums in Egypt, Heritage landscape of Egypt, Vol LVII, n° 1, 2 2005.P. 225-226. * Ismailia: is a city in north-eastern Egypt. Known in Egypt as "The City of Beauty and Enchantment" is situated on the west bank of the Suez Canal
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would be better to move these collections to the original place which have been discovered to reach to all Egyptians, offering many new opportunities to learn about their past, not all people from this city is going to travel to Cairo to see the collection as well it is a ways of reducing the more crowd. All these activities strengthen the value of our museums as cultural and educational platforms, and help build our nation. Reshaping the touristic map of Egypt, Egypt not only Cairo, Luxor and Aswan Thus, the ministry should think effectively that the all tourists come to Egypt and visit only one or two museums maximum because the state is displaying the master pieces and hundreds of thousands of artifacts under one ceil. For example, the collection of King Akhenaton who was husband of Royal Queen Nefertiti and established a city is called Amarna* the collections are displayed at EM, I think establishing an archaeological site museum as Acropolis Museum in Greece highlighting Akhenaton and Nefertiti and their role in the religious revolution that brought their god, the Aten, into prominence will has a great interest to the tourism distribution in Egypt.
5.3. Temporary and travelling exhibitions
Temporary and travelling exhibitions are magical cards, the Egyptian ministry of Antiquities should utilize to fundraise and self-finance through the stored artefacts instead of being stored suffering from damage and continuous deterioration by selecting a group of objects and installing or dealing for exhibitions inside and outside Egypt. This will help to save these objects because they will be conserved, well exhibited, preserved, insurance coverage and moreover, the unregistered objects will be registered till now the basement of EM full of artifacts no one knows the certain number of the objects. A recent example is the loss of 387 pieces of jewelry (bracelets dated from the Roman period), which might still be at the Cairo Museum as Hawass stated.
5.4. The paintings of the Museum
Regarding the paintings of the museum original colors will be used as a range of four basic colors: Pompeian red on the lower part of the wall, pistachio green on the upper part of the wall, grey stripes at different levels of the walls, light beige/sand colour for the upper mouldings.
5.5. Environment Control
Any enclosed space—a box, room, or building—contains an environment. The environment is the total of the container’s surroundings and circumstances. It may be easiest to control the micro-environment rather than trying to control the whole building because the natural ventilation that exists in the museum is the best system for such a building. The installation of a centralized, heavy and expensive air-conditioning system is, therefore, not envisaged. So the proposal will focus on controlling the factors which affecting badly on the artefacts as following:-
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5.5.1. Controlling RH and Temp.
To determine the control measures for a macro-environment, parameters must be established. To do that, set the acceptable lighting, temperature, humidity, and environmental requirements comes first. In turn, those parameters drive the development of environmental control strategies.
For the majority of objects containing hygroscopic material (such as textiles, ethnographic objects or animal glue) a stable relative humidity (RH) is required in the range of 40 - 60% and a stable temperature in the range 16 - 25°C.
More sensitive materials (e.g. scroll paintings on silk, paintings, vellum or parchment) will require specific and tight RH control, specified according to the materials.
Less sensitive materials (e.g. stone, ceramic) can have wider parameters for RH and temperature.
Humidifying can be done as a function of a machine called a humidifier. When these devices are lacking, humidity management by sealing extremely sensitive materials in micro-environments with buffering agents may help. To monitor temperature and RH in environments, some key tools are:46
Thermohygrometers Hygrothermographs Psychrometers
Figure 50: RH ranges for potential collection threats Photo Credits: Museum Exhibitions
46 David Dean. “Controlling the exhibition”, Museum exhibition theory and practice, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. P. 67:69.
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5.5.2. Controlling Light
The existing lighting system, which relies both on the skylights and, over more recent decades, on artificial lights, is obviously insufficient to provide adequate lighting for all the displayed artefacts. The team thus proposes redesigning the electrical lighting system to provide adequate illumination and enhance the beauty of the objects. Most of the new lighting will come from projectors that will be hung on the ceiling. In order to reduce the negative effects of sunlight penetrating through the skylights, it is necessary work to restore the skylights. Triplex, UV-filtering glass panes have also been fitted, replacing the old ones. (Table 1, 2)
Space type Design level (FC) Conference rooms, Auditoriums……. 30 Corridors, lobbies and means of access 15 Storage areas 10 Service and public areas 15 Circulation areas 30 *A foot-candle (FC) is a measure of illumination, 1FC= 10 lux. Objects sensitive to UV Foot-candles Oil and tempera paintings, natural leather, horn, bone, ivory, 30 lacquer. Textiles, fabrics, tapestries, drawings, prints, watercolours, manuscripts, books, stamps, gouache, dyed leather, botanical, 15 specimens, skins, fur, feathers, insects. Metals, stone, glass, ceramics, jewels, enamel and natural wood are not sensitive to UV radiation and maximum light levels need 10 not be limited.
*some objects may be damaged by infrared (heat) and/or humidity to varying degrees. Levels should not exceed 40 FC as rule.
Simple and cheap methods Installing curtains blinds with horizontal or vertical louvres, or shutters Siting display cases/display screens out of strong daylight zones Reducing the number and wattage of light bulbs Cutting out illumination when the museum is closed to the public Blocking out windows The UV light must be screened out by UV-absorbent film or glass in one of the following ways: a. Laminated glass UV filter. b. Acrylic/polycarbonate sheets. c. UV varnish applied to window or display case glass. d. Polyester film applied to window or display case glass. e. Plastic filter sleeves for fluorescent lamp tubes. 47
47 Timothy Ambrose, Crispin Paine. Museum basics, second edition, Routledge 2006. P. 169.
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5.5.3. Controlling Air pollutants Particulate matter (dust) and pollutants (airborne chemicals) pose another problem, usually solved by passing incoming air through a series of filters before it enters the building. It is important to control the entry of dust into galleries and storage areas, but that is a very difficult task to accomplish, especially if the museum building is not sealed against the outside environment. Where possible, entry to exhibitions or even buildings should be through two sets of doors forming a dust trap between them. 48 Basic precautions include:
Avoiding putting objects on open display Using well-made, dust-resistant display cases Keeping objects wrapped in acid-free tissue paper Using dust covers for large objects Keeping doors and windows shut and sealed where possible or desirable Ensuring public and staff areas of the museum are kept as clean as possible Cleaning museum areas with vacuum cleaners, not dusters 5.5.4. Controlling biological activity and pets attack
The control of living organisms in museum is achieved through three main activities: 1. Monitoring 2. Prevention 3. Extermination Fumigation of items, which may be necessary to kill eggs or larvae, is a hazardous procedure, and appropriate equipment and safeguards are essential. Vigilance and regular inspection are required to avoid damage to collections prevention is better and more cost- effective than cure.49
Insect traps are normally a combination of two components-a lure or attractant and a killing and retention system for example the use of sticky traps for early warning or monitoring infestations of insects originated with the ancient Greeks who used bowls filled with goat grease for fleas and bed-bugs. Detection of insects to provide early warning of insect presence and monitoring of infestation levels by use of sticky traps. The critical factor in effective monitoring programmes using sticky traps appears not to be the trap type or design but in the correct location of the trap. Insect traps in museums, galleries and historic houses tend to be positioned to catch crawling insects.
Insects attracted to the traps are killed and/or retained until they can be disposed of. Typical systems used are:
Electrocution by a high voltage grid Drowning in the attractant solution or water Fumigation with a vapour-phase insecticide such as dichlorvos
48 David Dean, Museum exhibition, Theory and practices, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. p, 70:75 49 Timothy Ambrose, Crispin Paine. Museum basics, second edition, p, 175-176.
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Exhaustion of the insect in a closed container such as a funnel trap from which it cannot escape.50 6. CONCLUSION
Egypt with its wealth of ancient artefacts, European powers profit from Egypt’s cultural heritage. Foreigners were destroying ancient edifices, extracting stones and other worked objects and exporting them to foreign countries. If this was continued, it was clear that no more ancient monuments will remain in Egypt. So the First Egyptian Museum was established to take measures against the theft of antiquities.
Egyptian museum has not received the attention it deserves from both foreign and Egyptian scholars. Although Europeans claim their superiority in the field of museology, they failed to emphasize local interests when they founded the museums in Egypt. Both imperialism and nationalism affected museum development in Egypt in different ways.
I have endeavoured in this thesis to illustrate a cultural process regarding museums. I have also attempted to explicate the development of first museums in modern Egypt, in particular the Egyptian Museum. Europeans developed the field of museology as a science, but Egyptians are not working well to adapt it to their own needs. Although several museums were constructed in Egypt during the last years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century but, these museums are still storehouses. They lack the necessary resources that allow their personnel to manage their museums according to professional standards.
This study considers several factors that affected the development of museums in Egypt. Imperialists battled over Egyptian museums. The politics of imperialism and nationalism played an important role in hindering their development. French Egyptologists tried to control Egyptian antiquities because they claimed to be the first decoders of the hieroglyphic language and the authors of the first encyclopaedia devoted to Egypt, the eighteenth century Description de l'Égypte. Its publication made Egypt known throughout the world. The British, on the other hand, desired to control and make use of all Egypt’s resources.
As a result of this agreement, the French controlled Egyptian antiquities until 1952. Auguste Mariette, Gaston Maspero, and others controlled the antiquities and limited the publishing of any new discoveries. Mariette constructed the Museum of Boulaq and arranged for the founding of the Egyptian Museum in Qasr El Nil (Currently Al-Tahrir Square).
The Egyptian Museum was designed according to the colonial system (Greco-Roman style) and came to reflect Western ideologies by isolating Egyptian history within the urban fabric of Egypt itself. When the museum opened in 1902, the British had control over the state schools that educated Egyptians the British policy, supported by the French directors of the Egyptian Museum, opposed hiring Egyptians in significant positions in the museums.
50 R. E. Child and D. B. Pinniger, Insects trapping in museums and historic houses, first International Conference on Urban Pests, K.B. Wildey and Wm H.Robinson (editors). 1993, p. 267-269.
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I have demonstrated that the display of the Egyptian museum came to reflect the colonizer’s policy in focusing on national mission rather than enhancing the professionalism of the colonized. Instead the museum served as a place for forcing Egyptians to keep their voice down and to have to follow European methods of managing and controlling.
The Egyptian Museum served as a storage place where archaeological finds could be cleaned and examined. Mariette and Maspero managed excavations throughout Egypt and gave permissions to foreign expeditions to work in Egypt’s archaeological sites.
However, they would reserve the important sites for themselves. In managing the museum and the archaeological sites, the French asserted that they were capable of recreating the cultures of their colonized. Publishing was the responsibility of the Europeans, who kept the natives away because they were simple and incapable of handling scientific research. The Europeans used the Egyptian Museum to enhance their power.
Following the 1952 Revolution in Egypt, the new leaders took control over the Antiquities Services. It is not surprising that nationalists intensified the excavation activities to challenge the colonizers’ long dominance. In doing so, the nationalists too used the museums as storage areas for their finds and prevented modernization. I wonder why we have to continue in excavation activities while we are unable to afford secure and safe environments for the collections we already have. Unfortunately, the nationalists were imitating their colonizers in order to display their power and to emphasize the end of colonial rule in Egypt. The museum was used as a tool to support a nationalist agenda.
In the last sixty years Egypt is under Military Rule, most Egyptians experienced heritage either as it was fed to them by the state or as a tertiary, unimportant element of life given that over half of the population lives under the international poverty line. It will be difficult to bring those who have been disenfranchised back to Egypt’s museums and cultural institutions. And this will be made even more difficult as museums continue to function with a security-minded, tourist-centric approach that incorporates no programs and initiatives to attract the public after they move their buildings to inaccessible, gated desert locations. Egyptian museums are in the hands of a few persons, in collaboration with companies such as Discovery and National Geographic. Egypt’s heritage has been monopolized, commercially packaged, and exported.
There is no excuse for Cairo’s Museum of Egyptian Antiquities’ current condition with peeling paint and missing artefacts replaced by hand-written notes saying in Arabic “under restoration” or “in a traveling exhibition.” The decision to move to a far-flung location, despite the availability of a large swath of land in the heart of Tahrir Square is mysterious. The area in front of the Museum was the athletic field of the Army Barracks that once occupied the site of the former Nile Hilton and the Arab League. The area became public land and was transformed in 1954 into a public garden at the heart of Tahrir Square. Parts of it were taken away and made into a bus station, then a parking lot, under Sadat. And for much of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency, a large area had been fenced off and made into a site of permanent construction supposedly for an underground parking facility with little
63 | P a g e progress to show after over a decade. It would be ideal to build the modern extension of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities directly adjacent to the existing building in the heart of the city, but this does not fit into Mubarak era anti-urban policies. For decades, Mubarak’s governments favoured exclusive gated developments over integrated urban projects. The earliest example of those policies was the 1985 decision to build Cairo’s new Opera in a gated campus in Zamalek, rather than rebuild it in its original location at the heart of Opera Square.
By interviewing Egyptian museum staff’s, I realized that the lack of museological consciousness might be among the obstacles to the advancement of museums in Egypt. This lack of museological consciousness can be traced in Egyptian Egyptologists’ confirmation that museology is a European invention which is not taught as a formal curriculum in Egypt. It can be also traced in Egyptian museological writing. Until today, Egyptian Egyptologists, conservators writing are not strictly scientific since it is based on general descriptions of museums’ collections, it focuses solely on Egyptology and ignores museology.
On the other hand, Egyptian authority needs to have its part in developing the museums. With the revolution of January 25th and the creation of a “New Egypt”, Egyptians should develop their own new directions in museum policy that would allow museums to generate financial resources out of their own assets and devote those resources toward museum improvements not involve the Military Forces in projects and deals related to Museology field and the Military has no experience to implement such projects. One way that should be attempted would be to develop a sound policy that would maximize traveling exhibits and devote the profits to enhancing museum personnel, who would accompany such exhibitions, and to developing the museum system. Extension of the Egyptian Museum should be applied in parallel temporary exhibitions and travelling exhibitions. The demolition of NDP will offer great land opportunities that should be used for implementing cultural programs and museum activities. The Ministry of antiquities should start registration the objects inside all museums in Egypt. Daily these artefacts are in danger due to lack of security, inappropriate storage and exhibition conditions. So the government should develop the security system and Environmental control in Egyptian Museums.
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