Remaking History’s Shelves

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<td align=left>[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]</TD></TR>
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Wessam Omar

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February 2010
Remaking History’s Shelves
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]
By Michael Kaput

The building that houses the office in charge of the nation’s museums at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) downtown is grand but half-finished. With some work, it could be truly magnificent. Whether that work gets done anytime soon is anyone’s guess. The same could be said about the SCA’s colossal undertaking to give the country’s staggering collection of artifacts a new showcase.

Flush with ticket revenue from international exhibitions and local tourist sites, the SCA is in the midst of a project that will see 20 new museums covering every governorate, and long-closed favorites re-opening to the public over the next five years. More than just cash cows feeding on tourist dollars, however, the new museums are also hope to reconnect Egyptians with their own heritage, in their own neighborhoods.

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<td vAlign=top width="100%"></TD></TR></TABLE>“Ten years ago, we didn’t have any [major] museum, only the Egyptian Museum,” says Mohamed Abdel Fattah, head of the SCA’s Museum Sector.
Indeed, the nation’s most famous museum is also its most infamous, with many visitors complaining about poor lighting and labels, crowded displays and no air conditioning. Renovation projects have added new display spaces for the royal mummies, temporary exhibitions and a revamped outdoor museum in the back garden. In January, a permanent children’s museum opened on the premises. The fact remains, however, that the nation’s collection of Pharaonic artifacts alone had outgrown the Egyptian Museum almost as soon as it opened in Tahrir Square in 1902.
The Downtown location was also considered a problem. “The people [in other governorates] are not able [] to come to Cairo to see the museum,” says Abdel Fattah. “We have to reach out to these people. We have to tell them about their civilization, about the history of their governorate.”
Until 2002, the museums were focused almost solely on the major tourist centers. Opened in 1892, Alexandria’s Greco-Roman Museum had a similar storehouse feel until it closed for renovation in 2005. The Luxor Museum opened in 1975, with a renovation and new annex completed in 2005. The Nubia Museum in Aswan opened in 1997, after 30 years in the planning.
When Dr. Zahi Hawass was appointed head of the SCA in 2002, he aggressively pushed for the new museums, according to Abdel Fattah. The SCA drafted a plan to build a museum in every governorate, as well as jumpstart stalled renovations on several others, including the Sohag Museum, delayed since 1998 and now set to open within a year.
Since then, the SCA has seen the Alexandria National Museum open in 2003, the Coptic Museum in Cairo reopen in 2006 after a complete makeover; a new site museum about the Pharaonic architect Imhotep open at Saqqara and, in November 2009, the re-opening of Howard Carter’s dig house on Luxor’s West Bank as a museum about the man who discovered King Tut.
Compared with the museums that have opened or been renovated over the last 15 years, the Egyptian Museum still looks like a neglected warehouse. “You can’t consider it a museum,” Abdel Fattah says. “There are no good installations, no good showcases, no good lighting. No places for the amusement of visitors. It is in bad condition, I can say. It was a storehouse.” But, he says that this is changing.
Part of the SCA’s plan is to air out the museum, transferring more than 20 percent of the objects, including the famed royal mummies, to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC) in El Fustat, due to open in two years. King Tutankhamun’s treasures will be moved to the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) being built at the Giza Plateau, which the Museum Sector head confirms is on schedule to open in five years.
While the blockbuster exhibits are heading to the outskirts of the capital, Abdel Fattah emphasizes that after an extensive renovation, the Egyptian Museum will still showcase some of the best antiquities.
The grand plans for the capital’s museums have been much publicized and often delayed. Abdel Fattah acknowledges that things have moved slowly in the SCA’s museum project. Renovations alone take about four years, he says, and the Islamic Museum, already delayed past its initial projected 2009 opening, has taken six. The museum sector head now predicts an April 2010 opening for the Islamic Museum.
The contract for the GEM’s architectural design was awarded in June 2003, but construction was delayed until 2006, when the Japanese government offered a $300 million loan to kickstart the $550 million project.
All things considered, the GEM has progressed quickly. The contract to build the Nubia Museum was signed in 1967, at the height of the international campaign to save the monuments from a rising Lake Nasser. Construction didn’t start until the mid-1980s, and only after the Egyptian government reached out to UNESCO for help.
Funding issues aside, Abdel Fattah chalks up many of the delays on various museum projects to the contractors working on the buildings and the age of the buildings themselves. In the case of the Islamic Museum: “The problem is it’s an old building. It is something like a sick man and when you [perform] surgery, you find [] another problem.” Alexandria’s Greco-Roman Museum suffers the same ailments; Abdel Fattah says the SCA hopes to reopen that museum in three years.
In the short term, the Suez Museum, focused on the Suez Canal, is the first to be unveiled, expected to open in April this year. The renovation of Alexandria’s Royal Jewelry Museum is also near completion; according to Abdel Fattah, the SCA is “reviewing the labels” on exhibits while preparing for the opening ceremony.
Several other regional museums have already been built and are awaiting the next step. The Aten Museum in Minya — a 25-feddan complex dedicated to Akhenaten, the first monotheist pharaoh — is awaiting only on interior design work. The Sohag Museum, looking at the pre-dynastic period circa 4000 BC, is at a similar stage, as is the regional museum in Sharm El-Sheikh, which, according to Abdel Fattah, will open in a year and a half. The Crocodile Museum, next to the Temple of Kom Ombo, is complete and will open soon.
Still in the planning stages are a museum for the Roman-era site of Kom Osheim in Fayoum, a Mosaic Museum in Alexandria and a museum in El-Arish.
The SCA sees museums as a self-generating investment. Revenues from existing museums and international exhibitions have padded the SCA’s coffers, according to Abdel Fattah. In 2008, Dr. Hawass told Al Ahram Weekly that the SCA earned nearly $350 million (LE 1.9 billion) from 23 international exhibitions, such as the still-touring Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of the Pharaohs, over the last five years. The money is being funneled back into SCA projects with potential for big returns.
By investing in museums in high traffic areas such as Sharm El-Sheikh, Abdel Fattah notes, the SCA can generate funds for new conservation and exhibition spaces in less traveled areas.
The price tag is a sum fit for a pharaoh: Abdel Fattah estimates that LE 50 million will be spent on the Suez Museum alone, and possibly double that on the Aten Museum in Minya. For the high-profile museums, local ticket receipts are not enough to get the project off the ground. The Japanese stepped in to support the GEM, and the Italian government has signed on to the Egyptian Museum makeover, budgeted at 1.32 million (LE 10.16 million), according to local media reports.
While the Cairo-based projects attract international press coverage and funding, it is clear that the vision has changed from Cairo as the central showpiece to a broader regional focus, playing on the strengths of each region’s history and population. “I think within five years, the whole map [of Egyptian museums] will change,” says Abdel Fattah.
There doesn’t seem to be much concern over whether tourists will flock to some of the more obscure places on that new museum map, such as Sohag or El-Arish. SCA officials hope the galleries will be filled with local visitors.
To that end, these new museums represent more than an attractive way to house artifacts: They symbolize a new way of thinking about how the country’s antiquities are preserved and presented to the public, especially to the nation’s youth. In addition to on-site conservation labs to preserve the artifacts, features like the Egyptian Museum’s new children’s exhibit will be a staple at all the new museums.
“This is a new generation,” Abdel Fattah explains. “We have to [engage] them with [their history].” et

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