The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is the oldest archaeological museum in the Middle East, housing over 170,000 artifacts. It has the largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities in the world. The Museum's exhibits span the period from 5500 BC to AD 364. Beginning in 1835, the Egyptian antiquities were successively stored and displayed in a number of locations. The current museum was built in 1901 and the antiquities were moved there in 1902. In the 1970s, the Art Gallery of Ontario presented a King Tut exhibition. I attended that exhibition and was "blown away" by the artifacts. Since I'm not much of a "museum person" and I had already seen the Toronto King Tut exhibition, I wasn't overly motivated to visit the Cairo museum. However, since I was in Cairo I felt obligated to make at least a brief visit. Once there, I was so impressed with the extensive history and displays that I spent two full days touring the museum. This web site is dedicated to displaying a small number of photos and videos of places that we have visited. This is intended to avoid overloading and boring friends who ask to see our trip photos. On this page, I have stretched my guideline. There were so many outstanding artifacts in the museum that I couldn't help posting a more extensive variety of photos. Even so, this is only a small sample of the amazing artifacts in the museum. Unfortunately flash photography and video lights were not allowed in the museum in order to protect the artifacts. Therefore, I have only video but no photos. Because of 1990s camera technology and the lack of lighting, the quality of my video is substandard. Most of the following photos are frame captures from the video and the quality suffers because of this. Where it seemed appropriate, I have "borrowed" a few better quality photos from the internet. |
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Below are thumbnails of each of the photos. Click on any image to enlarge it. The enlarged image will open in a new window. From there, you can either close the window and choose another to enlarge or simply click the "Next" or "Previous" button to scan through all pictures. |
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| The main floor of the museum contains very large and impressive artifacts. The following three rows of pictures provide a sample of those artifacts. | |||
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The artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamun may be the largest collection
of Egyptian antiquities. It is arguably the most famous and impressive of the displays.
While King Tutankhamun is probably the most well known of all ancient Egyptian pharaohs,
he was a minor ruler during his life. Click
here
for a brief history of his life. The following six rows of photos show a sample of those artifacts. | |||
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| The remaining photos represent a sample of the vast array of fascinating artifacts. | |||
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© copyright Gary & Nancy