It is one of the largest and most famous international museums, located in the heart of the Egyptian capital “Cairo” on the northern side of Tahrir Square. Its establishment dates back to 1835 and its location at the time was in Azbakeya Garden, where it contained a large number of diverse antiquities, then it was moved with its contents to the second exhibition hall in the Citadel of Saladin, until the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, who was working at the Louvre Museum, thought of opening a museum in which he would display a group of antiquities on the banks of the Nile at Bulaq, and when these antiquities were exposed to the risk of flooding, they were moved to a special annex in the palace of Khedive Ismail in Giza, then came the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero and in 1902, during the reign of Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, opened the new museum building in its current location in the heart of Cairo. The Egyptian Museum is considered one of the first museums in the world to be established as a public museum, unlike the museums that preceded it. [a] The museum contains more than 180 thousand artifacts, the most important of which are the archaeological collections found in the tombs of the kings and the royal entourage of the Middle Dynasty in Dahshur in 1894. The museum now contains the greatest archaeological collection in the world that expresses all stages of ancient Egyptian history.

Before construction :

The story of the museum began when foreign consuls accredited to Egypt expressed their admiration for ancient Egyptian art, and worked to collect Egyptian antiquities and send them to major European cities. Thus, the trade in Egyptian antiquities began to flourish, which later became a European fashion. Gifts of these rare pieces were widespread during the nineteenth century among the aristocracy, and coffins were among the most sought-after pieces. At first, the Egyptians did not understand the motives that made Europeans interested in the stones found in their lands. The most important motive behind the Egyptians’ excavation of antiquities in temples and tombs was the rumors that some of these areas contained hidden treasures.

The Egyptian Museum in Azbakeya :

At that time, Egypt was ruled by Muhammad Ali Pasha, who initiated a new strategy based on opening Egypt to the Western world. In 1835, Muhammad Ali Pasha issued a decree establishing the Antiquities Authority and the Egyptian Museum, and assigned the management of that authority to Youssef Diaa Effendi, under the supervision of Sheikh Rifaa al-Tahtawi, to take charge of the antiquities of the past. He succeeded in warning public opinion of the value of antiquities and ordered the issuance of a decision on August 15, 1835, prohibiting smuggling and trading in Egyptian antiquities, and even the necessity of maintaining and preserving them. At that time, the Egyptian Museum overlooked the banks of the Azbakeya Lake, and was then attached to the School of Languages.

Egyptian Museum in the Citadel :

Youssef Diaa Effendi, the Director of the Antiquities Department, began, upon assuming his position, to inspect the antiquities of Middle Egypt that were found by peasants. In 1848, Muhammad Ali Pasha assigned Linan Bey, the Minister of Education, to draw up a comprehensive statement of the archaeological sites and send the important antiquities to the Egyptian Museum. This work was not crowned with success due to the death of Muhammad Ali Pasha in 1849, which was followed by another turmoil and the phenomenon of antiquities trafficking reappeared. The collection that was contained in the museum that was established in Azbakeya began to shrink until it was transferred to the Citadel of Saladin in one hall. What made matters worse was the gift of the entire contents of that hall by Khedive Abbas I to Duke Maximilian of Austria during his visit to the Citadel. 

Egyptian Museum in Bulaq (Antikhana) :

Egyptian antiquities continued to be looted, plundered and destroyed until Khedive Abbas ordered the directorates to impose strict control over foreigners and Egyptians who were stealing, hiding and selling antiquities. Then came Auguste Mariette, who discovered the entrance to the Serapeum in Saqqara and conducted excavations in the Apis bull necropolis that lasted for about three years. He sought to convince those in charge to establish an Egyptian Antiquities Service and an Egyptian Museum. On June 19, 1858, Khedive Said approved the establishment of an Egyptian Antiquities Service and appointed him as the director of antiquities work in Egypt and the director of excavations. Mariette began intensive archaeological research programs and established a storehouse for antiquities on the banks of the Nile in Bulaq, which was transformed into a museum on February 5, 1859, when the treasure of Queen Iahhotep was discovered in the Draa Abu al-Naga area in Thebes. One of the most important pieces discovered was the coffin, inside which were found a collection of jewels, ornaments and weapons that were of a high degree of magnificence, which prompted Khedive Said to be enthusiastic about establishing a museum of Egyptian antiquities in Bulaq. It was built during the reign of Khedive Ismail and opened for visits for the first time in 1863. The museum was initially a huge building overlooking the Nile and was called (the House of Ancient Antiquities or the Antikhana), but it was exposed to the Nile flood in 1878, and the water flooded the halls of the museum to the extent that a group of exhibits of artistic and scientific value were lost.

Egyptian Museum in Giza :

Mariette considered the Bulaq Museum a temporary place, and after the flood incident he saw the opportunity to demand the establishment of a permanent headquarters for the museum with a large capacity to accommodate a larger collection of antiquities and at the same time be far from the path of the flood. After Mariette’s death, he was succeeded by Gaston Maspero, who tried to move the museum from its location in Bulaq, but was not lucky. In 1889, the building housing the antiquities collections reached the peak of its congestion, as there were no longer enough rooms in the exhibition halls or storage rooms for more antiquities. Antiquities found during excavations were left in boats in Upper Egypt for long periods. This tragic situation led Khedive Ismail to give up one of his palaces in Giza, located where the zoo is now located, to be the new headquarters of the museum. Between the summer and the end of 1889, all the antiquities were transferred from the Bulaq Museum to Giza, and the artefacts in the new museum were rearranged by the scholar De Morgan, in his capacity as director of the museum. From 1897 to 1899, Laurier succeeded Morgan, but Maspero returned to run the museum from 1899 to 1914.

The current Egyptian Museum :

The museum was designed by the French architect Marcel Dornon in 1897 to be located in the northern area of ​​Tahrir Square (formerly Ismailia) along the British Army barracks in Cairo at Qasr el-Nil. The foundation stone was laid on April 1, 1897 in the presence of Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, the Prime Minister, and all members of his ministry. The project was completed by the German Hermann Grabow. [5][7][8] In November 1903, the Antiquities Service appointed the Italian architect Alessandro Barazanti, who received the keys to the museum on March 9, 1902. He transferred the archaeological collections from Khedive Ismail’s palace in Giza to the new museum, a process that involved the use of five thousand wooden carts. The huge antiquities were transported on two trains that ran back and forth about nineteen times between Giza and Qasr el-Nil. The first shipment carried about forty-eight stone coffins, weighing more than a thousand tons in total. However, the transport process was chaotic for some time. The transfers were completed on July 13, 1902, and Mariette’s tomb was moved to the museum garden, in accordance with his will in which he expressed his desire to have his body rest in the museum garden with the antiquities he had spent a long time collecting during his life.[5] The Egyptian Museum was officially opened on November 15. The new museum adopted a display method based on arranging the halls in a gradual order and did not take into account allocating rooms for periods of turmoil, as they were considered of no historical importance. The antiquities in the museum were classified according to their subjects, but for architectural reasons, the colossal statues were placed on the ground floor, while the discovered funerary crypts were displayed on the first floor according to historical sequence, and every day the antiquities were placed and collected in a number of rooms according to their subjects. It became the only museum in the world so crowded with antiquities that it became a warehouse. When Maspero was asked why, he replied that the Egyptian Museum is a picture of the tomb or the Pharaonic temple. The artist used every part of it to place a painted painting or hieroglyphic inscriptions. In fact, the modern Egyptian house at that time had paintings and pictures placed in it so that every part on the wall was used. That is, the museum is a picture of the present and ancient Egyptian.