The Coptic museum: A silent jewel

Al Ahram Weekly by Nadja Tomoum

The Coptic Museum,situated in the heart of Old Cairo,was built in 1910 by Marcus Simaika Pasha who devoted his life to the preservation and promotion of the Coptic heritage. With the support of the Coptic church, Simaika Pasha established the Coptic Museum at a historically significant location, among some of Cairo's oldest and most important churches. According to a Biblical narration, the holy family rested in this area on their flight from the Jewish King Herod. The journey of Joseph, Mary and the infant Christ to Egypt has greatly influenced the early spread of Christianity throughout the country.

The Coptic heritage is a rather silent treasure in comparison with the splendid artefacts from the time of the great Pharaohs, and yet it is not less important and interesting. Masses of tourists are guided daily through the Egyptian museum -- Egypt's first National Museum --, whereas the Coptic museum attracts the attention of the individual tourist who enjoys the medieval flair of Old Cairo and the unique charm of the Coptic museum.

See the above page for more.If anyone is interested, I plonked a few photographs of the very beautiful Coptic monasteries of St Anthony and St Paul (Eastern Desert of Egypt) at

http://www.coptic.cd2.com/

Bode Museum reopens next week

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Refurbished_museum_to_display_Berli_10122006.html

"One of Berlin's great museums from the age of the kaisers, full of Byzantine, medieval and renaissance sculptures, is to reopen next week after eight years of closure and millions of euros of refurbishment. The Bode Museum is one of five monumental treasure-houses on the German capital's Island of Museums." Bode museum houses one of world's top collections of late Coptic art.

Coptic treasures get the home they deserve

Al Ahram Weekly by Nevine El-Aref

Mogamaa Al-Adian, Old Cairo's religious compound, is finally free of the roar of trucks and lorries that have blocked the entrance to the Coptic Museum for three years now. And the museum itself, with its limestone façade loosely based on the Al-Aqmar Mosque, has finally opened its doors to visitors in an area the attractions of which include the Mosque of Amr Ibn Al-Aas, the Hanging Church and the Synagogue of Beni-Ezra.

On Monday President Hosni Mubarak formally opened the museum during a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and scores of Egyptian ministers and senior government officials. The president was guided through the museum's 26 galleries, containing 13,000 items, by Culture Minister Farouk Hosni and Supreme Council of Antiquities' Secretary-General Zahi Hawass. They also watched a 15-minute documentary film on the restoration of the museum.

"The restoration of the Coptic Museum was an ambitious project," says Hosni. "It is one of Cairo's oldest museums and its restoration is an illustration of the government's commitment to preserving the nation's Coptic, as well as its Pharaonic and Islamic, heritage."

See the above page for the full story.

Mubarak inaugurates refurbished Coptic Museum

http://www.gom.com.eg/gazette/home/detail_2_22.shtml

"In his address during the opening ceremony, Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni said the Coptic Museum is one of Egypt's most important museums as it houses a huge collection of artefacts dating to the Coptic era.

President Mubarak watched a documentary on the restoration of the museum and the methods of display of 1,300 items in 26 halls. Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass said during a tour of the museum by the President that the restoration project included the addition of a new hall devoted to the history of churches in Old Cairo. A hall for temporary exhibitions has also been built, Hawass added. The restoration project, which was carried out by a group of Egyptian experts, began in 2003, Hawass said.. . . . President Mubarak heard a presentation by Ezzat Naguib, director general for restoration works on the Coptic Museum on manuscripts in the museum. The manuscripts, of which some date back to the 4th century AD, including 13 bibles and several exhibits obtained from monasteries in Egypt. . . . Head of the icons section Mervat Megalli briefed President Mubarak on the icon exhibits that range between 300 and 600 years old. Most of the icons are of the Virgin Mary, Christ and a number of saints."

See the above page for full details - please note that the page will be changing shortly.

A museum of Coptic identity

Al Ahram Weekly By Jill Kamill

With photos (click the small image to see the bigger photographs)

The Coptic Museum is approaching the last stage of structural restoration prior to its official re-opening this year as a state-of-the-art museum. Jill Kamil looks into what's going on

It was no easy matter to gain access to a building that was being restored -- or transformed, rather -- and even more difficult to find someone able, or willing, to talk about progress, plans and deadlines. The Coptic Museum has been off-limits to visitors for a long while now, and with rumour circulating that some galleries would re-open this year, Al-Ahram Weekly sent a team to investigate.

The reason for our interest was that no attempt had ever been made to sort out this huge jumble of Coptic antiquities of more than 16,000 objects according to historical sequence. This was understandable a century ago, when Morcos Samaika founded the museum, because provenance details for the bulk of the objects were not available. They had been collected haphazardly from abandoned burial grounds, derelict monasteries and ancient temple sites. Because Christian monuments were of little concern to early archaeologists, objects were trodden into the earth, covered by sandstorms, or used for garden decorations. In a word, neglected.

When in 1910 Samaika assembled the wide array of objects which revealed different ethnic influences, it presented him with a dilemma: how to put them into some semblance of order? He opted for the easy way out. He grouped the objects into media -- stonework, metalwork, tapestries, manuscripts, woodwork, pottery, glassware, etc. A few galleries were devoted to objects from a single source, like those
from the fifth-century monasteries of St Jeremais at Saqqara and St Apollo at Bawit, but there were also galleries of "miscellaneous objects".

See the above page for more.