The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to the most extensive collection of pharaonic antiquities in the world. It has 136,000 items on display, with many more hundreds of thousands in its basement storerooms.

The museum is an outgrowth of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, established by the Egyptian government in 1835, in an attempt to limit the looting of antiquities from sites, and protect artifacts. Its museum opened in 1858 with a collection assembled by Auguste Mariette, the French archaeologist retained by Isma'il Pasha. After residing in an annex of the palace of Isma'il Pasha in Giza from 1880, the museum moved to its present location, a neoclassical structure on Tahrir Square in Cairo's city centre, in 1900.

The highlight of the collection is often considered to be the tomb artifacts of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, whose almost intact tomb Howard Carter found in the Valley of the Kings in 1922.

The museum's Royal Mummy Room, containing 27 royal mummies from pharaonic times, was closed down on the orders of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. It was reopened, with a slightly curtailed display of New Kingdom kings and queens, in 1985.

A new Egyptian museum

The Grand Egyptian Museum will be built by 2007-2010 at the cost of $US 350M. The museum will be sited on 50 hectares of land in Giza and is part of a new master plan for the plateau. On January 5, 2002 Egyptian President Mubarak laid the foundation stone. The museum site is about three kilometers from the Pyramids.

To view all the artifacts in the Egyptian museum is almost impossible as if a traveler will spend three minutes each,it requires nine months to explore the Egyptian museum.Here are some of the most important artifacts in this great museum.

COLOSSUS OF AMENHOTEP IV

These colossal statues of Amenhotep IV come from one of temples built by the young king and dedicated to Aten before he transferred his capital from Thebes to Tell al-Amarna, next to the temple of Amun –RA at karnak . At the beginning of his reign when he still tolerated cults to other gods , Amenhotep IV had several sacred  buildings raised around Thebes , in particular in the areas scared to the ancient god Montu in the district of Thebes : at Medamud , Tod ,Ermonti , and karnak . His intention of conflict with the priesthood of Amun , dominant in Thebes , was evident .

The colossi found at Karnak are among the most conspicuous items from the Theban phase of the reign of Akhenaten . the colossi rest against pillars in the courtyards of  the temples depicting the pharaoh standing with his arms folded and hands gripping the flail and heqa scepter , a symbol of royal authority .

His wrists and arms bear the " didactic name " of the Aten : the programmatic name of  the sun god stated in the doctrine  championed by Akhenaten himself : " Long live Ra- Harakhti , who rejoices on the horizon in his quality as light that is in the Aten " The face of the king seems sunken , his eyes narrowed , and his chin long , imbuing the statue with an emotional tension that was typical of the early phase of Amarna art . The two plumes over the king's head ( the statue on the right ) are the symbol of the god shu; the statue on the left wears the double crown of the Two Lands . Of the various and very similar colossal statues of Akhenaten found at karnak , one shows a naked , " sexless " version of the king as the " mother and father " of this people , and by others as simply being an unfinished statue.

A shrine made from alabaster –a stone that the Egyptians quarried in the caves at Hatnub in middle Egypt-lay inside the monumental shrine made of gilded wood found in the treasure room of king Tutankhamun's tomb.The form of the alabaster shrine resembles the model of predynastic period temples in Upper Egypt.It is fixed to a gilded wooden sled that was supposed to facilitate movement of the object.The inside of the shrine is divided into four compartments that held the solid gold sarcophaguses that contained Tutankhamun's internal organs.The compartments are closed by alabaster lids that bear the image of the king;his face is framed by the nemes headdress while a vulture and a uraeus serpent,the emblems of rotal power,appear on his forehead.

Relief images of Isis,Nephtys,Neith and Selket- identified by the Hieroglyphic marks on their heads-appear on the corners of the shrine with their arms open to protect the body parts of the pharaoh.The inscriptions engraved on the sides of the shrine are formulas intoned by the goddesses to further protect Tutankhamun.

The base of the shrine is covered with thin gold leaf decorated with a line of djed and tit symbols in alternating pairs;these are the emblems associated with Osiris and his consort Isis respectively.

FUNERARY MASK OF PHAROAH TUTANKHAMUN

The splendid solid gold mask protected the head,shoulders and upper chest of Tutankhamun's mummy.The youthful and graceful facial features from an idealized portrait of the king.The slightly elongated face,the almond-shaped eyes with their curved eyebrows,and the fleshy lips are some of the typical features portrayed during the reign of Akhenaten.

Tutankhamun is wearing the nemes,a white and blue striped linen headdress puled close around the head,fixed over the forehead,with two flaps at the side and an attachment at the rear.The horizontal bands are formed using blue glass paste which imitate lapis lazuli.The nemes was reserved for the sovereign,often replacing the crown.

The figures of a vulture and a uraeus serpent can be seen on the king's forehead.They are made from solid gold inlaid with carnelian,lapis lazuli,and glass paste and represent the two guardian deities of Upper and Lower Egypt,Nekhbet and Uadjet,which when shown together symbolize sovereingnty over unified Egypt.The king's eyes,reproduced with quartz and obsidian,have the corners eyes realistically painted red.A long false beard made from gold and glass paste with the curved tip typical of the gods hangs from Tutankhamun's chin.The ears have perforated lobes in the Amarna fashion and are slightly asymmetrical.The large usekh collar is formed by twelve rows of beads made from lapis lazuli,quartz,amazonite,and colored glass paste.Its ends have two clasps in the form of falcon heads,each the image of the god Horus.

Hieroglyphics engraved in columns on the king's back and shoulders cite a magical formula which came to be a part of the book of the dead during the new kingdom period.It invokes various deities whose limbs are identified with those of the dead king.

A large number of very fine alabaster vases,many from the previous dynasties,were found in the grave goods of the underground stores of Djoser's step pyramid at Sakkara.The vase shown here is from the second dynasty.

The artist produced an effective and expressive symbol of one of the most important ceremonies of the era-The Sed festival or royal Jubilee-during which the king publicly reconfirmed his authority over his lands and regenerated his energy by undertakinga  ritual running.

The handless depict the images of the two thrones of Upper and Lower Egypt protected by their respective canopies.The king toke his place on the thrones as the absolute Lord of the Two Lands after receiving homage from the various deities of Egypt.

As images on a flat surface were never portrayed frontally,the thrones are seen in profile although they were in fact placed side by side.They rested on the square base flanked by the two stairways shown on the bulge of the vase.Below the kneeling god of eternity,Heh,raises his open arm as seen in the hieroglyphic heh meaning "millions".

To the northeast of the pyramid,Djoser rebuilt the buildings where the jubilee festivals were celebrated to ensure that the most spectacular and fundamental of the royal attributes would endure for "millions of years".

This Leopard head adorned a garment that imitated the animal's skin with the use of silver     .The use os stars in       of spots can be     back to the archaic period      of leopard as a symbolic representation of the sky.

The leopard skin was the distinctive attribute of the sem priest who was charged with revitalizing the mummified body of the pharaoh in the ritual known as the "Opening of the mouth." If the deceased was his predecessor,the new pharaoh would supervise the ceremony dressed as a sem priest.

The tomb also contained other leopard heads and various fragments of hides.

The three statuary groups of Menkaura  fully reflect the classical ideal of court sculpture in which the pharaoh's human nature is transfigured into a divine dimension .

Within a rigid stylistic and compositional schema , the figure of the pharaoh crowned with the white tiara of Upper Egypt is clearly dominant over the other two figures , both in size and because of his central and more forward position looking at the observer . He is wearing a shendit , a short pleated skirt , and grasps two cylindrical objects the function of which is unknown  .

To the right is the goddess Hathor wearing a three-part wig crowned by her attribute – cow's horns and a sun disk – and holding the symbol of eternity,the shen.the figures to the left of the king are the personifications of the nomes of Upper Egypt where the goddess was particulary revered,each of which is crowned by its respective emblem.The standard with the image of bat above the Isiac knot represents the province of Diospolis Parva immediately to the south of Abydos(1).The crouching jackal is the emblem of  the nome of Cinopolis(3)while the small male figure with the was scepter beside the king personifies the nome of Thebes(2).A short inscription at the feet of the figures describes the statues:Hathor is "The lady of the house of the sycamore in all its seats,"the sovereign is "The king of Upper and Lower Egypt,Menkaura loved eternally,"and both receive offerings"of all good things"from the nome represented.

The faces of the figures are identical so that only the attributes of each identify them.Beauty was an immutable value the reflected the perfection of the cosmos,and the gods,of whom the pharaoh was one,were the most complete expression of that beauty.

The superb rendering of the triads,each froma  single block of stone,reveals the hand of  an experit artist capable of harmoniously modeling the various parts of the body of each figure,of suggesting their forms below their clothing,and of smoothing the delicate volumes.

This votive tablet is an item of major artistic and historical importance.Egyptologists have long interpreted the scenes on the sides as a celebration of the annexation of Lower Egypt by king Narmer of Hierakonopolis,however,the dynamics of the events that led to Egypt being ruled by a single monarch are uncertain and it is only possible to have a sketchy idea of the political context in which the rulers of the first dynasty lived.

If it ever really happened that a northern and southern kingdoms existed  as rivals,then it is probable that the two lands have already been united before Narmer's rule and that Hierakonopolis,where many finds refer to the rulers of the city,would have played a prime role in this process.The enterprise immortalized by narmer more probably refers to a military victory over an area in the delta identified as uash.

The front of the tablet shows the triumphant king reviewing a double line of decapitated prisoners;the pharaoh is followed by a dignitary who holds the royal sandals and is preceeded by another dignitary and the four standards.The standards have been identified as the "followers of Horus",i.e.of the pharaoh.They are very ancient emblems of the first territorial units.Wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt,Narmer is the incarnation of the ruler of the north who strikes against those who rebel;this authority is displayed by the attributes he holds in his hand-the soldier's club and the royal scepter.He is the powerfull bull that attacks the fort and overthrows his enemies,and,in the central register,overcomes the forces against him represented by the wild cats with long entwined necks.The point in which malachite was crushed is the focus of the scene.The name of the king in the serekh,flanked by two Hathoric heads,is the main element on both sides of the tablet.

On the reverse is the victorious king with the crown of Upper Egypt defeating the enemy of uash;it emphasises  the hieroglyphic message that shows Narmer as the falcon Horus holding the man of the papyrus land (the Delta)on a leash.

By a happy coincidence,the earliest example of life-size royal sculpture to survive to the modern day is that of the first great pharaoh of the Old Kingdom period;his stone image is the most majestic and stately image in the history of Egyptian art.Mant other were commissioned by the rulers that succeeded him,but none,across three millennia,ever succeeded in conveying so effectively that sense of dominion,strength and superhuman power that today still raises awe and reverence in the observer.

The massive throne merged with the ruler's body in a single square block complied with the stylistic norms of pharaonic sculpture;the figure is hardly suggested,being veiled by the ceremonial jubilee cloak and rigidly locked in a pose that suggests eternity.

Djoser's face,on the other hand,is extremely austere and portrayed in every detail:the high cheekbones,fleshy and pronounced lips,moustache and ritual beard give the expression an intensity that the sunken(originally inlaid)eyes were supposed to emphasize.These features can be seen in the faces of the king's subjects,a tradition that was to last centuries,which were based on their master as being the model of aesthetic perfection.

The head is heavily framed by the symbols of his power:the thick three-part wig covered by a short lined headdress and the artificial beard.The inscription on the front part of the base bears the titles Nysut- bity "king of Upper and Lower Egypt";Nebty "the two ladies"i.e.the goddess-cobra Uadjet from Buto in the Delta and the Goddess vulture Nekhbit from the southern city of El kab,the incarnations of the two lands;and finally one of the names of Djoser,Netjerkhet i.e."His body is divine"

The statue stood in the serdab,a room on the north side of the step pyramid next to the funerart temple,which allowed the deceased to see the eternal world through a narrow opening at the height of the statue's eyes and consequently to be present at the ceremonies celebrated in his honor.

The use of wood as a material in sculpture became more established during the fourth dynasty;it was certainly more ductile and versatile but also more perishable.Work like the statues of the priest-reader Ka-aper,which have escaped the wear of time,are rare examples of what was a diffuse type.

The statue was originally covered with with a light coat of painted plaster,slight traces of which remain,and portrays with extreme realism the satisfied opulence of a well-to-do man pleased with his social position.The eyes-made from alabaster,crystal and black stone and ringed with copper in imitation of make up-vividly bring the face of the priest to life and reflect his dels-important personality.

The attitude of the figure more resembles the traditional typologies of bas-reliefs than of stone statues:he is shown in the act of advancing with his staff of power(here substituted with a copy)in one hand and probably a cylinder in the other,clothed in a long skirt tied below his navel.His short hair accentuates the rounded lines of his head and face merging in a composition of full and smoothed volumes.

Unlike stone statues in which the figure is never completely librated from the material in which is carved,wood sculptures are more independent,freed from the dorsal supports and filled spaces between the limbs which were worked separately and applied afterwards.

The firm personalization of the facial features of the figure means that this work falls into the "veristic" artistic school rather than the "idealistic"which tended to cancel the physical characteristics of the individual and conform the figure of an ideal type.The physiognomy of the statues of Ka-aper is so markedly naturalistic that,when they discovered it,Mariette's workers saw in it the features of the mayor of their village,translated in Arabic as Sheikh al-balad,the name by which the sculpture is still known today.

Immensely famous ever since its discovery,this statue of Khafra represents the apotheosis of the sculptural skills of the court artists applied to the sublimation of the royal divinity.

The pharaoh is portrayed on a cubic throne carved entirely with symbols of royality:on the front,lion paws and protomas,and on the sides,the symbol of the sema-tauy ,the emblem of "uniting of the two lands"(Upper and Lower Egypt)represented respectively by the papyrus plants and the lotus knotted around the hieroglyphic of the trachea.

The purpose of the statue was to legitimize and celebrate the universal authority of the pharaoh,of whom the throne was one of the most powerful expressions,as the guarantor of the stability and unity of the country.The concept is further emphasized by the presence of the god-falcon Horus who protects the head of the king between his wings as though to underline the perfest symbiosis of the man and the god.

Khafra wished to dive an unequivocal sign of the supreme function that the gods had assigned to him and to whose world he belonged by the creation of an unspecified number of identical reproductions of this statue(23 of them were found in the funerary temple)to illustrate the synthesis of earthly and heavenly power.

The statue overcomes the formal limits of simple sculpture and becomes a meassage in itself:it is a three dimensional hieroglyph cut from stone.

The skills of the sculpture succeeded in turning a work of complex ideological content into a masterpiece.As often happens,the choice of the stone was a determining facto in the success of the excution;in this case,a high quality stone like the hard and compact diorite was an ideal material to creat full but not heavy volumes,with the three dimensional relief rendered softer by the careful polishing of the surfaces.

The figure of the pharaoh seems therefore to reflict the light of his own divine essence,an effect that is cleverly emphasized by the dark green veined with white of the diorite.

STATUE OF RAHOTEP AND NOFERT

The mastaba of prince Rahotep and his wife is one of the largest from the necropolis of Maydoum.Below the east façade,decorated with the customary false-door niche,archaeologists discovered an earlier wall face with a  cross-shaped shrine decorated with low reliefs and superbly executed paintings of plaster.It is not known why the earlier wall face was overlaid.

The two statues and items with which they were discovered are examples of Egyptian art produced during the reansition from the third to the fourth dynasty.With regard to the execution,the pair are a fine  illustration of the strict canons that governed the iconography of this period;the couple are portrayed in the unavoidable conventional pose on a square seat painted white to give contrast to the black hieroglyphics.The lower part of the body is treated perfunctorily,almost negligently,while all the artist's attention is concentrated on the upper half,culminating in the brilliant quartz and alabaster eyes.Athletic and moderately muscular,rahotep's flesh is colored brick-red;he wears the traditional white loincloth and has very short hair.Nofert is wrapped in a shawl that resembles archaic models and leaves visible the shoulders of her dress.Her pale yellow face is framed by a heavy two-part wig softened by a charming floral diadem.The prominent forms of the woman emerge voluptuously but discreetly from behind the light material that covers her and creat a pleasant contrast with the lean,flaunted physique of her husband;the contrast is further emphasized by the elaborate necklace that adorns her décolleté compared to rahotep's sober choker.

It is these small technical points that give life to the whole work.The unknown artist was able to distribute the volumes and opulence of the forms and attributes so as to break the static symmetry of the two figures,though without detriment to the intimate communion of the couple

The statuary group of dwarf Seneb and his family was found in a small naos in his mastaba in Giza.The crudely realistic sculpture has become famous for the ingenuity of it composition:Seneb's physical deformity is hidden as much as possible by a skilful optical trick:his short legs,crossed below his skirt,are disguised and continue into the figure of his two children.The illusion is completed by the symmetrical representation of his wife's legs,covered down to her ankles,with the result that the artist was seemingly able to provide Seneb with what nature denied him.

The Egyptian conception of the world did not allow deviations from the principle of order and balance that had regulated the universe since its creation,and therefore the purpose of every form of art was to represent the mythical archetype.From this point of view,the existence of Seneb's physical defect is not denied but it is hidden so that the aesthetic harmony of the group could be saved.

The figure of the wife with her arm around Seneb's shoulder is very expressive;the lack of color in her eyes does not soften the gentleness of her glance,and the slight movement of her upper body is a gesture of devotion towards her unfortunate husband that seems to want to stop time.

The two children are shown in a typical pose:naked,sucking on a forefinger and,in the case of the boy,with the typical plait of childhood that falls to his shoulder.The inscription on the base and the front of the chair reveal that Seneb was the funerary priest of the pharaohs Khufu and Djedefra and in charge of the royal wardrobe.The dwarf's tomb was one of the first attempts at building a ceiling dome over a square chamber.Rows of jutting bricks at the corners of the room slowly created the circular plan on which the dome rested.

Memphis    

The Step Pyramid   

The Pyramid of Chephren