Latin American Herald Tribune - Web Users Select “Piece of the Month” for Egyptian Museum

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Web Users Select "Piece of the Month" for Egyptian Museum

CAIRO – Web users from Egypt and around the world were able to choose for the first time the archaeological "piece of the month" to be exhibited in July in a special space by the Egyptian Museum, the Antiquities Ministry said Wednesday.

The ministry launched the project on its official Facebook page, where every online user could vote for the "piece of the month" to be exhibited for 30 days starting July 1 in a selected area of the museum.

The ministry wants to introduce the public to pieces preserved in the museum and share the decision of which piece to highlight each month, a choice previously made by museum officials.

The archaeological piece garnering the most votes this month is a Ptolemaic-era relief depicting a woman in labor assisted by birth deities.

An antique wig and a statuette depicting a blue hippopotamus were voted into second and third places.

The Greco-Roman period began in Egypt with the conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. and ended when the Romans took over Alexandria in 30 B.C., putting an end to the reign of Cleopatra VII.

Elham Salah, president of the ministry's Department of Museums, praised the popular vote for this particular stele given "its great archaeological and artistic value."

"Citizen participation in these kinds of initiatives will help create new channels of communication with different segments of society," which "will contribute to raising their archaeological awareness," Salah said in a statement.

The most-voted stele was selected by Web users from among 10 pieces pre-selected by the ministry with an eye toward publicizing pieces usually forgotten in the museum's vast holdings, where mummies, sarcophagi and pharaonic statues get more attention.