Egypt inaugurates two new museums at Cairo International Airport
Collections of artefacts will be on display in Terminals 2 and 3
Egypt's tourism and antiquities minister on Tuesday inaugurated two museums inside Cairo International Airport in observance of International Museum Day, celebrated annually on May 18.
The new museums are inside Terminals 2 and 3 and will hold artefacts to give travellers a "glimpse of Egypt's treasures", said an official Tourism Ministry announcement released on Facebook on Tuesday.
The artefacts were chosen to represent the Egypt's various civilisational eras including the Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic periods.
Most of the pieces were in storage at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, the Suez Museum and Alexandria's Greco-Roman Museum, said Prof Moamen Othman, head of the ministry's museums department.
The collections were chosen by the Tourism Ministry's Supreme Committee for Museums.
The inaugurations, which were also attended by Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Manar, took place early on Tuesday morning.
But the government had announced early in 2020 that it intended to open a museum at Cairo's airport as part of its efforts to boost the country's tourism, which was hit hard by Covid-19.
Among the museum's most prominent exhibits are two well-preserved mummies.
The face of one mummy, from the Roman era, is covered in a gilded mask and decorated with colourful drawings.
The other comes from the Late period and depicts a man in the Osiris position.
Prof Othman said one of the most important pieces on display was a bronze statue of the winged goddess Isis, wearing the two horns of Hathor with the sun disk between them.
The exhibits also include a group of canopic jars from ancient Egypt, small pieces from the Islamic and Coptic periods and a group of portraits from the Late period.
In celebration of International Museum Day, Sharm El Sheikh Museum launched the "I Can" initiative in collaboration with a group of young volunteers in South Sinai.
They will revamp tourism to the governorate, which holds some of the Red Sea's most popular beach destinations.
Through this initiative, archaeologists at the museum gave educational tours to students from international school in the area, teaching them the significance of the artefacts there
The students will be given the chance to show what they learnt through a tour in which they will act as guides and pass on their knowledge to museum visitors.
The student tours will be conducted in languages including English, Russian and Italian.
World Museums Day is taking place this year under the theme of "The Future of Museums, Recovery and Reimagining".
Updated: May 19, 2021 03:20 AM
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