Bassir: Egyptian Museums Unique... BA's is Perfect Example

Egyptian museums are known for the precious services they provide and very low entrance fee they charge.

This is what Dr. Hussein Bassir, director of Antiquities at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, affirmed, when he compared the Egyptian museums with other international museums, which charge their visitors tens of dollars, euros or pounds.

Dr. Basir added that Egypt has museums since the nineteenth century under Khepe Ismail, when they were established to overtake a large number of museums in the world such as the British Museum in London and the Louvre Museum in Paris which were palaces and then converted into museums over time Unlike the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, which was established from the beginning in 1902 to cope with the latest traditions of building and exhibiting museums in the early twentieth century.

The Museum of Antiques at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the first museum to be built inside a library. It was established after archeological teams discovered antiques at the location of the library. The artifacts date back to the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine times.

The contents exhibited cover different times for ancient Egypt, starting with the Pharaonic era to the Islamic era through the Greek civilization that came to Egypt with Alexander the Great and followed by the Roman civilization and then Coptic before the introduction of Islam to Egypt. The museum was officially opened on 16 October 2002, and contains 1133 pieces,

classified into two pisions of collections:

1. Artifacts discovered during excavations at the library site (1993-1995).

2. Antiquities collected from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea near the Eastern port and in the bay of Abu Qir.

The museum was designed in a modern style using the latest interior design techniques such as modern optical lighting systems suitable for exhibitions, and fire and theft systems. Recently, the French language was added to the cards in all sections of the museum besides Arabic and English to serve all the museum's visitors.

The first section contains one hundred and eleven pieces, most notably, the most beautiful Hellenistic mosaic floors, which are believed to have covered the floors of the royal palaces that existed in this area.

The Sunken Antiquities section shows some of the artifacts recovered from the bottom of the eastern port of Alexandria and from the bay of Abu Qir - where the ancient cities of Thionis-Heraklion, Canopus and Menuthis were built.

This collection, along with coins, ornaments and amphorae, comprises a unique collection of statues and remains of statues, in which foreign influence is shown on Egyptian art. One such example is a black basalt statue believed to depict one of the Ptolemaic queens, possibly Arsinoe II.

The Bibliotheca Alexandria's Museum of Antiquities includes 183 artifacts discovered on the island of Nelson, located four kilometers from the head of the bay of Abu Qir and eighteen kilometers from the heart of Alexandria.

The constant interest in providing all that is new to visitors to the BA Antiquities Museum was behind borrowing some unique pieces from the Greco-Roman Museum for temporary display. These collections include artistic, historical and archaeological pieces which belong to different subjects and fields and date back to different historical periods.