Alexandria National Museum (ANM)

The ANM is the latest museum to join the many others present in this coastal city. It is  housed  in a beautiful 3-storey Italian-style building. Most of its exhibits come from other museums  in Egypt. The Alexandria National Museum  has grown in importance these days, and is now  considered one of Egypt's finest museums. It was inaugurated by President Hosni Mubarak  on December 31st, 2003, and is one more addition to the reasons one should visit this grand  old city. The national museum is located in a restored palace and contains about 1,800  artifacts that narrate the history of Alexandria throughout the ages, including the Pharaonic , Roman, Coptic and Islamic eras. There are even some more modern pieces, including 19th  century glassware, silverware, chinaware and precious jewels, which provide a sense of the  richness of the court of Mohammed Ali and his descendants. Mummies are shown in a  special underground chamber (basement). Also, some of the items found during the  archaeological underwater excavations in Alexandria are now on the same floor as the   Greco-Roman artifacts. The museum consists of 3 levels -  the basement housing the Pharaonic artefacts, the ground  level displaying the Graeco-Roman treasures, and the 1st floor - containing relics from  Egypt’s Coptic Christian and Islamic heritage, as well as some insight into the valuables  left behind by King Farouk’s family before the 1952 revolution. Making our visit to the  museum akin to a trek through time, we began with a descend into the basement to view  the Pharaonic artefacts. Set out below are some of the pictures taken from this level of the  museum. The museum is housed in the old   Al-Saad Bassili Pasha Palace. He was one of the  wealthiest wood merchants in Alexandria during his lifetime. It is located on Fouad Street  (Tariq al-Horreyya), near the center of the city. Construction on the site was first undertaken  in 1926. The palace covers an area of 3,480 square meters,. It is a white Italian-style  mansion that sits in an expansive garden of rare trees and plants. The palace consists of   four floors and an underground shelter,  which was used during  World War II air raids. The palace was designed by a French engineer who used the Italian styles in its construction. His three-store palace was  a gathering place for the upper class people of Egyptian society in Alexandria, including  notables such as Egypt’s former Prime Ministers, Ismail Sedqi Pasha and Ali Maher Pasha,  along with many others. This villa was sold to the Americans as a consulate in 1960, and  thereafter in 1997, was purchased by the Ministry of Culture for about 12 million LE. Its  conversion to a museum, including up to date audiovisual equipment, security and fire  protection, cost another 18 million LE. In the preparation of the Alexandria National Museum , the highest of standards has been adopted, especially in display techniques and in the  design of educational and cultural galleries. The recent realization   that Egypt's museums were  originally made not to assume an  educational and cultural role, but rather to function as buildings for storing antiquities had led  the Ministry of Culture to begin transforming them into places which transmit to the visitor  a cultural message about the varied creative products of the Egyptian civilization.  The Alexandria National Museum is the first of its kind in Egypt. It is the only one which  narrates the history of the people of Alexandria through antiquity. Passing through the main gate, one mounts an elegant semi-rounded staircase in view of a  life-size Graeco-Roman Period marble statue of a toga-clad matron. Crossing a small but  luxuriously decorated foyer with two rows of speckled grey marble columns, one enters  the museum proper. Within, one willl find symbolic colors used, just as they were during Pharaonic time, in a  specific arrangement. One will notice that the Pharaonic section itself features dark blue walls. This   color is meant to portray the journey of the ancient Egyptians to their eternal afterlife. In the  Graeco -Roman Period section, objects are set against a sky-blue (marble color) colored backdrop,  reflecting  romance and a lust for life. As Copts and Muslims share beliefs concerning heaven, the  sections  reserved for artifacts from these religious traditions are painted green.   The artifacts within the museum's collection have not been exhibited in the past. They were  previously in storage in various other Egyptian museums, and therefore come from the  Egyptian Antiquity  Museum and the Coptic and Islamic Museums in Cairo. Others are from the Graeco-Roman  and  Jewelry museums in Alexandria, which are closed nowadays for renovation. Items from the Pharaonic Period span each critical period, including the Old, Middle and  New Kingdoms. Among the masterpieces on display is a statue of King Menkaure, the builder  of the third  pyramid at Giza, a head of a statue of Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) and a head of Hatshepsut, the great   female pharaoh of Egypt. There is also a fine statue of a scribe and several statuettes of  servants  depicted in the midst of daily activities. There are also a number of offering tables, building  tools and  statues of deities. In addition, there is a replica of a tomb, similar to those in the Valley of the Kings on the West  Bank at Luxor (ancient Thebes), that contains one mummy along with genuine funerary  equipment.  These items include canopic jars, an anthropoid sarcophagi containing the mummy, ushabti  figures and  the deceased’s private possessions. The tomb is meant to provide an overview of the Ancient  Egyptian concept of burial and the afterlife. Alexandria was a Graeco-Roman city of great splendor, and there is no scarcity of objects  from this period. Among the most noteworthy are the beautifully painted terra-cotta Tanagra  figurines  of fashionably dressed Greek women. The figurines stand motionless with styled looks,  wearing hats or veils, and holding children, fans or pets. From the Roman Period, displays include busts of the Emperor Hadrian and a red granite  statue of Caracala. The collection also includes reports from pioneering scientific studies on  the  human body undertaken in Alexandria, complete with marble hands, legs and torsos. A highlight of the museum is a display (on the Graeco-Roman floor) of artifacts raised  during underwater excavations around Alexandria in recent years. To provide a  comprehensive look at this  new branch of archaeology, huge posters feature activities from various underwater sites over the last  few years. Here, one finds some of the most important pieces raised from the sea bed,  including a black  basalt statue of a high priest in a temple of the goddess Isis, lifted in 1998, a 2.2 meter granite statue of Isis   found in May 2001. There is also the granite stela of King Nakhtnebef, which is an identical  copy of the    Naucratis stela, discovered in the  sunken city of Heraklion offshore from Abuqir. The floor devoted to Coptic and Islamic items has a variety of objects from Egypt's two most  prominent religious traditions. Coptic Christian items include icons of Jesus and the Virgin  Mary and the  Last Supper, as well as tombstones and garments decorated with golden and silver crosses.  Among  the Islamic objects are a collection of 162 gold and silver coins minted in Alexandria,  a number of metal  incense burners, chandeliers, decorated pottery, doors and mashrabiya windows inset with  geometrical ivory ornamentation. Finally, the lives of Egypt's former royal family is revealed in a collection of magnificent  jewelry, bejeweled gold and silver awards, watches, crystal glasses and vases, not to mention gold -plated handbags, rings, necklaces and bracelets. No modern museum is complete without its high-tech restoration laboratory for antiquities  and electronic security system to preserve them, and this museum is no exception. Also,  a hall in the  basement has been transformed into an audio-visual workshop in which visitors can tour the  museum via computer programs that display every item in the museum from a variety of angles.  Use has been made of every available space. The old garage for the American Consulate's staff has been converted into a lecture hall  and an open air theater for evening performances. The open-air theater can accommodate  an audience of about 800, while the lecture auditorium holds about 150 people.  photography is ok but no flash