National Library and Archives

The National Library and Archives was established by an AH 1286 (AD 1870) decree from Khedive Ismail on an initiative from Ali Pasha Mubarak. By virtue of that decree, the Library of the Egyptian Khedivite occupied the first floor in the Palace of Prince Mustafa Fadel, the Khedive's brother, in Darb Al Gamamiz. The library was established for the purpose of "collecting the valuable and precious manuscripts held back by the Sultans, Princes, Scholars, and authors from the Mosques, Shrines, and Institutions of Learning."


As the Library grew, the palace became crowded with the collection, and a new location was found in Bab El Khalq Square for the Khedivite Library and the House (Dar) of Arab Antiquities, the present Museum of Islamic Art. The ground floor was allocated to the latter, while the two upper floors were allocated to the former. The Library moved to the new premises in the year 1903 and was officially opened in the beginning of the following year.


The building, once again, became too small to hold the ever-increasing collection, and a foundation stone of a newer building, overlooking the Nile at Ramlet Boulak, was laid in July of 1961. Transfer to the newer premises began in 1973, but the official opening came later in 1977.


In the current development of the Library, new information technology systems were introduced in the reading, manuscripts, and documents halls. The modern system allows users to gain access to the Library's great resources in manuscripts and documents, which include more than 57,000 of the most valuable manuscripts in the world. The manuscript collection covers a vast number of subjects, fully documened, dated, and compiled. It also houses a rare number of Arabic papyri, including a group totalling 3,000 that were discovered in Kom Ashqow, Upper Egypt. These are related to marriage, rent, and exchange contracts, as well as records, accounts of taxes, distribution of inheritance, and the payment of dowries and other items. The oldest papyrus group dates back to the year AH 87 (AD 705), only 444 papyri out of these were published. A good collection of official documents representing endowment deeds and records of different ministries and courts in the various fields of archaeology and history can also be found in the Library. The Library also keeps a good collection of Arabic coins, the oldest of which dates back to the year AH 77 (AD 696).



from this museum

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The Greco-Roman Museum

The Greco-Roman Museum was officially opened on 17 October 1892 by Khedive Abbas Helmy the Second. Giuseppe Botti, an Italian, had undertaken the task of creating a museum in Alexandria dedicated to the Greco-Roman period.

Interest in this period had begun in earnest after 1866, when Mahmoud El-Falaki completed his excavations in Alexandria, bringing to light the plan of the ancient city. Interest in the museum was enhanced by the formation of the Society of Archaeology in Alexandria in 1893.

Initially, the collections were housed in part of a building situated in Rosetta Street, which is now El-Horreih Road. Construction of the first ten galleries of the present building was completed in 1895. The additional galleries (numbers 11 to 16) were completed in 1899 and the facade was completed in 1900. Some of the Greco-Roman artifacts, especially the coin collection, were obtained from the Bulaq Museum (now the Egyptian Museum) in Cairo.

When Giuseppe Botti assumed responsibility for the management of the museum, he enriched it with collections obtained from his excavations in the city and its environs. When Evaristo Breccia and Achille Adriani subsequently took charge of the museum, they continued to supply it with objects from excavations in Alexandria. They also began to obtain artifacts for the museum from excavations in the Fayium region.

The collections in the museum mostly date from the third century BC to the third century AD, spanning the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. The collections are categorized and organized in 27 rooms with some objects exhibited in the small garden.

Negotiations Egypt Germany later this month to regain the Head of Queen Nefertiti

Scheduled to take place Egypt this month, talks with Germany in its bid to reclaim the statue of Queen Nefertiti, as confirmed by the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Dr.. Zahi Hawass, Egypt would continue its claim to recover the head of Queen Nefertiti from Germany.

Hawass added that he would meet on December 20 with Frederika Svrid director of the Egyptian papyri in the Berlin Museum, where the new displays famous statue, which attracts hundreds of millions of visitors from around the world.

He pointed out that he would submit to the director of the museum, who is visiting Cairo for the discussion of the evidence is that the head escaped from Egypt illegally, pointing out that successive German governments refused Egypt's request to return the statue, which abound in the world or painted images made like him.

The head of Nefertiti is the effect due to the Pharaonic reserves in 3400 by Germany, attracting millions of tourists each year, and had left
From Egypt in mysterious circumstances
1912,
Have often been replaced except P diplomat between the two countries.

Statuette of the God Cupid

A bronze statuette of Cupid, the Roman god of love, called Eros by the Greeks, depicts the god as a child of seven years old with two wings. This statuette has lost a wing and part of one foot.

He is sometimes shown carrying a quiver of sharp arrows. Sometimes he is blind, as love is blind, and does not see the faults of the beloved person. Ancient poets wrote a lot about love in their poems. The worship of Cupid was often related to the worship of his mother Venus (Aphrodite).

Dimensions:  Height 9.2 cm

Information on the history of the Sphinx

It is guarding the three pyramids It is a monster made of rock and the head of human body Assadullah We believe that there is an ambiguous one could not interpret a look at the far reaches of the Sahara And the kind of glory Ibg high and 18 meters And 57 meters tall 5000-year-old Why brown sphinx?? There are some inscriptions by the ancient kings of Mlcan Says that the sphinx is a form of the sun god The purpose of this statue to remove all kinds of evil Transferred from the cemetery of the pyramids The meaning of the word sphinx Balfronih (Mr.)

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Re-discovery of the Sphinx of the Western world at the passage of Napoleon in Egypt in 1798, and there are too many statues of the Sphinx on the world, mostly in Egypt and the Giza And some of them as the son of the Egyptian goddess of the sun (Ra) and is thus a force and wisdom and was a symbol of the strong presence of Egypt for centuries ago, but that there is another type of the Egyptian Sphinx and the form of a scapegoat and was continued for another god (Amon) He (Onubis) guard in charge of the cemetery and embalming

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Sculpture of the Sphinx Bazlte rock hard and you may also have set a smaller head of the body because the body was buried under the sand preferred to maintain a coherent structure from the elements in contrast to the desert to bury the head and revealed a number of times over the centuries, the sand removed from the body of the Sphinx fully in 1905 to reveal the beauty of this statue

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Foot length of 15 m and height up to the full 45 m, 10 m high head and offer 4 p.m., and because the composition of the statue of the blessed are several layers have been eroded from other areas and kept the other form and has lost much of the fine details of the original form

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The most common theory that the King Khafre (2558-2532 BCE) of the strain is the fourth property is the construction of the Sphinx, Khafre, the son of Cheops (the pyramid is the largest) and there is a straight path between the Sphinx and the pyramid East (the tomb of Khafra)

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Exist between the feet of the Sphinx gate now called the gate of dreams and carving out the story, tells the story of the eighth generation, the Royal Ttmosis two tenths VI - (c.1400-1390 BCE) Thutmosis IV Nam at the top of the Sphinx, who was lying with earth until his neck. Ttmosis dream that sphinx speech and his promise to become a king but in return to free them from the desert sands and to remove the soil by

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Did not know which it really happened in that period, but it seems that Ttmosis removed sand from the Sphinx then, and believed that the dream was a story fabricated for political purposes, the type of propaganda to prove its credibility and legitimacy of the King For as the ancient Egyptians believed that the gods are decided supported by the pharaoh and the next, and perhaps in this case, the Sphinx itself ..

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Plate made of granite over the gate tells the story of the dream addition to the registration of the first year under the rule of Ttmosis and to the gate of dreams, there is a kind of altar, where the pagan rituals in the era of Ramses II

The Eternal Egypt Website

The centerpiece of Eternal Egypt is a trilingual website which offers the most robust repository of information and media about Egyptian cultural history available on the web today. High-resolution two- and three-dimensional artifact scans, 360º panoramas of locations, annotated multimedia animations, virtually-reconstructed environments, and real-time photos from webcams are woven into a multi-epoch journey through the museum that is Egypt itself.

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The website began as a concept, "Egypt Everywhere," which strove to highlight the major themes that run through the course of Egyptian history. Spanning periods, peoples, and cultures the website was envisioned to appeal to the sensibilities and interests of a global audience. To reflect this concept in the development of a look-and-feel for the site, and consequently all other aspects of the project, IBM conducted a global "call for entries" amongst the e-business Innovation Centers in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, D.C., Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, and Vancouver. The most visually appealing aspects of these designs were taken as inputs for a truly globally-inspired look-and-feel for the entire Eternal Egypt project.

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Ease of use and diversity of options for interacting with the wealth of content characterize the advanced functionality available on the Eternal Egypt website. Organized primarily in "articles", small segments that cohere thematically and can be grouped into stories or tours, the content for the site is accessed in a variety of ways. Visitors can take a birds-eye view of the site by exploring content by type - artifacts, characters, and places - or by the multimedia which represents it. Visitors can think more geographically and explore the collections by the sites and museums which contain them. Or, information can be explored even more visually by moving around an interactive, zoomable map of Egypt. Visitors more interested in exploring chronological relationships between the elements of Egyptian culture can use an interactive timeline. For a truly impressive experience, the Connections function can be used to visualize the implicit and explicit relationships between the artifacts, places, and people. Connections allows the serendipity of thematic connections in Egyptian culture to be your guide through Eternal Egypt.

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A dynamic media viewer enables easy interaction with the thousands of images and multimedia on the website. The viewer adapts to the media under consideration, allowing zooming for high-resolution two-dimensional images and greater manipulation of panoramic movies and virtual environments. The viewer itself is scalable so that monitors of varying sizes and resolutions can experience the most rich visual presentation of content. IBM Text-to-Speech technology enables spoken narration of the content throughout the website and nicely complements the viewer. As visitors explore a three-dimensional reconstruction of the lighthouse at Alexandria, for example, they can also be listening to the story of how this lighthouse came to be, in English, French, or Arabic.

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Personalization features of the website include My Collection, a persistent "notebook" which allows the visitors to assemble their favorite elements from the site. These elements can be saved for later retrieval on the Digital Guide, allowing a truly multi-modal experience of the same content. For example, visitors can assemble their favorite objects in advance of a trip to Egypt for easy retrieval as a cell-phone based tour upon arrival. My Visit charts a visitor's progress through the website, allowing easy backtracking to precisely the elements that were viewed before. A guided tour of site functions, an interactive page-specific glossary, extensive help section, and a low-bandwidth version for different access speeds rounds out the site functionality that makes Eternal Egypt so special.

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The Eternal Egypt site is served to its World Wide Web audience from a "farm" of IBM xSeries servers located at the MCIT Hosting site in Smart Village, Cairo, Egypt. This infrastructure runs on a Linux platform and has been designed to provide a secure, scaleable, and flexible environment, which makes it possible for the Eternal Egypt website to support millions of "hits" each day.

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