EGYPT MUSEUM - THE COPTIC MUSEUM CAIRO

MAMAZORAYAS August 03, 2022

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The Coptic museum is located in Old Cairo (Religious Complex), within the walls of the Roman fortress of Babylon, surrounded by some of Egypt's oldest and most important churches, including the Church of Virgin Mary, the Hanging Church, and the Church of Abu Serga,

as well as the oldest Jewish synagogue (Ben Ezra), which dates back to the 9th century AD.

The grounds of the Coptic Museum are serene and serene. Its open-air structure is tiled with mosaics and ornamented with antique mashrabiya screens.

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The museum includes a large collection of Christian-era items that connect the Pharaonic and Islamic periods.

THE COPTIC MUSEUM COLLECTION

The Coptic Museum is one of Egypt's oldest and most important museums, containing the world's biggest and most important collection of Coptic antiquities hold a collection of 16,000 artifacts organized chronologically via twelve sections.

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Coptic monuments exhibit a diverse blend of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman traditions, connecting ancient and Islamic Egypt.

The museum was refurbished in the early 1980s with two additional annexes that, along with the original aisles, The artifacts on exhibit depict an often-overlooked time in Egypt's history, as well as how the aesthetic evolution of the Coptic civilization was impacted by the pharaonic, Graeco-Roman, and Islamic cultures.

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The Coptic Museum also houses a corpus of 1,200 Nag Hammadi manuscripts in a library accessible only to specialists.

THE COPTIC MUSEUM HISTORY AND MARCUS SIMAIKA PASHA

when you notice a Man statue by the entryway and wonder who he is? he is Marcus Simaika Pasha began construction on the Coptic Museum in 1908, after getting Approval from Pope Cyril V, and it was dedicated on March 14, 1910. The Coptic Museum has the biggest collection of Coptic antiques and artwork in the world, Stonework, woodwork, metals, textiles, and texts are among the mediums represented.

Marcus Simaika (1864-1944) was a Coptic leader, politician, and the creator of Cairo's Coptic Museum. Simaika was born in Cairo on February 28, 1864, to one of the city's oldest Coptic families. The Simaikas succeeded in state and religious service, with several becoming magistrates.

Simaika began his schooling at Cairo's St. Mark's Coptic Patriarchal school. His father picked him to be a priest, as was customary at the time, because at least one son of the top Coptic households was destined for the clergy. As a result, his father prevented him from learning English for fear of distracting him from his ecclesiastical studies. Simaika went on hunger strike until his father relented and agreed to let him study English.

Simaika amassed a huge collection of carved wood and stone fragments and considered establishing a modest Coptic Museum in 1907. Simaika, as vice-president of the Maglis, discovered Pope Cyril monitoring while a silversmith weighed out antique silver Gospel covers and church items to be melted for reworking in 1908. He discovered that these silver artifacts dated from the 14th and 15th centuries and bore Coptic and Arabic inscriptions.

He offered to pay the market value for these artifacts, which would be housed in the projected museum's core chamber. Simaika proposed establishing the museum in a chamber adjacent to The Hanging Church in ancient Cairo entrusting the entire collection to the supervision of Church priests so that the artifacts would remain Church property. Cyril approved, and the Coptic Museum was founded.