How do people feel

[Major Thom]

Now the New Multi Million Museum is finished in Cairo, how do people feel?
Most of the antiquities in it are from Luxor. I would have thought that a big boost to Luxor would have been a big Museum displaying antiquities from the local area.

My thoughts are that the Museum in Cairo should have stayed and a further larger one built in Luxor to display the antiquities found local, including King Tuts goods, and the Mummies found in the Valley of Kings and Queens plus surrounding historic sites. There would have been a spike in local employment while building and also long time employment for permenant staff. I have always been a believer that antiquities should stay local.. How do people think on this?

[carrie]

Didn't know it was finished, thanks for the update.

[Yildez]

Didn't know it was finished, thanks for the update.

It’s certainly not open yet, a friend is in Cairo at the moment and hoped to visit it.

[carrie]

Oh well another case of MT's informants getting it wrong.

[Major Thom]

There was a program on tv showing people walking around and saying they are going to put Tuts things in it. I just presumed it had opened. Anyway the thought of all Luxors antiquities going to Cairo and not staying around the district it was found must raise eyebrows as to what may be happening. It just seems wrong to me.

[newcastle]

Didn't know it was finished, thanks for the update.

It isn’t finished - nowhere near - and scheduled opening is now end 2020. I wouldn’t put any money on that.

The people wandering about were probably builders. There’s also a lot of restoration work going on in the extensive facilities of the GEM.

A tiny fraction of the contents emanated from the Luxor Museum....mainly Tut stuff as it seemed sensible to have all the contents of KV62 in one place.

The idea of having a new, or extended, large museum at Luxor is ludicrous. Tourists there can barely see a fraction of the existing sites in the time available on a typical holiday. The idea is to make the contents a collection of worldwide interest and ( perhaps optimistically) the GEM hopes it will rival the Met , the British Museum and the Louvre as places to visit.

Cairo is the obvious location in terms of accessibility.

[HEPZIBAH]

Historical artifacts being removed from Luxor to the Cairo museum is old news - almost historical information rather than news itself.

Much of the information has been bandied about for years and I am sure there are threads, from the past, on these forums, discussing about it.

[HEPZIBAH]

The question was asked 'How do people feel?
My answer: It does not change how this person feels. Overall the Pharonic artifacts hold little of interest to me.
However, rather like the saying 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket.' , I do believe it is foolhardy to place all your national trasures in one place. In the event of natural or manmade disaster. If all the best and most important are contained together there is a greater potential to lose all.

[carrie]

Think it's a great idea, I am really looking forward to seeing it when and if it does eventually open.

[newcastle]

The question was asked 'How do people feel?
My answer: It does not change how this person feels. Overall the Pharonic artifacts hold little of interest to me.
However, rather like the saying 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket.' , I do believe it is foolhardy to place all your national trasures in one place. In the event of natural or manmade disaster. If all the best and most important are contained together there is a greater potential to lose all.

Good point!

But, unlike many developed countries with collections of art, sculpture, heritage etc. Egypt doesn’t have a supply of suitable depositories for its historical artefacts. There are, of course, a number of museums scattered around the country but most are off the beaten track as far as tourists are concerned....and boosting tourism is a major aim of the GEM.

Hopefully the GEM will not only house Egypt’s greatest treasures but will be afforded maximum security and the highest standards of care and supervision.

There have been a number of museums opened or improved in recent years, housing a wide range of cultural heritage....not only from the pharaonic era...so not all the eggs are in one basket

[HEPZIBAH]

The question was asked 'How do people feel?
My answer: It does not change how this person feels. Overall the Pharonic artifacts hold little of interest to me.
However, rather like the saying 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket.' , I do believe it is foolhardy to place all your national trasures in one place. In the event of natural or manmade disaster. If all the best and most important are contained together there is a greater potential to lose all.

Good point!

But, unlike many developed countries with collections of art, sculpture, heritage etc. Egypt doesn’t have a supply of suitable depositories for its historical artefacts. There are, of course, a number of museums scattered around the country but most are off the beaten track as far as tourists are concerned....and boosting tourism is a major aim of the GEM.

Hopefully the GEM will not only house Egypt’s greatest treasures but will be afforded maximum security and the highest standards of care and supervision.

There have been a number of museums opened or improved in recent years, housing a wide range of cultural heritage....not only from the pharaonic era...so not all the eggs are in one basket

Actually, my thoughts go beyond local or national housing of such things as artifacts and historical treasures. I think that items should be dispersed worldwide. I know that many are, but equally many items these days are being argued over - who legally and technically owns various artifacts, and whether they should be returned to the country of origin.

[newcastle]

Whether artefacts should be housed primarily by their country of origin is a debate that’s been going on for decades. I can appreciate both points of view.

On the one hand it could be argued that they belong to humanity as a whole, and should be easily available to all. On the other hand, insofar as they represent the culture and heritage of a particular country, perhaps they should reside there.

Then you have the question as to where the artefact is best held...for safety and accessibility.

Personally, I have an open mind on the matter.

It’s hard to imagine the Sutton Hoo Viking treasure being housed anywhere but the British Museum....or the contents of Tutankhamen’s tomb being housed anywhere but the GEM.

When you come to items like the Rosetta Stone, the argument seems, to me, less certain. Its importance straddles the subject of egyptology as a whole, its history involved the French and British rather than Egypt and, after all, it’s hardly unique. Several other stelae with script in hieroglyphs and Greek have been unearthed. It just happens to be the one which Champollion studied.

I have some sympathy for Egypt’s desire to have the head of Nefertiti returned. It was smuggled out of Egypt in dubious circumstances and Berlin’s claim that it’s too fragile to move is nonsense. Moreover, now that Egypt has a more suitable home in which to display the head, most of Berlin’s arguments as to why it should stay there look a bit flimsy.

[HEPZIBAH]

I do think that there are some things that do essentially have to stay in their home country. I admit I don't know what those items are. However, there is a danger that when museums and governments are yelling 'It's ours.' and playing political chess with various artifacts and treasures, that everyone could lose out.

[carrie]

My home town has a very interesting museum, part of which is dedicated to Egyptology. As a child I was often taken there I loved the place. A mummy there of an Egyptian Princess in her beautifully decorated sarcophagus ( which has recently been shown to actually be a mummy of a man and the sarcophagus not actually belonging to the mummy) never mind, inspired me to visit Egypt one day.
If those artifacts hadn't been there my life now might be very different.

[BENNU]

...
If those artifacts hadn't been there my life now might be very different.

As a young girl I could spend hours at the Egyptology collections at two museums in Copenhagen, and I found myself alone in a room with the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin, when I was only dreaming about one day visiting Egypt.

Such an inspiring introduction to history is important, I think, but at Louvre I was shocked by the huge amounts of treasures, some far more impressive than what I have seen in Egypt, and that just seemed greedy and felt wrong to me.

Luxor Museum seems empty now, and the general feeling among people I know is sadness that more antiquities will be moved to Cairo, so you no longer have a chance to see them where they belong.