Tutankhamun’s famous home is undergoing a facelift (no glue involved)
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Version 0 of 1. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the home of Tutankhamun, has seen better weeks. First it emerged that Tut’s beard – perhaps the world’s most celebrated artefact – had been broken by clumsy curators. Then it was said that bungling conservators had reattached it with the wrong glue. Officials at first downplayed the story, then owned up to it, before finally the museum’s chief conservator was moved to a rather less glamorous position at the museum of royal vehicles. But the catalogue of mishaps belie the fact that the museum is supposed to be undergoing an official revival. A few rooms away from Tut’s crocked chin, visitors can find a set of newly printed labels. The walls there have also been recently repainted pistachio green, restoring the interior to its original colour. To the casual visitor, these small steps will not seem like the epitome of progress, particularly in the light of Tut’s experiences. But for the top brass of the museum, which houses one of the world’s best collections of pharaonic artefacts, these small steps are the start of the museum’s long-awaited second coming. “It’s to revive the Egyptian Museum,” says its director, Mahmoud Halwagy , whose sunless office is a microcosm of the gloominess of the place. “To return the museum to its original status.” When it was built in 1902, the museum was a jewel in Cairo’s crown. As one of the world’s first purpose-built museums, it had considerable historical significance. Sited, pointedly, across from the barracks of the British occupiers, it was of patriotic importance too. Today it is still a honeypot for what remains of Egypt’s tourists, but it has lost much of its initial aura. The exterior is swamped by nearby traffic jams and building works, while the inside is cluttered and tired, its impressive artefacts inscrutable to most visitors. The museum shop is permanently shut, the restaurant dark and gloomy, and to its critics the whole site has an amateurish feel. The rumpus about Tut’s beard personifies this, as do the museum’s display signs which – if they exist at all – are often written on flimsy bits of paper. “The museum has suffered for a long time from a lack of governmental financial support because of the decrease in the numbers of visitors coming to Egypt,” concedes Halwagy, who writes communiques by hand at his desk. But if the officials at Egypt’s antiquities ministry are to be believed, an official seven-year revival is now under way – a well-funded initiative that comes amid several other attempts to show that Egypt, under its authoritarian new government, is once again open for business after four years of political turmoil. Under the plans, the building will be refurbished and next door, Hosni Mubarak’s burnt-out political headquarters will be knocked down and turned into a garden. Showcases will be installed with protective glass, and machines installed to control the temperature and acidity of the air. “It will kickstart a self-propelling change in downtown Cairo in its entirety,” claims part of a bombastic brochure handed out at a launch for the revival in December, attended by dozens of nodding ambassadors and dignitaries. Much has been promised, but so far only a small part of these grand plans has been enacted. A few galleries on the second floor have been repainted, and within them a young curator, Dr Mohamed Gamal, was allowed to create a small exhibition. Funding for large panels did not materialise, but Gamal printed a series of informative labels. Modest in scale, the well-planned exhibit nevertheless hints at what could be achieved at the cluttered museum with a bit of strategic direction. “Rather than just showing object after object, I wanted to tell a story using only certain objects so that you won’t forget everything when you leave,” says Gamal, as he wanders through the rooms. Gamal belongs to a new generation of Egyptologists hoping to rejuvenate the museum and the ministry that runs it – a generation that, in a metaphor for the country’s wider post-revolutionary condition, wants to move faster than the existing hierarchy does. Gamal would like to let tourists take photos of the artefacts, and encourage curators to tweet about the museum’s treasures. By contrast, the powers that be have yet to update their website with details of what the museum houses. “Why don’t we put it all online?” says Gamal. “The British Museum’s collection is online – we should aim to be like that. It’s not like we have secret stuff that no one else should look at.” Gamal has been similarly outspoken on the revival project. He thinks there is not enough focus on making the museum’s contents more accessible. “The revival is mainly about the building, not the collection,” he says. “But we should be trying to show the world that it’s not just the building that’s changing, but the collection, the display, and the staff.” But while there have been no decisions about how things will be displayed in the revived museum, there are nevertheless huge plans to reconfigure exactly what will be displayed. Many of the museum’s most prized objects will eventually be sent to two new museums being built in the city. The entire Tutankhamun collection will go to the Grand Egyptian Museum (Gem) down by the pyramids, while the mummies will end up in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC) in southern Cairo. In a few years’ time, the Egyptian Museum will be left with just a collection of ancient art. For Halwagy and his counterpart Tareq Tawfiq, director of the uncompleted Gem, this plan spells good news all round. “I think we have guaranteed for [the Egyptian Museum] that it will continue to be a magnet,” says Tawfiq, speaking at his modern offices on the edge of Cairo near where Gem will soon stand. “Once the museum has lost the objects that are crowding its halls, it will start to breathe, and I think it will appear in new glamour.” Others are not convinced. Sitting under the dome of the Egyptian Museum, one of its most passionate curators, Ahmed Samir, praises his superiors and their plans. But he is anxious about the future of his workplace. “If you put Tutankhamun’s treasure in the Gem, and all the royal mummies in NMEC, what will be left in this, one of the most ancient museums in the world?” says Samir. “What will guarantee that this museum will have, after the renovation, the same number of visitors?” Samir hopes the revival project will see his museum fitted with 21st-century technology – touch-screen computers and audio headsets – in order to encourage more visitors. But he wonders whether funds will be spent on such gadgetry when so much money has already been allocated to the city’s other museums. A trip to the building site of Gem helps to explain such anxiety. Unlike many institutions in Egypt, this site feels dynamic and well-funded. The staff are energised, while the buildings that have been finished are voguish and elegant – testament to the resources that have hitherto been put towards Gem’s construction, rather than to its older and less loved sister in central Cairo. Tawfiq says such concerns are unjustified. “Once this process of relieving the [Egyptian Museum] from its ballast has finished,” he says, “I think then will come the moment when more money will be made available to transfer this museum into a really fantastic art gallery.” But for Samir, the nagging question is whether it is necessary to do so in the first place. “I appreciate very much what [senior officials] are doing,” he says. “But when the British built other museums, they didn’t spread the British Museum’s artefacts among the new ones. They kept the British Museum as the most important museum in the country. Why not do the same for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo?” |