CAIRO, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Egypt has inaugurated the primary part of renovations on the venerable Egyptian Museum in central Cairo, giving the gathering a facelift after lots of its objects had been relocated to different museums across the nation.
The constructing in Cairo’s Tahrir Sq. first opened in 1902 and has lengthy ranked as one of many world’s biggest museums, with its huge shows of Pharaonic artefacts that stretch over 3,000 years of historical past.
Tourism is a significant greenback earner in Egypt’s cash-strapped economic system and has been regularly recovering from a number of hits, together with political turmoil after a well-liked rebellion in 2011, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which reduce off a considerable movement of vacationers from each nations.
Egypt hopes to develop its tourism business by 25% to 30% a 12 months, Tourism Minister Ahmed Issa stated on the inauguration ceremony on Monday.
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The renovation, financed by the European Union and assisted by 5 main European museums together with the Louvre and British Museum, was designed to modernise the presentation of the objects. A few of its show circumstances dated to the mid-Nineteenth century.
Amongst its treasures despatched to newer museums had been objects found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, which had been relocated to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, scheduled to open inside months, and a royal mummy assortment, now within the Nationwide Museum of Egyptian Civilization 4 km to the south.
“The Egyptian Museum continues to develop itself, permitting it to compete with the opposite main fashionable museums,” Issa stated.
The renovation was additionally designed to enhance infrastructure, archiving and digitisation, in line with a press assertion.
The wing of the museum inaugurated on Monday incorporates artefacts by no means earlier than displayed, together with the gathering belonging to twenty first Dynasty King Psusennes I, who reigned till about 1,000 B.C., museum official Abir Abdelaziz stated.
Additionally on show is the Waziri-1 Papyri, a scroll containing 113 chapters from the E-book of Dying, and the primary to be found and unwrapped by Egyptians, stated Mostafa al-Waziri, secretary basic of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
(This story has been refiled to repair a typo within the headline.)
Reporting by Amr Abdallah, writing by Nafisa Eltahir; Modifying by Patrick Werr and Sharon Singleton
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