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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons A case for display
By Nigel Ryan
The Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition arrived in England when I was in the third year of prep school which must, I know, be a perfectly inconsequential coincidence to anyone but myself. Yet the fact is that I remember, and remember quite clearly, something that happened almost three decades ago. There is little else I can recall from that particular year at school. Strangely, though, the hullabaloo surrounding the exhibition had a lasting impact.
Hardly a voracious consumer of the media, it was impossible to miss the excitement the exhibition generated: even the pilot of the plane on which the exhibits were carried became something of a celebrity, giving television interviews in one of which -- I cite this to add veracity to what might otherwise appear vague recollections -- he was asked whether it was the most precious cargo he had ever carried and replied something to the effect that no, nothing could be more precious than the passengers that constituted his usual freight. With hindsight he must have anticipated the question and had the answer prepared. As a nine-year old, though, I was suitably impressed.
There can be no doubt that the touring exhibition was a major PR coup. It generated blanket coverage in every country it visited -- magazines, newspapers and television fell over themselves to run stories. Indeed, at least as far as London was concerned, it created -- and more or less overnight -- the phenomena of the blockbuster exhibition, defining all its essential features -- people camping overnight on pavements to get into the show, queues stretching around the block and then around again. The funeral mask of Tutankhamun -- that ultimate icon of stasis -- became the season's favourite magazine cover. As far as Egypt was concerned, the exhibition generated the kind of publicity of which advertisers and media manipulators can only dream.
The treasures on which Howard Carter almost accidentally stumbled in 1922, propelling an obscure 18th dynasty Pharaoh to international fame, surely rank as one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries ever made. And today they are housed in the Egyptian Museum, home to what is undoubtedly one of the world's finest archaeological collections and an obligatory stop for every tourist passing through Cairo.
Yet there is something immeasurably sad about the museum. It squats, like an aging dowager, on Tahrir square, the recently applied coat of reddish paint already dusty. It looks somehow marooned, the immediate environment unrecognisable from that in which the museum was first built.
A straw poll in the office -- hardly a scientific sample but telling nonetheless -- revealed that no one could recall visiting the museum in the last decade. Had I been asking about the Islamic and Coptic museums, I dare say the answers would have been more or less the same. And while one should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from such a random sampling, it seems to indicate that the bulk of the museum's audience are one-time visitors -- foreigners, on holiday, doing their obligatory guided tour. Such an impression is certainly reinforced inside the museum. Tour groups mill about the galleries and it is German, French, Spanish and English that echo in the air.
The Egyptian Museum is deservedly a draw. Its contents are unsurpassed. Yet in the bulk of the galleries the standards of display approximate towards those of the warehouse. The supports of statues are covered in plywood originally painted beige but now a dirty brown. Some exhibits are so dust-laden that it would be possible to write one's name on their surface. The marble on the stairs is cracked. Items are temporarily piled in corners. Many pieces are unlabelled, many labels unreadable through the grime that has accumulated over the years. On the morning I visited last week, it was impossible to pass through the limestone doorways at the end of the central gallery because they were blocked with sheets of plywood, piled high and coated with dust. All of which can be considered something of a PR disaster.
The museum itself provides Cairo with one of its most impressive interior spaces. The entrance, leading beneath the massive dome and onto the central gallery, is majestic. Many of the objects -- royal and religious statuary -- are unashamedly theatrical, providing the perfect backbone for a stunning display. To mess it up on the scale that the Egyptian Museum messes it up seems an act of deliberate carelessness.
Any city worth its salt must have its museums, and those museums must be part and parcel of the fabric of the city and of the lives of its inhabitants. It is regularly rumoured that the Egyptian Museum is about to move, the most favoured locale spewed out by the rumour mill being somewhere along the road to the Fayoum. Which might be no bad thing -- the present museum is hopelessly overcrowded, and there is enough in the store rooms to fill 10 museums in any case. It would be tragic, though, if the present city-centre building were to be vacated, tragic and an inexcusable abnegation of responsibility towards the inhabitants of Cairo. The current museum needs maintenance, a massive clean-up, the removal of the tacky linoleum tiles that inexplicably cover the floors of the upper galleries, and then it needs to be turned into a showpiece of the art of display, a presentational masterpiece, a PR coup, a venue that, with changing displays around its core collection, attracts both foreigners and locals. The building is there, the exhibits are there. The cost, though large, would be justified by the returns. What, then, is lacking?
