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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 19 - 25 October 2000 Issue No. 504 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 19 - 25 October 2000 Issue No. 504
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Palestine International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Travel Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Killing time
By Nevine El-Aref
I have travelled to Assiut many times and over the years I have often heard of a rich collection of antiquities to be found there. Yet when I sought out Assiut's archaeological museum, I searched in vain; and when I ploughed through guidebooks and brochures, I found no mention of the fabled collection. Outside of the recollections of a few Egyptologists and the odd Assiut resident, the museum may as well not exist.
The eyes above: a funerary mask on display at the hoplessly obscure antiquities museum in Assiut
photo: Khaled El-FiqiBut exist it does, as I found out on a recent visit. My five-hour train ride to Assiut was for business, not pleasure, but I got to thinking about the collection and was determined to see it with my own eyes. My schedule was tight, but with a few hours to spare, I made the museum priority one. Upon arrival, I made my way down the corniche, soaking in the hot, dry air, the Nile by my side and the agricultural lands bounded by desert until I found myself at the local inspectorate.
I was to meet up with an inspector there. I told him I wanted to stop by the museum, but despite the confidence with which I made the request, it was flatly denied. It was not possible, he explained, as permission to visit was hard to come by. The collection was housed in a secondary school and permission had to be taken from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). This hardly sounded like a daunting task, so again, I insisted, "Well, get it." After much humming and hawing, the matter was settled with surprising ease: a simple phone call.
In no time I found myself in front of a large off-white building with a wrought-iron gate leading to Al-Salaam Secondary School. We were granted access by an official in charge and I was reminded of my own school days -- of the trepidation I felt on the first day. The museum is located on the second floor of the school's library. As we passed through the school yard, I spied a statue of Horus, and uneasiness turned to curiosity.
The inspector told me the story behind the museum, explaining that the entire collection had once belonged to an antiquities enthusiast and private collector, who happened to own the school in the 19th century. After the 1952 Revolution, the owner offered his collection to the (now-defunct) Egyptian Antiquities Organisation. The school's administrative board allocated the second floor of the library as temporary museum space for the collection until a special building was constructed to house it. It never happened. The plan for a museum of antiquities in Assiut has been almost permanently shelved. Periodically, the idea emerges to be 'reconsidered', but no concrete steps have been taken for its construction.
Upon entering the museum space, my first impression was one of shock. Show cases were blanketed with a thick layer of dust and one could hardly recognise the floor for the white marble it is. The room was crammed full with objects too numerous for the space itself, leaving an overall impression of chaos and making certain over-stuffed corners of the Cairo Museum look positively orderly.
But once I had registered the scene and lifted my jaw from the floor, I saw the little details that betray a loving hand. The small hall displays more than 600 objects in 20 showcases, ranging from predynastic pottery to the late Mameluke era, but I noted that the objects are exhibited in chronological order. They were obviously organised by someone with a cultivated awareness of Egyptian history; a curator who had even considered the aesthetic quality of the display. This was no storeroom.
The Al-Salaam Secondary School, despite its esoteric location and the tedious manoeuvres one must perform to gain access, houses a real museum of Egyptian antiquities. Objects range from pottery and papyrus to scarabs and statues; from cosmetics and coins, to coloured engravings and cloth. Historically, the range is enormous, but a sequence can nonetheless be traced, moving from the Pharaonic collection through early Christianity to Islamic military equipment and soldiers' uniforms.
I was especially taken with the collection of ancient Egyptian funerary monuments; I found stelae (engraved stone slabs), coffins, and a beautiful collection of gilded mummy masks. A wooden sarcophagus on display is covered with gold leaf patterns and inscribed with religious texts. One can also see a mummy found with a broken leg inside his sarcophagus. The inspector informed me that the deceased was probably a high-ranking official, as the mask features the face of a man wearing the sun disk and adorned with the uraeus (sacred snakes).
I spent well over an hour looking at the exhibits before I was reminded of my busy schedule and was reluctantly escorted from the school, the museum left to resettle its coat of dust.
Two days later, as I headed back to Cairo, the haunting black eyes of the museum's funerary mask seemed to loom in the reflection of the train's window. I did not see the fields or the rural countryside as we headed north. I only envisioned dusty cabinets with ancient combs, necklaces, anklets, rings, bronze mirrors, headrests and tombstones decorated with Qur'anic verses. I thought of a lost collection, waiting hopelessly for its day as the star of a new museum and wondered if it were not time to resurrect a long-forgotten plan to give Assiut a place to house its truly intriguing treasures.
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