Sunday, August 28, 2005

Cairo's Museum doesn't match majesty of treasures

http://www.daytondailynews.com/life/content/life/daily/0828cairo.html
In this article from the Dayton Daily News entitled Cairo's Egyptian Museum doesn't match the majesty of its treasures, the Cairo museum is given the thumbs down: "Rare artifacts sit randomly stacked in corners and hallways, or crowded onto shelves too small for them. Labels are tattered, curling and faded, typewritten decades ago and apparently untouched since then. Welcome to the Egyptian Museum: the world's largest and most important repository of ancient Egyptian art — and at the same time, a ramshackle, deteriorating mess". The item goes on to explain that the current Tutankhamun exhibition will be playing its part in paying for a solution: "The DAI [Dayton Art Institute], like other museums which have picked up the tour, paid the Egyptian government $1 million upfront for the show. As you wander around the Egyptian Museum, you can see plenty of ways in which that much, and much more, might be spent". Two of the objects that the article describes as particularly easy to miss are the Narmer palette and the model human head from Merimde.

No comments: