Activities in Egypt

With support from an official development loan from Japan, construction is already underway for the Grand Egyptian Museum, planned to open in 2011 or 2012 with more space and features than the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, which is currently the largest museum in Egypt. In conjunction with this, the Grand Egyptian Museum Conservation Center Project is providing support to the Conservation Center for conservation and restoration technology and the construction of a database for collected items in the museum.

With one hundred thousand objects to be prepared for exhibition in time for the museum’s opening, the project is supporting an on-going operation for database maintenance, physical object transfer, conservation and restoration. In addition to supporting the workflow setup from basic database maintenance to physical transfer of the objects, the project is also holding workshops for conservation and restoration technicians. These workshops are at the Conservation Center and focus on technology theory and practice for specific materials such as paper and dyed cloth.

Project Highlights

One part of the project is intensive training being provided to young Egyptians with training in Egyptology on proper methods to catalog artifacts scattered throughout Egypt. Planned next is the reconstruction of the database for the one hundred thousand items expected to be housed in the Grand Egyptian Museum. This will be done in cooperation with conservation and restoration specialists who have attended the restoration technology workshop.