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Ismailia museum
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Yesterday,
the Ismailia Museum celebrates its 83th anniversary, with further restoration
works in the area to be undertaken soon. Written By/ Nevive El-Aref.
In
an attempt to promote tourism, the Ministry of Antiquities celebrates yesterday
the 83rd anniversary of Ismailia Museum. The celebration was to be inaugurated
noon by Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany and Ismailia governor Major
General Yassin Taher.
Elham
Salah, head of the Museums Department at the ministry, told Ahram Online that
the celebration would include a number of sportive activities for children, a
lyre (semsemeya) musical performance, and lectures on archaeology. A
documentary summarising the history of the museum since its construction in
1934 is to be screened.
Ismailia
Museum was the second museum to be constructed in Egypt after the Egyptian
Museum in Tahrir Square, Cairo. The idea of its establishment started in 1911
when a French mission led by archaeologist Jean Kilda unearthed a collection of
sarcophagi at Qantara-East city.
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The relief of king Ramses II
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The Sphinx
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Ismailia
Museum opened in 1934 in a building constructed in a style inspired by the
Greco-Roman architecture. The collection displays 3,800 objects from the
Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman eras unearthed in the course of construction work on
the Suez Canal 1859 and at other sites in Ismailia, Suez and Port Said cities.
Distinguished
artifacts such as a collection of statues, scarabs, stelae and columns and
records of the first canal built between the Bitter lakes and Bubastis by the
Persian ruler Darius are also on show. The highlight of the museum is the large
and beautifully preserved Roman floor mosaic depicting Phaedra sending a love
letter to her stepson Hippolytus, while below Dionysus rides a chariot driven
by Eros.
El-Enany
is to also embark on an inspection tour around three monuments in Suez that
will soon see restoration works. These monuments are the Mohamed Ali Pasha
Palace at Al Khour area in Suez city, the Suez Canal Authority edifice in
Ismailia, and the Abbas Helmy II mosque in Ismailia.
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Thé Suez Canal Authority building
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Ahmed
El-Nemr, member of the Scientific Office of the antiquities ministry, told
Ahram Online that the Mohamed Ail Palace was built to be Mohamed Ali's
residence when following up on army forces during his war against the Wahhabis
in the Saudi Arabia. It is a two-storey house with a wooden dome at its eastern
roof.
The
Suez Canal Authority building was built by Fernand de Lesseps and consists of a
basement, a ground floor and a first floor with 120 rooms. The Abbas Helmi II
mosque was built in 1898 for Khedive Abbas Helmi II and has a collection of
very distinguished arcades.
El-Nemr
said that the mosque was restored and inaugurated in 2013, adding that both the
palace and the edifice of the Suez Canal Authority are in a very bad state of
conservation and that a restoration project for them would be implemented soon.
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