The Antique Khana of Egypt
It was back in 1902 on the Good Land of our graceful Cairo - El Mahrousa - when our ancestors' treasures finally found a home to settle. The idea of a museum for Pharaonic antiquities, however, was born earlier in 1835 in El Azbakeya during the reign of Mohamed Ali Pasha. The contents were then moved to a storage room in the Citadel, and later to an old royal palace in Boulaq through the efforts of the Great French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. After moving to another palace in Giza, it finally settled in Khedivate Egypt, when Khedive Abbas Helmi II ordered to build a museum for the Ancient Egyptian antiquities in Tahrir Square, which was then known as El Ismaeeilia Square (after Khedive Ismaeel, the father of the Khedivate Cairo architecture). The current building, which Egyptians used to call the Antique Khana (the antiquities' chamber), was given its "neoclassical" style by French Architect Marcel Dourgnon. It was built over...