A final call for the Archaeological Museum of Alexandria

Alexander would turn in his grave if he knew how careless his first great city was handling his past!

Agreed, today’s Archaeological Museum of Alexandria is a very far cry from the famous Library/Museum where all the great minds of the ancient world met and exchanged their ideas, but even so: a museum always is a precious center of culture and art.

The recent unrest in Egypt is not a favorable climate for any museum or antique site, but when I hear that this Archaeological Museum contains more than 40,000 artifacts, including some rare and unique books, it certainly hurts my feelings.

The situation in Alexandria is so desperate that private intellectuals and archaeologists have joined hands and are launching a campaign to expand this Graeco-Roman Museum. First of all, the land right next to the museum should be acquired and excavated to recover relics from early times before constructing an extension to the present building from 1892 whose façade copies that of a Greek temple. This museum has been closed since 2005 because it simply is too small to exhibit all its treasures, although I think they could easily rotate their collection if they want to. For now, there is an agreement on the land but the building permit is caught in red tape – to nobody’s surprise.

Yet the stakes are high since the plan is to match the grandeur of the famous Alexandrian Library from antiquity for which UNESCO is willing to help raise the funds.

It will take several years, if you ask me, before this building becomes reality and its relics from the basement going back to the third century BC will find a place so that we can enjoy all these unique treasures.

[Picture from Wikipedia.de]