The New Home of Egypt's Mummies: Egyptian Civilization Museum

Welcome to the home of the pharaohs. I'm Joshua Hamlin and today we're taking a look at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization which opened in April of 2021. There was an incredible parade from the old Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square of all of the mummies that were brought over here in April of 2021 in the Golden Pharaohs parade to put them on display in this brand new much more impressive and modern feeling museum. The museum is broken into two different sections so the first and definitely most impressive section is the mummy area and they've built the museum in a really cool way where you actually walk down as if you're going into an ancient Egyptian tomb to look at the mummies. They have nice descriptions on the wall of each mummy and then they have the mummy there with usually the coffin maybe some of the other artifacts from their rule on display. The mummies are all primarily from the 18th 19th and 20th dynasties which saw many of Egypt's most famous rulers and many of the warrior kings and famous queens that built many of the temples in Luxor and around Cairo and other famous cities around Egypt. So as you go through there there's even some cool areas that have CT scans of some of the old mummies and they talk about kind of how they died whether it was in battle or what kind of diseases they might have had so there's been so much research done on these mummies over the years you can really learn a lot. They are a little gruesome to look at I will give you a little bit of warning but well worth it as you walk through there and kind of check out each mummy. The other half of the museum the top floor is the more Egyptian civilization area and this takes you from Egyptian pre-history all the way through to about the 20th century with the end of the the Muslim rulers here in Egypt. I would say about half this area is ancient Egyptian history so still heavily tied into the the mummies that are on the the bottom floor of the museum but then there's the Greco-Roman history as well and then the Islamic rule so lots of artifacts from all of those eras as well. You kind of get this full picture of Egyptian history in addition to all of the incredible mummies here at the museum. Now it does cost 200 Egyptian pounds per person to get in that's for a foreign visitor that's not a bad price at all for what you're able to see here. I should clarify how the some of the museums work here in Cairo now so as of the recording of this video which is in April of 2022 there is the Old Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square in Cairo so that's been there for a very long time. You walk in and it feels very old the way the displays are set up and everything. Lots of incredible stuff to see in there but the feel of it is very outdated. There's this museum the Museum of Egyptian Civilization which as I mentioned opened up about a year ago now that houses the mummies and then the general Egyptian history and then the Grand Egyptian Museum is opening in November of 2022 and it will have a heavy focus on King Tut as well as other aspects of ancient Egyptian history and that is going to open right next to the the Giza pyramids the Great Pyramid Plateau just outside Cairo. So just to clarify that and try your best to see all three if you can they'll each kind of have a unique aspect and cool artifacts to show off. So that's a little bit more about some of the museums here in Cairo. Thanks for watching!