Graeco Roman Museum Alexandria

The Graeco-Roman Museum of Alexandria is one of Egypt's principal museums, the oldest building in Egypt to be architecturally designed for the purpose of preserving and displaying antiquities. Furthermore, it is the only museum fully dedicated to the antiquities and civilization of Egypt during the Greek and Roman eras.

Since 1889, the Italian Giuseppe Botti sought to establish a museum for Alexandria that would protect its antiquities from displacement and destruction. He continued to work on that until the decision to establish the museum was issued on June 1, 1892. The museum began in a modest rented property, and Khedive Abbas Helmy II inaugurated it on 17 October 1892. Giuseppe Botti was its first director.

Since its inception, the museum has sparked a cultural renaissance about interest in the city’s archaeological activities. Discoveries increased, and there became a pressing need for a new spacious building. On September 12, 1894, Nubar Pasha laid the cornerstone for the new museum to be built on land owned and adjacent to the Municipal Council. 

The new structure was designed by the architects Dietrich and Stenon in a neoclassical style. The construction process took one year, and it was inaugurated again by Khedive Abbas Helmy II on September 26, 1895.

After Botti's death in October 1903, the management of the museum remained Italian, Evaristo Breccia took charge in April 1904, and Achille Adriani succeeded him from 1932 to 1940. from 1940-1947, the museum was run by Alan Rowe. from 1948 to 1953, Adriani took over management once more. Egyptian archaeologists have been in charge of the museum since 1953 onward.

In 1982, a development project was implemented for the museum, during which a new wing was added connecting the western and eastern wings. In September 2005, a decision was made to close the museum in order to carry out a comprehensive project to expand and develop the museum. The project stalled for ten years until work was resumed in April 2015. By creating an upper floor, a new interior design, and a new display scenario are applied.

The Restoration and Upgrading of the Greco-Roman Museum 

The idea of establishing the museum emerged in 1891, when the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Botti thought of allocating a place to encompass the archaeological discoveries that were revealed in Alexandria, in order to preserve its cultural history. The current museum was built in the style of Greek buildings.

Graeco Roman Museum ground floor:

It contains 27 halls that house the artifacts, which have been arranged in chronological order from the pre-Alexander the Great era (5th century BC) to the Byzantine era (6th century AD). This is, in addition to artifact stores, organic and inorganic artifact restoration laboratories, and restrooms.

Graeco Roman Museum the Upper floor:

It includes 4 halls: The Museum Education Hall, the Archive and Registration Hall, the Egypsotica Hall, and the Study Hall.

Graeco Roman Museum the first floor: 

The artifacts are displayed in this floord according to a thematic classification, including the Nile Hall, the Agora, the Red Land, Industry and Trade, Coins, Alexandrian Art, the Serapeum, the Kom El-Shuqafa area, and Alexandrian sculptures. The floor also includes cafes, restaurants, a library of rare books, a lecture hall, artifact stores, and restrooms.

The museum contains 6,000 artifacts. The themes of the exhibits in the museum halls have been diversified from the previous ones, and cover historical periods from the history of ancient Egypt in general and Alexandria in particular. This is done through the permanent display of the Greek-Roman Museum scenario, the re-display of the museum, and the introduction of new sections in the museum to serve the modern museum concept in a way that attracts Egyptian and non-Egyptian visitors. This aims to highlight the intellectual and artistic fusion between the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Coptic, and Byzantine civilizations.

The Graeco Roman Museum project also included raising the efficiency of services offered to visitors to improve their experience and makes it more attractive and convenient. Cafeterias and a gift house have been added to the museum. The museum was equipped to receive people of determination visitors, providing them with convenient bathrooms, elevators, and places for museum education.

The Crocodile Temple Sobek

The Crocodile Temple Sobek -This room is mainly dedicated to show pieces of a shrine in the Fayoum dedicated to the Crocodile-god, Pnepheros in Greco-Roman Museum of Alexandria. among the most distinguished are the Sobek Temple with a shrine bearing a mummified crocodile from the reign of Ptolemy V. 

This Temple was previously on display in the garden of the Museum prior to the restoration project.

The Apis Bull Graeco Roman Museum of Alexandria

Apis Bull was well known during the Greco-Roman in Egypt, especially the bull Apis. Memphis was his main cult center, where his cult was associated with the chief god Ptah, and a priest responsible for both cults. Furthermore, Memphis also contains subterranean galleries for the dead mummified bulls as Osir-Apis. The Ptolemies paid a great attention to the cult of Apis and shared the coronation of the New Apis, and the funeral of the dead one. They integrated the cult of Serapis, the chief god of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, as the Hellenization form of the Egyptian Osirified Apis bull. Moreover, The Romans paid respect to the cult of Apis inside Egypt, and outside either.

Apis’s prominence during the Greco-Roman period added him new aspects in both funeral and burial customs. The research tries to identify the new attributes of Apis in the Greco-Roman tombs as a funerary god, besides, other roles initiated from his integration with other gods. Apis was a main figure not only in the decorated Greco-Roman tombs of Egypt, but also upon the stelae, the Mummy Coffins and Mummy Cartonage of Egypt. He appeared as a burial god; equated with Osiris and Dionysos. His association with Serapis in the Hellenistic Egypt represented him as the protector of the kingship of Egypt. Ptolemaic and Roman rulers depicted themselves under his respect, and either spread to the Hellenistic world with Isis as her husband.

In addition, his cult appeared in the Roman Isaeums in Rome, and the other Hellenistic temples consecrated for her with the Egyptian figure as a bull. Apis was the carrier of the deceased in the netherworld, and he appeared in the judgment’s court of the deceased. He either performed the role of Isis and Nephthys as the deceased’s guardians in his tomb, as they did with Osiris, and as protectors of the fetish of Abydos. The statue is about 1.90 metres long, carved in basalt and dated to the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd Century CE. It was discovered to the west of Pompey's Pillar in Alexandria.

Graeco Roman Museum opening hours all week from 9 am : 5 pm