The Egyptian Geological Museum is a

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. The museum was established in 1901 as part of the Egyptian Geological Survey, which had been started in 1896 under the direction of the

Khedive Ismail Isma'il Pasha ( ; 25 November 1830 or 31 December 1830 – 2 March 1895), also known as Ismail the Magnificent, was the Khedive of Khedivate of Egypt, Egypt and ruler of Turco-Egyptian Sudan, Sudan from 1863 to 1879, when he was removed at the ...

. The museum was the first of its kind in the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

and the

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

n continent.Kamil, Jill
"History in geological time"
, ''

Al-Ahram Weekly ''Al-Ahram Weekly'' is an English-language weekly broadsheet printed by the Al-Ahram Publishing House in Cairo, Egypt. History and profile ''Al Ahram Weekly'' was established in 1991 by the ''Al-Ahram'' newspaper, which also runs a French-langu ...

'', October 7, 2004. Accessed October 3, 2008.

Museum history

The museum was initially housed in a Greco-Roman style building that was located in the gardens of the Ministry of Public Works in

downtown Cairo Downtown Cairo ( "middle of town") is the colloquial name given to the 19th-century western expansion of Egypt's capital Cairo, between the historic medieval Cairo, and the Nile, which became the commercial center of the city during the 20th c ...

; it was designed by Marcel Dourgnon, the French architect who had previously designed and constructed the

Egyptian Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, commonly known as the Egyptian Museum (, Egyptian Arabic: ) (also called the Cairo Museum), located in Cairo, Egypt, houses the largest collection of Ancient Egypt, Egyptian antiquities in the world. It hou ...

(also known as the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities). This building had an exhibition hall with ceilings high in order to accommodate the reconstructed

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

skeletons of paleontological finds, which included a ancestral elephant. The first Museum Keeper was William Andrews, a paleontologist from

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history scientific collection, collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleo ...

, in 1904, who was followed by Henry Osborne in 1906.Egyptian Geological Museum
TourEgypt.net. Accessed October 3, 2008. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, most of the important samples were buried in the sand so they wouldn't be damage if the area was bombed. After the war, the samples were sent back to the Geological Museum to be put on display. The original museum was expanded in 1968 with the construction of an annex designed to house the museum's laboratories for

petrology Petrology () is the branch of geology that studies rocks, their mineralogy, composition, texture, structure and the conditions under which they form. Petrology has three subdivisions: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrology. Igneous ...

and

paleontology Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure ge ...

. The museum remained there in downtown Cairo until 1982, when the original building was torn down to accommodate construction of the

Cairo Metro The Cairo Metro (, lit. "Cairo Tunnel Metro" or ) is a rapid transit system in Greater Cairo, Egypt. It was the first of the three full-fledged metro systems in Africa and the first in the Middle East to be constructed. It was opened in ...

Present museum

Egyptian Geological Museum by Hatem Moushir 2

The museum was transferred to its present location near

Maadi Maadi ( ) is a leafy and once suburban district in the Southern Area of Cairo, Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile about upriver from downtown Cairo. The modern extensions north east and east of Maadi, New Maadi and Zahraa al-Maadi are admini ...

, a southern suburb of Cairo. On display are the

Fayoum Faiyum ( ; , ) is a city in Middle Egypt. Located southwest of Cairo, in the Faiyum Oasis, it is the capital of the modern Faiyum Governorate. It is one of Egypt's oldest cities due to its strategic location. Name and etymology Originally f ...

vertebrates, a series of fossils that had been unearthed in 1898 by geologist Hugh Beadnell at Qasr Al-Sagha to the north of Birqet Qarun in the Fayoum desert. These artifacts were sent to the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

for identification and returned to be displayed at the museum. The museum also includes examples of the natural history of Egypt, and how its geology and minerals helped make Egypt a world power. Also in the museum's collection is the

Nakhla meteorite Nakhla is a Martian meteorite which fell in Egypt in 1911. It was the first meteorite reported from Egypt, the first one to suggest signs of aqueous processes on Mars, and the prototype for Nakhlite type of meteorites. History The Nakhla me ...

, a

Martian meteorite A Martian meteorite is a rock that formed on Mars, was ejected from the planet by an impact event, and traversed interplanetary space before landing on Earth as a meteorite. , 277 meteorites had been classified as Martian, less than half a perce ...

that fell at the village of El Nakhla El Baharia village in 1911, and is one of a very few meteorites known to have their origin in the planet Mars. One of the main museum exhibitions is the set of type specimens from the Kamil iron meteorite, a huge iron meteorite that fell 2000–5000 years ago (3-4) to strike the sandstone bedrocks of the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...

period, 1000 km southwest of Cairo. The huge kinetic energy that resulted from the meteorite collision with the ground created a medium-sized crater, 45 meters in diameter and 15 meters deep, as a result of a pushing-off the sandstone country rocks at the point of the impact. The meteorite itself exploded and disrupted into thousands of fragments, ranging in size from minute millimeter-sized grains up to several centimeters. Both the meteoritic fragments and the sandstone chunks are distributed around the crater in more or less regular arms that extend 1 km from the crater center.

Current events

The new Museum administration takes steps to develop the services of the museum. From January 2011 the museum staff began a monthly scientific report, each focused on one of the interesting museum exhibitions. Now there are comprehensive data on the Gebel Kamil meteorite, which represents one of the more interesting exhibitions in the museum, as well as Egyptian dinosaurs, and gemstones. The museum organizes weekly public meetings to discuss the cultural and scientific interest of specific exhibitions. During the latest government problems, while no visitor was allowed to enter the exhibition hall of the Museum, some objects of historical interest disappeared, including face of a Pharaonic statue made of basalt and a small Roman statue made of serpentine. This is mystery because there were no visitors to the museum at that time. This happened during the second month in office of the new director, who led immediately a comprehensive reform in the various sections of the museum. There were no troubles in the museum to account for this mystery. The Egyptian Military recovered all objects, except the small Roman statue.

References

* Geology, published online on 5 January 2011 as * https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/science.1190990/DC1 {{coord, 29.9963, 31.2286, type:landmark_region:EG, display=title Science museums in Egypt Museums in Cairo Geology museums Fossil museums Museums established in 1904 Paleontology in Egypt