Museum · Cairo
Egyptian Geological Museum
The first geological museum in the Middle East and Africa, holding fossils and finds from Egypt's earth beside the Nile corniche at Athar El Nabi.
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The story
The museum was founded in 1901, after the Egyptian Geological Survey was set up in 1896. Its first home was a Greco-Roman style building in the grounds of the Ministry of Public Works, opened to the public on 1 December 1904 and displaying animal fossils gathered in Fayoum in 1898. It stayed there until 1982, when the building was pulled down to make way for the Cairo metro. The collection then moved to its present site at Athar El Nabi on the Nile corniche.
Good to know
- It is regarded as the first museum of its kind in the Middle East, the Arab world and Africa.
- Dr. Hassan Sadek was the museum's first Egyptian curator.
- The museum marked its diamond jubilee in 1979, with a commemorative postage stamp issued for the occasion.
- Its collection includes the Nakhla meteorite, which fell at El-Nakhla in 1911 and is thought to have come from Mars.