About
The Egyptian Geological Museum is a museum in Cairo, Egypt. The museum was available in 1901 as part of the Egyptian Geological Survey, which started in 1896 under the direction of the Khedive Ismail. The museum was the first of its kind in the Middle East and the African continent.
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; Marcel Dourgnon designed it , the French architect who had previously designed and constructed the Egyptian Museum (also famous as the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities). This building had an exhibition hall with ceilings 4 metres (13 ft) high in order to accommodate the reconstructed fossil skeletons of paleontological finds, which included a 3 metres (10 ft) high ancestral elephant. The first Museum Keeper was William Andrews, a paleontologist from London’s Natural History Museum, in 1904. Who was followed by Henry Osborne in 1906.
Present museum
In fact,the museum transferred to its present location near , Maadi a southern suburb of Cairo.
In fact,on display are the Fayoum vertebrates. A series of fossils that Hugh Beadnell unearthed in 1898 at Qasr Al-Sagha to the north of Birqet Qarun in the Fayoum desert. In fact,these artifacts were sent to the British museum 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. A Martian meteorite that fell at the village of El Nakhla El Baharia village in 1911. In fact, and is one of a very few meteorites famous for having their origin in the planet Mars.
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