The First Exhibition of the Nubia Museum Library: Archaeologists Who Wrote History (Yasser Abdelrady, Egypt, ITP 2019)

Written by Yasser Abdelrady, Conservator, Nubia Museum (Egypt, ITP Fellow 2019)

In the context of activating the cultural and educational role of the Nubia Museum, Professor Ahmed Ghoneim – Chairman of the Executive Board of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and General Supervisor of the Nubia Fund, inaugurated the first exhibition of the Nubia Museum Library entitled Archaeologists Who Wrote History on Saturday 23 October 2021.

The general idea of the exhibition comes to address the most important scholars who played an important role in the study of archaeology in Egypt, especially at the  Nubia, so that part of their intellectual production available in the museum’s library, which came as a result of their archaeological studies.

Exhibition characters

The exhibition deals with Egyptian and foreign scholars. The exhibition included a display of the intellectual publications of six individuals, namely George Andrew Reisner, Walter B. Emery, Welliam Adams, Fred Wendorf, Derek A. Welsby and Tohfa Ahmed Handoossa.

Aims of the exhibition

As a result of what happened throughout the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the aims of this exhibition was to revitalise the museum’s cultural, academic and community communication role, to introduce museum visitors and exhibition goers to the personalities who played an important role in archaeological studies and to highlight that role. The exhibition is a tribute to the memory of these scholars, and also aims to shed more light on the Nubia Museum library, its rare books and activating its cultural role.

Exhibition objects

The exhibition includes a biographical presentation of the selected academics in both Arabic and English with a personal photograph of each of them, with a presentation of their most important books in the museum’s library after the necessary preservation work. In addition we included an impressions box that allowed the visitors to write their thoughts about the  exhibition.

Exhibition duration

The exhibition will continue until the beginning of the last week of November 2021.