
The statue, discovered in 1924 in its serdab (cellar) in the northeastern corner of the pyramid, is the oldest statue of its kind in the museum. In glass cabinet No 16 is the limestone statue of Zoser (Djoser), the 3rd-dynasty pharaoh, whose chief architect Imhotep designed the revolutionary Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Seen like this, the Narmer Palette, found at the Temple of Horus in Kom al-Ahmar near Edfu, is the keystone of the Egyptian Museum.

This, then, is the starting point of more than 3000 years of Pharaonic history in which more than 170 rulers presiding over 30 dynasties and during which time almost everything in this building was fashioned. Egyptologists take this as the birth of ancient Egyptian civilisation and his reign as the first of the 1st dynasty. Dating from around 3100 BC it depicts Pharaoh Narmer (also known as Menes) wearing the crown of Upper Egypt on one side of the palette, and the crown of Lower Egypt on the other, suggesting the first union of Upper and Lower Egypt under one ruler. In the central cabinet No 8, the double-sided Narmer Palette is of great significance. In the area before the steps lie some of the collection’s oldest items. ROOM 43 – ATRIUMĪs you enter the museum, the central atrium is filled with a miscellany of large and small Egyptological finds. The ground floor of the museum is laid out roughly chronologically in a clockwise fashion starting at the entrance hall.
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Mariette’s tomb is overlooked by an arc of busts of two dozen Egyptological luminaries including Champollion, who cracked the code of hieroglyphs Maspero, Mariette’s successor as director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and Lepsius, the pre-eminent 19thcentury German Egyptologist.


To walk around the museum is to embark on an adventure through time. Here, the treasures of Tutankhamun lie alongside the grave goods, mummies, jewellery, eating bowls and toys of Egyptians whose names are lost to history.

The Egyptian Museum is one of the world’s most important museums of ancient history and one of its great spectacles.
