Nubian Museum of Aswan

The Nubian Museum (officially the International Museum of Nubia) is an archaeological museum located in Aswan, Upper Egypt. It was built to a design by architect Mahmoud El-Hakim for an estimated construction cost of LE 75 million (approximately $22 million at the time).

Completed in 1997, the Nubia Museum is dedicated to the history of Nubia, the area that stretches from Aswan in the north through Sudan in the south. Designed as an innovative interpretation of traditional Nubian architecture, the museum won an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001.

Building

The Nubian Museum covers an area of 50,000 square meters, 7,000 of which are devoted to the building, while the rest are devoted to gardens and other public spaces; the building has three floors for displaying and housing, in addition to a library and information center. The largest part of the museum is occupied by the monumental pieces, reflecting phases of the development of Nubian culture and civilization.

Contents

The museum is organized along a chronological path illustrating the development of the region from prehistory up to the present through art and artifacts. In addition, the museum boasts life-size models showing traditional Nubian customs as well as a permanent exhibit documenting international efforts, carried out during the construction of the Aswan Dam, to rescue the ancient monuments of Nubia from the waters of Lake Nasser.

Three thousand pieces of Egyptian antiquities, representing various ages; Geological, Pharaonic, Roman, Coptic and Islamic, were registered; the open-door exhibition includes 90 rare monumental pieces, while the internal halls contain 50 invaluable pieces dating back to prehistoric times, 503 pieces belong to the Pharaonic period, 52 to the Coptic era, 103 to the Islamic age, 140 to the Nubian era, in addition to 360 pieces reflecting the history of Aswan.

Landscape

The Museum is built on a steep cliff, which enables it to embody a full scale design for the Nile river from its origins in Ethiopia and Sudan to Egypt; the edifice is surrounded by a Natural Botanical Garden, which contains a large variety of Egyptian flora.