The Coptic Museum is a museum in Coptic Cairo, Egypt. It was founded by Marcus Simaika Pasha in 1908 to house Coptic antiquities. The museum track down the history of Christianity in Egypt from beginning to the present day.
The museum is filled with the largest collection of Egyptian Christian artifacts in the world. It was erected on 8,000 square meters offered by the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria under the guardianship of Pope Cyril V.
In 1908, after receiving approval and a number of silver antiquities from Patriarch Cyril V, Marcus Simaika Pasha built the Coptic Museum with the joint efforts of public funds and inaugurated it on 14 March 1910.
The Coptic community was benevolent in their support of the museum, donating many vestments, frescoes, and icons.
In 1931 the Coptic Museum became a state museum, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Antiquities, and in 1939 the collection of Christian antiquities in the Egyptian Museum was moved there.
Marcus Simaika Pasha was followed by Dr Togo Mina and then by Dr Pahor Labib, the novel to have the title of Director of the Coptic Museum.
As well as the museum buildings there are gardens and compounds and the area is surrounded by old Coptic churches. Generally, there are six churches, but the most significant are the hanging church, of the Virgin Mary and the church of St.
Sergius, with its origins as early as the 5th century AD. The Coptic Museum’s grounds are a serene and tranquil. The fascinating thing about its airy is that, the building is paved with mosaics and decorated with old mushrabiya screens.
It houses an extensive collection of objects from the Christian era which linked the ancient Egyptian times to the Islamic conquest of the country. The museum was renovated in the early 1980 with two new appendixes.
