An interesting article that looks at the Alexandria museum, the fact that it has received only a fraction of the expected visitors, the role of museums today, and describes its contents and how they are displayed: "The Alexandria National Museum is, in a word, breathtaking. Here are displays on each of three floors of antiquities from different periods within the confines of an exquisite Italian-style building. Each floor in this three-storey structure is devoted to an epoch: Pharaonic on the ground floor; Graeco-Roman on the first; Coptic, Islamic and 20th century treasures on the second, and, a final surprise, down a narrow stairway to the basement is a replica tomb, with genuine funerary furniture: canopic jars, anthropoid sarcophagi containing mummies, ushabti figures and the deceased's private possessions are all part of this mise-en-scène that offers a snapshot of the ancient Egyptian world-view of burial and the afterlife".
This article is well worth reading.
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