More re opening of Arish National Museum

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

Five years after building started and many more years since its inception, the temple- shaped, honey-coloured Arish National Museum stood poised last Sunday for its official inauguration by Mrs Suzanne Mubarak. The long-awaited museum has been erected on the very spot at the eastern end of Arish where the Egyptian flag was raised following the Israeli withdrawal from this part of Sinai in 1979.

Mrs Mubarak expressed her pleasure at sharing the inauguration with the women of Arish as they celebrated Egyptian Women's Day.

Upon her arrival Mrs Mubarak, along with Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), embarked on a tour of the museum's sections relating to the history of Arish from predynastic to the Islamic eras. More than 2,000 objects are on display, carefully selected from eight major collections in Egypt: the Egyptian, Coptic and Islamic museums in Cairo, the Recovered Antiquities Museum at the Citadel, the Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria, the Sinai Historical Museum in Taba, the Port Said Museum, and the Beni Sweif museological storehouses in Ashmounein. Artefacts unearthed at excavation sites in North Sinai such as the Horus military road site in Qantara East and Tel Basta in the Nile Delta are also on display.