Page 35 - museum penflat

INTRODUCTION

Many books have been written about the For the next four years, we researched
history of the Suez Canal, but creating a visual continuously, and the museum narrative slowly
narrative for the new Suez Canal Museum was started to take shape despite the obstacles.
a very different undertaking. We faced many Alongside the story of canal construction,
challenges because there was so much we we developed different ideas to highlight the
wanted to evoke: the complicated initiatives monumental impact of the project on other
and events leading up to the start of the aspects of life, and the modernisation it sparked
project in the 19th century; the difficulties and across various sectors, from transportation and
hardships endured by Egyptian labourers during communication to construction machinery and
construction; the technological breakthroughs industrial production methods. Gradually, we
that minimised the need for manual labour; formed a museum collection that would bear
and the glittering inauguration that remains a proud witness to one of the most significant
momentous event to this day. We realised that chapters in modern Egyptian history.
our narrative would have to be very distinctive
from that found in the usual written sources. To bring more interactivity to the museum
experience, we introduced holograms of
We decided to create a journey through time dialogues between key figures in the canal’s
for the visitor, a series of historical scenes using history, and concluded with a display of the
objects and documents to depict well-known recent expansion of the canal and the addition
events combined with little-known facts and of a new branch in 2015, illustrating how vital
fascinating background. As we started to the Suez Canal remains to global trade and
visualise the museum in 2019, it became clear transportation more than 150 years after its
how difficult it would be to collect the material inauguration.
needed to tell the story. The museum collection
initially relied on objects found at the canal site, It has been a challenging and unconventional
many of them unearthed during the excavation. journey, powered by a team who believed in
These objects preserved traces of the history the importance of telling the story of the Suez
of the area, going as far back as the Pre- and Canal and of the idea that evolved over more
Early Dynastic periods. When we came to than 3,000 years in the service of Egypt and
look for objects from the period of the actual humanity.
excavation of the canal, however, things became
complicated, and we faced a dilemma: how Dr Mahmoud Mabrouk
would this vision be realised when we had few Museum Curator & Advisor to the Minister
objects from the more recent past? of Antiquities for Museum Displays