Written by Taylor Moore (2024)

INtroduction

The Cairo Agricultural Museum complex, located right off of Salah Salem street in the neighborhood of Dokki, is a gem of object collections and archival holdings hidden in plain sight. Its under-utilized collections will be of interest to historians and social scientists working on agriculture, food, natural history, political economy, rural Egyptian history, and public works from the Pharaonic period until present day. The museum is also a rare find for scholars interested in material culture and museum studies in modern Egypt. Its exhibits stand as an archive in and of themselves. They provide material testament to developments in the natural sciences, anthropology, food science, visual culture, and curatorial practices as many of the collections and dioramas remain untouched since the first half of the twentieth century.

The Cairo Agricultural Museum is open Friday through Sunday from 9am to 2pm. As of 2024, the entirety of the museum complex is inaccessible to the public. However, the library building is still open, but is only accessible with special permissions.

Location: Google Maps

GOING THERE

The Cairo Agricultural Museum is located in the neighborhood of Dokki. The museum is an easy 25 min. walk from the Behouth (Dokki) or the Opera (Zamalek) metro stations. Given the museum’s location right off of Salah Salem, it is easily accessible via taxi, Uber, or Kareem as well. Direct them to “al-mathaf al-zara’i” or “wizarat al-zira’a.”

GETTING IN

As of 2016, the entry fee to the main collection halls, library, and gardens was 5 EGP, with an extra fee to enter the Hall of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture. However, researchers must note that depending on the day, and maybe even the hour, particular halls or exhibitions may be locked and/or closed to visitors. Generally, the main exhibits in the natural history, or scientific collections, and the library are always open to the public.

The library, located near the research laboratories a ways off from the main buildings, is a charming and pleasant workspace. More often than not, researchers will have the reading room to themselves, sharing the space with only a handful of library staff.

Finding your material

Currently, there is neither known catalog for the ethnographic and natural history collections, nor the holdings in the library. I was also not able to find information on the provenance of the museum’s collections. However, as of 2017 the Egyptian Central Department of Archaeological Acquisitions examined and registered over 1,000 of the Agricultural museum’s ancient animal and geological artifacts. There may be a way to access the catalogue or reports from this investigation. Those wishing to work with certain objects or collections should get in touch with the museum staff directly. Although the museum’s pamphlet (see below) provides a phone number and an email address for researchers to direct their inquiries, it is recommended that scholars make requests in person to the museum staff who may put you in touch with the museum director. It is advised that researchers provide a statement in Arabic addressing their academic affiliation, research interests, and the collections they are interested in working with.

collection overview

the Cairo Agricultural Museum boasts seven exhibition halls which depict varying topics in natural history and agricultural science. The majority of the museum’s labels are in Arabic, however some exhibits provide English translations.

1. Scientific Collections

The Scientific Collections Hall is the oldest in the museum. The first floor is dedicated to ethnographic materials that depict the social and economic lives of the Egyptian fellahin. The most stunning exhibits of this building are the large, life-size dioramas of a rural wedding procession, and a village souk complete with a community forn, a café with galabiyya-wearing men laughing while smoking shisha, and even a female fortune teller reading shells. There are also rooms specializing in rural handicrafts, “habits and customs,” and the High Dam. The second floor houses a large natural history collection of taxidermy animals native to Egypt and Sudan, with rooms specializing in the life-cycles of domestic farm animals, insects and crop pests, as well as a room of popular Egyptian products and manufactured food goods from the 1940s and 1950s.

2. Botanical Revolution Hall

This hall, also referred to as the “Plant Kingdom Museum,” was established in 1935. Its exhibits depict Egypt’s field crops, horticultural and garden plants, and popular agricultural machinery. The first floor specializes in grain crops such as wheat, barley, corn, and rice, and also has a room on onions and garlic. The second floor specializes in fiber crops, and rooms on fruits, vegetables, legumes, and more.

3. The Cotton Museum

In many aspects the original collection of the Agricultural Museum, the Royal Agricultural Society organized the Cotton Museum in 1920, and opened it to the public in 1926. The collections in their most recent state were inaugurated in the Cairo Agricultural Museum in 1996 on Eid el Fellah (a feast day commemorating the victories of the peasantry and the implementation of Nasserist agricultural reforms after the 1952 revolution). The collections explore the importance of the cotton crop over the long duree of Egyptian history in its many forms from field to finished product, and include rare cotton the seeds and fibers from varying species of cotton crop grown around the world.

4. Ancient Egyptian Agriculture

This collection highlights role of the Nile River and the importance of agriculture in the economic, social, and spiritual realms of Pharaonic civilization. Many of these collections were acquired between 1932 and 1938 as donations from the Egyptian Museum and the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. Cappers and Hamdy (20007) provide original catalogue entries for specimen in this collection as well as some in the “Greek, Coptic, and Islamic” collections below.

5. Agriculture in Greek, Roman, Coptic, and Islamic Periods

These collections represent the second stage of development in early Egyptian agriculture from 332 BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, until the rule of Mohammed(Mehmet) Ali Pasha in 1805. However, the majority of materials are concentrated in the Greek and Roman periods. They highlight the role of plants in society (from popular field crops to medicine), the raising of livestock, and the social lives of the peasant classes at in these periods.

6. The Syrian Hall

This exhibit, inaugurated on July 31, 1961 commemorates Egypt and Syria’s short-lived union in the form of the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961. Its contents include information on trade between the two countries, and provide a collection of Syrian handicrafts, produce, and rural life.

7. The Egypt-China Friendship Exhibition

Opened in 2013, this exhibit is composed mostly of art and ceramics donated from China to illustrate the thriving political relationship between Egypt and China.

8. Library

The museum’s library is a quaint two-floor building with an array of books, periodicals, and maps ranging from the mid-nineteenth century until the early 2000s. The subjects of the collection focus on a variety of agriculture and “agriculture-adjacent” materials such as botany, horticulture, public works, livestock, geography, and the social and economic aspects of rural life. Some examples of publications held in the library include volumes of Mémoires Présentés à l’Institut d’Egypte from the 1880s until the 1930s, yearly reports from the Department of Public Works from the 1880s onwards, and a Ministry of Agriculture periodical entitled Zamīl al-Fallāḥ published in the 1930s. Certain publications of the Ministry of Agriculture can also be found here, however most of those materials are held in the library of the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Agricultural Library (both located down the street from the Agricultural Museum.) As far as I know, this collection has not been catalogued and I was only able to conduct a cursory survey of the holdings during my research there. Future researchers may find more than detailed in this review.

Ordering your material

After signing your name in a logbook, a librarian will ask you what kinds of materials you are interested in. You can give them specific texts or vague subject and she will bring the exact item, or items that might interest you out to the reading room for you. If you are lucky, she may allow you to wonder through the upstairs stacks yourself. This is the area where most of the old periodicals, governmental reports, and “rare books” from 1880 until 1950 are housed.

Ordering scans

Unlike other archives in Egypt, such as Dar al-Watha’iq al-Qawmiyya (The Egyptian National Archives) and Dar al-Kutub (The Egyptian National Library) where photographs of materials are forbidden, or in the Egyptian Geographical Society’s Ethnographic Museum where photographs of the exhibits can be taken for a fee, the Cairo Museum of Agriculture allows researchers to take pictures of materials in both the library and the museum for free.

Food and well-being

The Agricultural Museum and Library is easily accessible to researchers. Those that speak Arabic will have an easier time of things, although many of the museum and library staff know some level of English.

There are a handful of restaurants, cafes, and kushks located near the museum, particularly in the directions of the Dokki Shooting Club (Nadi Es-Sid) and Mohandessin.

Additional remarks

Here is a the Cairo Agricultural Museum Pamphlet and the Cairo Museum of Agriculture Booklet.

Originally published on Hazine