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The Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany and the Ambassador of Switzerland to Egypt Markus Leitner inaugurated today an exhibition at the Egyptian Museum under the title “Abu Simbel: 200 years after Sheikh Ibrahim Burkhardt” in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the discovery of the awe-inspiring Abu-Simbel Temples which coincide with the death of his discoverer Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burkhardt.
Sabah Abdel Razek, Director of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir said that the exhibition will be open to the public from 15th of May to 20th of June and will display objects discovered in places that Sheikh Ibrahim visited during his travels in Nubia. Some of these historic artefacts, part of the collections of the Egyptian Museum, will be presented to the public for the first time, including two fragments of a wall painting from the rock-cut sanctuary in Wadi Al-Seboua of the pharaoh Amenhotep III period.
The exhibition is organized by the Egyptian Museum and the Embassy of Switzerland with the University of Basel which helped select the items that will be on display and provided ample information outlined on large colorful panels to be placed in the museum throughout the exhibition.
Johann Ludwig Burkhardt was born in 1784 in Lausanne and brought up in Basel, Switzerland. Following his studies in Germany, he was hired by an association exploring North Africa to embark on a travel mission in the region by joining the pilgrims’ caravan from Cairo through the South Libya Fezzan to the city of Timbuktu in Mali. Burkhardt studied Arabic and settled in 1809 in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Having immersed himself in the culture of the region, he became known as Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah.
In 1812, en route from Syria to Cairo, he rediscovered the ancient city of Petra, Jordan. Later, upon arrival in Cairo and while waiting for a caravan to Fezzan, he decided to travel up the Nile. During his travels in Nubia he discovered the Abu Simbel temples in 1813 which were largely covered by sand. Back in Cairo, he informed Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni about his discovery. Based on Burkhardt’s description, Belzoni travelled to Abu Simbel, started to remove the sand and entered the temples200 years ago, in 1817. The same year, Burckhardt died in Cairo. He is buried in the Bab El-Nasr cemetery in Cairo.
“2017 commemorates 200 years since Burckhardt’s death and since access was made to the Abu Simbel temples. We are very proud to celebrate this important historical and cultural link between Switzerland and Egypt. The exhibition sends a positive message to the Swiss and encourages tourism to explore Egypt’s special history,” said Markus Leitner, the Ambassador of Switzerland in Egypt.
The exhibition is organized by the Egyptian Museum and the Embassy of Switzerland with the University of Basel which helped select the items that will be on display and provided ample information outlined on large colorful panels to be placed in the museum throughout the exhibition.
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