Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Veterans of Serbia and Ambassador of Egypt in Belgrade inaugurates the first collective traveling exhibition of the collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts at the Museum of African art.
Egypt’s ambassador to Belgrade Amr Aljowaily inaugurated the first collective exhibition of ancient Egyptian artifacts in Serbian museums at the Museum of African Art in Belgrade, which includes 102 pieces from eleven museums in seven cities in Serbia. Aljowaily praised the initiative of collective cooperation among the museums to jointly organize a traveling exhibition throughout Serbia, thus contributing to presenting the Egyptian civilization to the Serbian people of different age and social strata.
“The exhibits are ambassadors of the entire human civilization extending invitation to the whole audience”, Aljowaily described the “Under the Spotlight” collection, adding that the full scope of Ancient Egypt can only accessible by visiting the unique archaeological sites of Egypt, especially with the recently launched direct line between Belgrade and Cairo, which has become the only African station for Air Serbia. He praised the large audience present including a number of ministers and senior cultural and media circles and the diplomatic corps, highlighting that their visit to the exhibition is “only a starting point for a long journey to discover thousands of years of Egyptian history, codifying the development of human civilization from Ancient Egypt to Modern Cairo, from expressive hieroglyphic script to the art of Arabic calligraphy”. He recalled that the exhibition culminates the #EgyptALLogy campaign, that the embassy and the Museum launched last year, which also included saw extensive courses and workshops for adults and children.
Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Veterans of Serbia Zoran Đorđević commended the initiative to organize the exhibition, as a model for cooperation between Serbia and Africa. He praised the role and contribution of Egypt, in supporting cultural cooperation with the African continent as a whole. For her part, the director of the Museum of African Arts, Marija Aleksić, highlighted that the exhibition includes a rare collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts distributed in several regional museums of several cities in Serbia: Vršac, Sombor, Subotica, Srem, Užice and Belgrade, as well as specialized museums, including the Museum of Yugoslavia, Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, National Museum in Belgrade, the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, at the initiative of the Museum of African art.
She added that the interest of the Serbian public in the ancient Egyptian civilization prompted the young historian Nenad Markovic to launch a series of lectures on the cultural history of ancient Egypt, which included a number of young students in several Serbian schools, eager to learn about the holdings of Serbian museums of Egyptian artifacts. She explained that a team was formed among the museums to participate in this joint pilot project which includes 102 pieces of a total of 196 pieces from several museums in Serbia that can be classified as “ancient Egyptian”, to be also made available later for academic research by specialists.
On this occasion, Ambassador of Egypt in Belgrade briefed on the current efforts to conclude a memorandum of understanding between the Museum of African Art, the only institution of its kind in Eastern and Southern Europe, and the Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo, thus enhancing cultural cooperation between Africa and the Balkans in general and Egypt and Serbia in particular.