Vatican Museum - Gregorian Egyptian Museum

Once we got to the doors we purchased our admittance tickets. We had decided that we get audio guides to do the self guided tour of the Museums. It was about 10:30 a.m. when we got under way.

The Vatican Museums contain masterpieces of painting, sculpture and other works of art collected by the popes through the centuries. The Museums include several monumental works of art, such as the Sistine Chapel, the Chapel of Beato Angelico, the Raphael Rooms and Loggia and the Borgia Apartment.

There are many different areas in the Museums highlighting different geographical areas or types of works. The first of these areas is the Gregorian Egyptian Museum which has nine rooms.

Pope Gregory XVI had the Gregorian Egyptian Museum founded in 1839. It houses monuments and artefacts of ancient Egypt partly coming from Rome and from Villa Adriana (Tivoli), where they had been transferred mostly in the Imperial age, and partly from private collections, that is purchased by nineteenth century collectors. The Popes’ interest in Egypt was connected with the fundamental role attributed to this country by the Sacred Scripture in the History of Salvation. The Museum occupies nine rooms divided by a large hemicycle that opens towards the terrace of the "Niche of the Fir Cone", in which there are numerous sculptures. The last two rooms house finds from ancient Mesopotamia and from Syria-Palestine.

We started to look around, but didn’t plan to spend too much time in this area since we would be in Egypt in a couple weeks and going to the Egyptian Museum there.

Here are some statues. This room had a scene set up. A typical Egyptian bust. Another bust. I loved the décor of this room – so I wanted to get a picture of the room. A statue of one of the gods – Ra maybe? An Egyptian exhibit would not be complete without a Mummy. This is the terrace of the “Niche of the Fir Cone” The Niche of the Fir Cone (in case you could not figure out this was a fir cone sculpture.)This is one of the other sculptures in the terrace. You can go out to the terrace from the Egyptian section using this staircase – nothing too elaborate. Next up was the Classical Antiquities (Greek and Roman)