Christianity has been present in Egypt since the 1st century and Coptic
Christianity is the main branch of Christianity that the Egyptian Christians
adhere to. Coptic Christians have created a great legacy since their presence
in Egypt and this can be witnessed when visiting the Coptic museum.
The Coptic museum was built in 1908 by Marcus SimaiPasha. It holds a
huge number of 16,000 works of art, which date back to each of all the
different times that Christianity has passed through in Egypt. This continuity
and variance in the date of origin of the displayed pieces of this museum allow
the visitors to see for themself the different phases of Christianity in Egypt,
starting by the first phases in the times of transitioning from the ancient
Egyptian local religions to Christianity till the modern times.
Example of some of the famous pieces in this museum are a piece that
shows how an ankh symbol, or key of life, was reworked into a christian cross,
another piece exhibiting how Mary with a sucking infant Jesus was shaped after
the prototype of Isis breastfeeding Horus and another one where crosses and
Horus hawks are present in basket-weaving. When seeing these pieces, one can
notice how the introduction of Christianity into the lands of Isis, Ra and
Horus resulted in an interesting mixture of ideas, religion and artistry.
Other invaluable pieces include a set of artifacts dating from the 6th
to the 9th centuries, collections of papyrus scripts, including the most
prominent sheets of the Gnostic gospel, and the Coptic Psalter, which is the
oldest preserved codex in the world.