The Coptic Museum in Old Cairo was founded by Marcus Simaika Pasha, with silver antiquities from Patriarch Cyril V and public subscription. The Coptic Orthodox Church offered 8,000 square meters of land. The article names no architect or style, and says the facade was designed to resemble the 12th-century Al-Aqmar Mosque. It was built in 1908 and inaugurated on March 14, 1910, with mosaic paving and old mashrabiya screens.
It became a state museum under the Department of Antiquities in 1931, and Christian antiquities moved in from the Egyptian Museum in 1939. The New Wing was completed in 1944, the Old Wing closed in 1966 for damage, and a full renovation followed in 1983 and 1984. Foundations strengthened from 1986 to 1988 helped it survive the 1992 earthquake.
It houses the largest Coptic collection in the world in twelve sections, with about 1,200 Nag Hammadi manuscripts open to specialist researchers.
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