Hong Kong Palace Museum to host city’s largest showcase of Egyptian artefacts

The Hong Kong Palace Museum has signed a historic agreement with Egypt’s custodian of its heritage to host the city’s largest and longest-running exhibition of artefacts from the African nation, with 250 exhibits on display this November.

The exhibition “Ancient Egypt Unveiled: Treasures from Egyptian Museums” will run for nine months starting from November 20 at the museum in West Kowloon Cultural District. It will feature items such as a more than 2.8-metre (9.2-foot) tall statue of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, mummified cats, coffins and canopic jars.

The agreement signed with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, marks the first time that a Hong Kong museum has collaborated with the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, with both sides describing the move as the starting point of future collaborations.

“This is the longest and the largest Egyptian exhibition that [is] organised in Hong Kong,” said Hong Kong Palace Museum director Louis Ng Chi-wa.

“With these nine [months], we hope to attract many people to come to Hong Kong to see [or] to view the treasures of Egyptian ancient culture. And also to understand more about our friendship [between Egypt and China].”

Ng expects that the exhibition will be “very, very popular” and may draw between 600,000 and 700,000 attendees during its run.

The director said that he expected the visitor profile for the event would be similar to their usual profile, with about 30 per cent being local visitors, more than 50 per cent from mainland China and the remaining 20 per cent from elsewhere in Asia.