More than 50,000 books
The library contains very rare books, magazines, and periodicals in many languages, such as Arabic, English, French, and Dutch. The library includes more than 80,000 books, as well as some of the rarest books on the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Near-Eastern disciplines, among others. The most important of these books are "The Description of Egypt", and "The Book of Antiquities of Egypt and Nubia". It also contains a rare collection of maps, paintings, and photographs.
Working hours 9 am - 4 pm from Sunday to Thursday
Library services: Reading and photograph
A special budget was contributed for the idea of developing a library at the Egyptian Museum in 1899, in the time of Loret. Maspero began in 1900 to buy books. By appointing a librarian in 1903, the library became more active. Mr. Ducros, the first librarian, took the charge of arranging the books and preparing their cards, as the number of books and cases increased. In 1904, the ground floor was wholly furnished. In the following year, Maspero arranged furnishings on the first floor. In 1910, Maspero investigated with Lambert the potential for enlarging the premises and using the upper parts of the library. Such expansion was necessary, given that every year the library acquired more books and brochures on Egyptology, philosophy, history, and geography, among others.
The librarian Munier expanded on Ducros’ work, furnishing the library with catalogues (obtained through exchanges or donations), all the while preparing reference cards for the items contained according to their date of publication and authors. Any further development of the library was stopped during the 2nd World War. It was reived by a curator, Dr. El Khachab, in 1948, who rearranged the cases and organised more periodicals exchanges.
In 1950, Dr. Dia Abou-Ghazi started working as librarian, and she proposed a system of exchange which allowed for the acquisition of more books from different libraries and booksellers. The number of books was raised from few hundred to 5,000. She also succeeded in raising and securing a budget to cover the needs of the library.
In 1976 the library was enlarged by adding the southern portico, and the expansion works were completed in 1983.