China, Egypt sign cultural relics cooperation

The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Shanghai Museum in China signed a cooperation protocol in Cairo, Egypt on Feb 25, agreeing to hold an exhibition of ancient Egyptian cultural relics in Shanghai.

According to information from the Chinese Embassy in Cairo, the exhibition will take place from July 19 to Aug 17, 2025. About 800 artifacts spanning different eras of ancient Egypt, including statues of Kings Tutankhamen, Amenemhat III, Ramesses II and Queen Hatshepsut.

The exhibits will be selected from a number of Egyptian museums, including the Manial Palace, Ismailia, Suez and Luxor, as well as new archaeological findings from the warehouses of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The agreement was signed by Chu Xiaobo, director of the Shanghai Museum, and Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Egypt Supreme Council of Antiquities, and witnessed by Yang Ronghao, cultural counselor for the Chinese Embassy in Egypt and director of the China Cultural Center in Cairo, and Ahmed Issa, Egypt's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities.

Issa expressed his pleasure about the upcoming exhibition in China, especially in light of the close and long-standing relations between Egypt and China, which are among the oldest civilizations in the world. He believed that the exhibition will be a platform for advertising Egyptian tourism products in China.

The exhibition entitled Top of the Pyramids: Ancient Egyptian Civilization Exhibition, will be the largest display of Egyptian artifacts outside the North African country, according to the Shanghai Museum.

"Over 95 percent of the artifacts will be arriving in Asia for the first time, and almost all of them are being shown in China for the first time," said Chu.

The highest-profile exhibits include the statues of Amenhotep IV and Tutankhamen from Egypt's 18th Dynasty (c. 16th-13th century BC), a mummy portrait from the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BC) and a wooden coffin recently unearthed in Saqqara.