Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Sharif Fathi, received Liu Duo, the Deputy Mayor of Shanghai Municipality in the People’s Republic of China, and her accompanying delegation at the ministry’s headquarters in the government district of the New Administrative Capital.
The meeting took place during their current visit to Egypt and was attended by Moamen Othman, Head of the Museums Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Chu Xiaobo, Director of the Shanghai Museum, and a number of ministry leaders and representatives from Shanghai Municipality and the Shanghai Museum.
Duo reviewed the results of the “On Top of the Pyramid: The Civilization of Ancient Egypt” exhibition currently held at the Shanghai National Museum, highlighting its success and the large turnout of visitors, which prompted the museum to extend the exhibition’s operating hours into the evening.
She pointed out that the exhibition has received more than 1.9 million visitors since its opening in July 2024, with attendees coming not only from Shanghai but also from various neighboring Chinese cities.
She added her expectation that the number of visitors to the exhibition will reach 2.5 million by the end of its run next August, expressing her hope for broader horizons of cooperation between the two countries in the coming period.
The minister then reviewed the volume of tourist traffic arriving in Egypt from China, expressing his aspiration to further promote this traffic from this important market by strengthening joint cooperation mechanisms and opening broader horizons in the fields of tourism and antiquities through several avenues, including adopting the idea of establishing temporary antiquities exhibitions and increasing the number of joint promotional campaigns.
The two sides also discussed the possibility of cooperation in the fields of museums, training, archaeological excavations, scientific research, and the exchange of expertise.
The Chinese side expressed its hope to increase the number of archaeological missions working in Egypt. Recently, a new joint archaeological mission between the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Shanghai Museum began work at the Sekhmet Temple in the Mit Rahina archaeological area, as did the joint mission of Peking University with the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which will work at the Tell el-Aziz site in Mit Rahina.
This is in addition to the existing archaeological missions, including the missions at the Montu Temple in Karnak and the Shanghai University of Science and Technology working in Saqqara on the digital documentation project of coffins.
