The Egyptian Museum of Turin is a “must” for those who visit this Piedmontese city. The exposition area is enormous, the artefacts are of immense historical , archaeological, cultural, artistic and ethnographic value, and concern millennia of history of one fo the greatest and most fascinating civilizations of the ancient world.
The museum is arranged on three levels and encompasses a period of time from the beginnings of Egyptian civilization (4th millennium B.C.) up to the end of the 6th century A.D. The collection began to take form in the mid 17th century when the House of Savoy purchased the so-called “Isiac Tablet”. At the time, Egyptian history did not fascinate scholars and the public as it does now. However, once hieroglyphic system was deciphered (in 1822 by the Frenchman, Champollion), interest in the ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley grew enormously.
In the museum, the visitor can find extraordinary treasures and masterpieces such as statuary groups, sarcophagi, funerary objects, papyrus, stone tablets, votive images and mummies.