The group of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) working in the varying fields of the specialties in Egypt and the students of Daito Bunka University, who had been in the city of Alexandria located northwest of Cairo to study Arabic, visited the Grand Egyptian Museum Conservation Center (GEM-CC) separately on the 19th and the 27th of September. Obviously it was very rare experience for two groups of visitors to have the opportunities to look around a forefront scene of the JICA’s technical cooperation with Egypt in the field of conservation work of the ancient Egyptian cultural heritage. Mr. Suzuki, chief advisor of this project, gave explanation about the course of the JICA GEM-CC Project. They were very much excited and keen on to listen his explanation.
Both groups of visitors led by JICA experts and they were able to look around the most of GEM-CC’s scientific labs. Especially, when groups were at the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) Lab, everybody was so amazed by a scientific analytical device of SEM, which costs around one hundred million Japanese yen and they had never seen such device before.
In the field of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM), where the knowledge and technical skills of the IPM have been improved by JICA initiative, research on inhabitation and control management of pest has been carried out for protection of the ancient Egyptian artifacts. So, the entered and inhabiting pest insects has been captured, collected and studied in GEM-CC. The visitors, especially ladies were surprised by weird appearance of insect pest, which does not inhabit in Japan.
Both groups of visitors also had the opportunities to overlook the construction site of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM). The procedure of past construction work of GEM was explained to visitors by a site supervisor. It appeared that all visitors were overwhelmed by the huge construction site of GEM, where GEM is once constructed, it is to be ranked as one of the biggest Museum in the world.
