[2] In 1908, after receiving approval and a number of silver antiquities from Patriarch Cyril V and raising funds by public subscription, Marcus Simaika Pasha built the Coptic Museum and inaugurated it on 14 March 1910.

The museum houses an extensive collection of objects from the Christian era, which links the Pharaonic and Islamic periods.

The museum was renovated in the early 1980 with two new annexes, which with the original aisles, houses the collection of 16,000 artefacts arranged in chronological order through twelve sections.

Coptic monuments display a rich mixture of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Axumite and Ottoman traditions,[8] linking ancient and Islamic Egypt.

[11] The Coptic Museum also houses a corpus of 1,200 Nag Hammadi manuscripts in a library open to specialist researchers only.