More than an archive of Coptic history, Cairo's Coptic Museum is a case study in the formative years of a major religion. It houses the world's most important collection of Coptic art, showing examples of the first Christian representations.
Many artefacts display icons like the ankh-symbol (like a cross with a loop on top), which was reworked into a Christian cross, or how Mary with a sucking infant Jesus was shaped after the prototype of Isis breastfeeding Horus.
Noteworthy is the collection of scripts, which include papyrus sheets of the Gnostic gospels found at Nag Hammadi in 1945, and the Coptic Psalter, the oldest preserved codex in the world.