The Hong Kong Palace Museum has signed an agreement with the custodian of Egyptian antiquities to host the city’s largest and longest-running exhibition of artefacts from the African nation, with 250 pieces on display from November.

“Ancient Egypt Unveiled: Treasures from Egyptian Museums” will run for nine months starting from November 20 at the museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District. It will feature items including a more than 2.8-metre-tall (9.2-foot) statue of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, mummified cats, coffins and canopic jars.

The agreement marks the first time that a Hong Kong museum has collaborated with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, with both sides describing the move as the starting point of future collaborations.

“This is the longest and largest Egyptian exhibition [being] organised in Hong Kong,” Hong Kong Palace Museum director Louis Ng Chi-wa said.

“With these nine months, we hope to attract many people to come to Hong Kong to view the treasures of Egyptian ancient culture and also to understand more about our friendship [between Egypt and China].”

Ng said he expected that the exhibition would be “very, very popular” and could draw between 600,000 and 700,000 attendees.

The director said that he expected the visitor breakdown for the event would be similar to its usual profile, with about 30 per cent being locals, more than 50 per cent from mainland China and the remaining 20 per cent from elsewhere in Asia.