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How to forget the spectacular Golden Parade of April 2021, when Covid-19 was still raging, which put in the spotlight none other than the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. Cairo took the opportunity to turn the transfer of 22 priceless royal mummies from the historic Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square into a new home in a celebratory parade like no other. The Pharaohs were taken to the colossal National Museum of Egyptian Civilizations in the Giza Plateau.
Not yet open to the public, but already at the end of the works, the Grand Egyptian Museum will soon become the largest archaeological structure in the world dedicated to finds belonging to a single civilization.
The new expensive museum of Egypt, abbreviated, not coincidentally, to the acronym “GEM”, will host around 100,000 ancient artefacts dating back to the years of the Pharaonic civilizations, and beyond. Its flagship attraction will be on the collection of treasures that belonged to the famous “child Pharaoh” Tutankhamun.
While awaiting official communication on the inauguration date, which should be in spring 2024, below is a quick look at the treasures that can be found inside the museum, its unique design, and the reasons for the delays in the opening.
New “GEM” of Egypt: opening soon
The GEM will be a key attraction of Cairo. Alongside the other two big museums on Ancient Egypt in the capital, which are the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and the downtown Egyptian Museum of Cairo in Tahrir Square, a third jewel will open its doors: the Grand Egyptian Museum. Compared to the others, however, the GEM will boast the title of the largest archaeological museum in the world and will also be one of the most modern.
Its location will also ease many tourist visits. Built on the Giza plateau, the new museum will stand only a couple of kilometers from the Pyramids complex. Thus, after visiting the only Wonder of the Ancient World still existing, tourists will be naturally pushed to continue their historical immersion in the Egyptian civilization by going to the “nearby” GEM, avoiding the chaos of city traffic.
Credits: Grand Egyptian Museum (Instagram).
Tourists will have the opportunity to explore the 12 exhibition rooms of the museum, which covers a vast surface area of 480,000 square metres. Although, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Museum is not yet open to the public, access to some limited spaces has been permitted since 8 March: the Grand Hall, the Grand Staircase, the commercial area and the external gardens.
GEM official website reads: “The GEM Complex is now offering limited tours to test site readiness and the visitor experience ahead of the official opening”. All the internal spaces of the museum will remain closed to visits until the inauguration, to which will be invited Heads of State, politicians, and VIPs from all over the world.
The treasures of the Grand Egyptian Museum
The Grand Egyptian Museum will offer an unforgettable historical immersion in Egyptian civilization, from the predynastic years to the more modern Greco-Roman periods. Millennia of history will thus be revealed to the public, who will also have the opportunity to discover unreleased ancient finds, exhibited for the first time.
One of the greatest attractions of the museum, as anticipated, will be the entire tomb collection of the most famous pharaoh of Egypt: Tutankhamun. In fact, his treasures alone amount to more than 4,500 pieces. These include the iconic golden funerary mask (14th century BC), previously preserved in the Egyptian Museum of Tahrir Square, as well as the jewels of the sarcophagus, the throne, and the mummified body of Tutankhamun.
During the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade in 2021, his mummy and 21 other Ancient Egyptian royals were transferred to the GEM. Among the mummies there was also the Great Ramesses II, whose magnificent statue, previously located in downtown Cairo, will now give a spectacular welcome to the museum’s tourists in the Grand Hall.
Credits: Grand Egyptian Museum (Instagram).
The treasures of the GEM will also include a black granite sculpture of Queen Nefertiti, a pink granite sculpture of Amenhotep III, and Pharaoh Khufu’s solar boat.
1-billion-dollar project
Why was the Grand Egyptian Museum, a one-billion-dollar project, built? The answer must be sought in the early 1990s, at the time of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency.
He announced the need for a new museum that could collect the ancient artefacts scattered across the country. The necessity to build a new structure also arose because of the little space left in the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, where historical artefacts were crammed.
In 2002, an international contest for the creation of the museum was therefore launched. An Irish architecture firm, Heneghan Peng Architects, won with an ultra-modern project that harmonized the forms of the museum with those of the nearby pyramids, through an original design.
Credits: Grand Egyptian Museum (Instagram).
The construction of the GEM thus began in 2005, with an estimated overall budget of 500,000 million dollars. A series of slowdowns due to both internal and external factors in the works, however, have increased costs over time, up to doubling them.
Slowdowns and unexpected events
The completion of the works originally scheduled to last ten years evidently did not go as planned, due to some difficulties and unforeseen events. Among these, the financial crisis of 2008, the outbreak of popular uprisings in 2011 known as the Arab Spring, which started in Tunisia and then spread like wildfire to many other Arab countries.
Besides, the outbreak of the global Covid-19 pandemic has derailed the opening plans of the Grand Egyptian Museum, further postponing the inauguration date.
Credits: Ovedc (Wikimedia Commons); license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
Added to the external unforeseen circumstances have been the difficulties relating to the construction of the museum itself. The exaggerated dimensions of the architectural complex and the search for suitable building materials to support the structure have represented a real challenge for engineers and contracting companies.
Despite the numerous obstacles encountered over the years, today the GEM is finally complete. All that remains is to wait for the official announcement of its opening, news that the whole world now impatiently desires.
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