Cairo – Egypt’s authorities will host dozens of overseas leaders and dignitaries on Saturday because it holds an official opening ceremony for the Grand Egyptian Museum, a $1 billion mission a long time within the making that was stricken by a number of delays and a ballooning of the price range.
The GEM is among the largest museums on the planet, and the most important devoted to a single civilization: historic Egypt. Its material spans some 7,000 years, from prehistory to the tip of the Greek and Roman eras round 400 A.D.
The preliminary price for the greater than 5-million-square-foot, triangular-themed construction a few mile from the long-lasting pyramids of Giza was estimated at $500 million, however the last price ticket was greater than double that. Costing over $1 billion, the mission was funded via Egyptian sources and worldwide cooperation.
In entrance of the primary entrance stands the imposing 53-foot-high Hanging Obelisk, the one such construction on the planet. The obelisk itself is about 3,500 years previous, nevertheless it sits suspended overhead on a contemporary construction with a glass ground, so guests can peer up and examine its historic inscriptions from an angle by no means earlier than attainable.
The Obelisk of Ramses II is pictured earlier than the facade and entrance of the brand new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza close to Cairo late on April 6, 2025.
LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Past is the Grand Staircase, with 108 steps bringing individuals up the equal of six flooring to the primary galleries, with colossal statues on view the entire method up.
The GEM has 12 major exhibition halls, overlaying about 194,000 sq. toes.
The variety of artifacts on show has practically doubled preliminary expectations due to Egypt’s wealth of antiquities, with officers saying about 100,000 objects can be housed within the halls.
To place that in perspective, if a customer had been to spend one minute taking a look at every artifact on show within the museum, it might take nearly 70 sleepless days to view the complete assortment.
The museum’s triangular structure radiates outward from its entrance towards the three fundamental pyramids of Giza, aligning completely with their positions. Its partitions and sloping ceilings observe the identical traces, rising towards the pyramids’ highest factors, however not exceeding the peak of the traditional constructions, out of respect for his or her builders.
A view of daylight pouring into the Grand Egyptian Museum’s fundamental corridor, illuminating a row of colossal statues of pharaohs seated in regal poses on the Nice Egyptian Museum, on October 15, 2024 in Giza, Egypt.
Mohamed Elshahed/Anadolu by way of Getty Photographs
The museum’s inside presents beautiful panoramic views of the pyramids. The idea could sound easy, nevertheless it required a big reshaping of the native topography, together with the excavation and removing of some 79 million cubic toes of sand, which took employees seven months.
King Ramses II was there first
Within the entrance courtyard of the GEM, stands an enormous, 3,200-year-old statue of King Ramses II. The statue was moved in 2006 from a busy sq. in central Cairo to a web site close to the Nice Pyramids, the place it stood awaiting the brand new landmark museum’s development.
A view of the primary atrium with a statue of Ramses II as individuals go to the Nice Egyptian Museum, on October 15, 2024 in Giza, Egypt.
Mohamed Elshahed/Anadolu by way of Getty Photographs
The 83-ton statue’s journey took 10 hours, processing slowly via the streets of Egypt beneath heavy safety as individuals watched on TV.
Later Ramses was moved to a brand new everlasting residence, about 400 yards away, and the museum was constructed round it.
King Tut’s full assortment
The GEM’s fundamental attraction, it might be argued, is the whole assortment of the well-known King Tutankhamun, the golden boy.
All 5,398 objects from the tomb of the thirteenth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of historic Egypt, who dominated from round 1333 to 1323 B.C., can be displayed collectively in a single place for the primary time since they had been found by Howard Carter in 1922.
The brand new showroom is six occasions the scale of the one which beforehand housed a lot of the Tut assortment, on the previous Egyptian Museum in central Cairo.
King Khufu’s Boats
The GEM additionally boasts the King Khufu’s Boats Museum, exhibiting the 4,500-year-old the boats that had been designed for use within the journey to the afterlife.
The 2 royal boats had been found in 1954 close to the Pyramid of Khufu. It took specialists greater than 10 years to reassemble the primary boat. It’s now absolutely reconstructed and was moved to the museum in 2021. Guests of the museum also can view the conservation work underway on the second.
Vacationers get pleasure from a sundown at a restaurant subsequent to the Nice Pyramid of Khufu, forward of the Grand Egyptian Museum’s official opening subsequent Saturday, in Giza, Egypt October 27, 2025.
Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS
Students consider they had been both utilized in Khufu’s funeral procession or they had been supposed for his journey with the solar god Re within the afterlife.
The lengthy highway to the Grand Egyptian Museum
The thought for a grand museum on this web site in Egypt dates again greater than 32 years. The federal government first allotted 117 acres for the mission on the location in 1992.
On the very starting of 2002, Egypt launched an enormous worldwide architectural competitors to discover a successful design for the museum. A complete of two,227 architects from 103 nations utilized to submit designs, and by August of that yr, 1,550 from 83 nations had submitted conceptual drawings.
A pair months later officers had whittled the choices all the way down to solely 20 designs to place ahead for a second stage. In July 2003, the prize – and the huge contract – was awarded to the Irish architectural agency Heneghan Peng.
Vacationers view the location of the good Pyramids from the remaining zone of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Egypt, Friday, Might 23, 2025.
AP Picture/Amr Nabil
The plan was initially for the museum to open in 2010, however a collection of occasions together with monetary crises, political uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and regional wars delayed the curtain elevating.
A authorities spokesperson mentioned the opening ceremony would draw an unprecedented variety of world leaders, with as many as 40 heads of state, together with royalty, anticipated to attend, together with numerous different senior officers from around the globe, although no names have been confirmed.
Egyptian officers hope the brand new museum will increase the nation’s tourism business, and with it, the still-struggling economic system. They’ve predicted that the GEM will appeal to some 5 million guests per yr.
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