Egypt Unveils Massive New Museum

In an extravaganza of pharaonic imagery with a drone light show depicting ancient gods and pyramids in the sky, Egypt inaugurated its long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum on Saturday, a megaproject aiming to give the country's millennia-old heritage a rich, modern display. Two decades in the making, the museum located near the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx is the centerpiece of the government's bid to boost Egypt's tourism industry and bring cash into the troubled economy, the AP reports.

• Egypt's pharaonic history has long made it a tourist magnet. But it has also long struggled to organize and display the sheer huge amount of artifacts—everything from tiny pieces of jewelry and colorful tomb murals to towering statues of pharaohs and animal-headed gods, with more as discoveries are constantly being made across the country.
• The large, open halls of the new building, touted as the world's biggest museum dedicated to a single ancient civilization, give space for some 50,000 artifacts on display, along with virtual reality exhibits. It displays the entire collection of treasures from the tomb of the famed King Tutankhamun for the first time since its discovery in 1922. The museum boasts a towering, triangular glass façade imitating the nearby pyramids, with 258,000 square feet of permanent exhibition space.

• It opens to a granite colossus of Ramses the Great, one of ancient Egypt's most powerful pharaohs who reigned for around 60 years, from 1279-1213 BC, and is credited with expanding ancient Egypt's reach as far as modern Syria to the east and present-day Sudan to the south. The statue greets visitors once they step inside the museum's angular atrium.
• The museum replaces the Egyptian Museum, housed in a building more than a century old in downtown Cairo that, while elegant in its Neo-Classical style, had become antiquated and was often compared to a warehouse, overpacked with artifacts with little explanation.
• Officials hope the museum, known as GEM, will draw more tourists who will stay for longer periods and provide the foreign currency needed to shore up Egypt's battered economy. The government has also revamped the area around the museum and the nearby pyramids and the Sphinx. New highways were built, and a metro station is being constructed nearby. An airport, Sphinx International Airport, has also opened west of Cairo—40 minutes from the museum.

• GEM is expected to attract 5 million visitors annually, said Egypt's tourism and antiquities minister, Sherif Fathy. That would put it in the realm of the most popular museums in the world. In 2024, by comparison, Paris's Louvre brought in 8.7 million, the British Museum 6.5 million, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York 5.7 million.
• The museum is one of several megaprojects championed by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi since he took office in 2014, embarking on massive investments in infrastructure with the aim of reviving an economy weakened by decades of stagnation and battered by the unrest that followed the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.
• At Saturday night's grand opening, an orchestra played fanfares, lines of actors dressed in ancient Egyptian garb arrayed around the museum, the pyramids, and the Sphinx. Hundreds of drones created a light show in the sky, depicting well-known Egyptian gods like Isis and Osiris and the pyramids.
• El-Sissi posed with delegates from more than 70 countries, including members of the royal families from Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Jordan, Gulf Arab nations, and Japan, and a number of European and regional presidents and prime ministers.