With 12 massive galleries housing priceless artifacts, Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum is already making history. Although only a portion of the over 5-million-square-foot museum opened in October—featuring the six-story Great Staircase overlooking the pyramids and the atrium displaying monuments, pharaoh statues, and sarcophagi—the rest will open in the near future. Once fully inaugurated, it will be the largest museum ever dedicated to a single civilization. Located just over a mile north of the Great Pyramid of Giza near Cairo, the museum expects nearly 4,000 visitors daily, according to Al-Tayeb Abbas, the museum’s deputy director, as reported by NBC News.
The museum’s plans started off with high hopes: in 2002, the Egyptian government launched a global design competition, and just weeks later, they held a groundbreaking ceremony. By 2003, an Irish design firm was chosen, and construction began in 2005. But then, the world waited as global and local events derailed the ambitious project: first, the political upheavals of the Arab Spring in 2011 led to a decline in tourism, and just when stability and tourists started to return, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a halt. Since 2018, there have been numerous official announcements about the museum’s opening, but each anticipated date slipped by… until 2024. Now, the over $1 billion mega-project opens its doors daily to 4,000 visitors. Eissa Zidan, head of restoration and artifact transportation, mentioned that all the newly opened halls are equipped with advanced technology and multimedia displays to showcase the lives of ancient Egyptians, including their kings.
Visitors are first greeted by a colossal 3,200-year-old statue of Ramses the Great, the legendary pharaoh of ancient Egypt. This statue, one of the first and largest artifacts moved to the new museum in 2018, is among 100,000 pieces transferred from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square and other museums across the country. The Grand Staircase leads to the museum’s roof, lined with untouched statues of ancient Egyptian rulers and offering views of the pyramids through a soaring ceiling.
Exploring this expansive museum requires time. “It takes at least one to two hours just to see maybe 20% of the statues,” Hawass said. Each piece, from royal busts carved from granite to gold necklaces adorned with turquoise and coral, and even a multi-meter-long preserved papyrus, now has ample space to be appreciated in a thoroughly modern and serene setting.
One of the museum’s most valuable treasures is the famous golden mask of Tutankhamun. This mask, which has survived tomb raiders and even clumsy restoration attempts, now has its own dedicated room. However, according to Hawass, the Tutankhamun exhibition—Egypt’s perhaps most famous archaeological treasure—won’t be immediately accessible to the public, as curators await a calmer situation in the Middle East before the grand global reveal.