Prime ministers, presidents and royals arrived in Cairo on Saturday to attend the spectacular opening of a sprawling new museum built near the Pyramids to house one of the richest collections of antiquities in the world.
The opening of the $1 billion Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the pandemic and wars in neighboring countries.
“We have all dreamed about this project and whether it would really come true,” Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said at a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the entire world, from a country whose history goes back more than 7,000 years.”
Spectators, including President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, gathered Saturday night before a huge screen outside the museum, which projected images of the country’s most famous cultural sites while dancers in brilliant pharaonic-style outfits waved glowing orbs and scepters.
‘New chapter for Egypt’
They were accompanied by Egyptian pop stars and an international orchestra dressed in white under a sky illuminated with lasers, fireworks and floating lights that formed moving hieroglyphics.
By opening the museum, Egypt was “writing a new chapter in the history of the present and future of this ancient nation,” Sisi said at the opening.
The audience included German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi, and the crown princes of Oman and Bahrain.
The museum’s most touted attraction is the extensive collection of treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb, discovered in 1922, including the boy king’s golden funerary mask, throne and sarcophagus, and thousands of other objects.
A colossal statue of Ramses II that stood for decades in a central Cairo square named after the pharaoh now adorns the grand entrance hall.
The complex’s elegant design, reminiscent of the pyramids, creates a stark contrast to the dusty and often dated exhibits of the neoclassical Egyptian Museum that opened more than a century ago in central Cairo overlooking Tahrir Square.
Looted old museum
The ancient museum suffered indignities in recent years, including the looting of several display cases during Egypt’s 2011 uprising, when antiquities theft was common.
In 2014, the beard on Tutankhamun’s funerary mask broke when workers were changing the lights in the display case and was later glued back together. The following year, the mask was further restored and put back on display.
Officials hope the new museum can put to rest the perception fueled by such events that Egypt has been negligent in caring for its priceless treasures, and add weight to their calls for the return of Egyptian artifacts kept in museums abroad.
“Is it a national shrine or a global showcase? A gesture of cultural sovereignty or a tool of soft power?” Read an article in a special edition of the state-run Al-Ahram Weekly dedicated to the museum, which he called “both a philosophy and a building.”
“The GEM is not a replica of the Louvre or the British Museum. It is Egypt’s answer to both. Those museums were born of empire; this one is born of authenticity.”
The museum’s billion-dollar-plus price tag was largely financed by Japanese development loans. Designed by an Irish firm, Heneghan Peng Architects, it covers about 120 acres, making it about the same size as Vatican City.
Officials are also betting that the museum, the latest in a series of megaprojects launched or completed since 2014, can accelerate the revival of tourism, a vital source of foreign currency for an economy battered by years of regional conflict and economic uncertainty.
A number of galleries opened late last year, but many exhibitions were not accessible to the public.
