Cairo — Egypt’s authorities will host dozens of international leaders and dignitaries on Saturday because it holds an official opening ceremony for the Grand Egyptian Museum, a $1 billion undertaking many years within the making that was stricken by a number of delays and a ballooning of the finances.
The GEM is among the largest museums on the planet, and the most important devoted to a single civilization: historical Egypt. Its subject material spans some 7,000 years, from prehistory to the tip of the Greek and Roman eras round 400 A.D.
The preliminary value 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 closing price ticket was greater than double that. Costing over $1 billion, the undertaking was funded by means of Egyptian assets 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 The obelisk itself is about 3,500 years outdated, nevertheless it sits suspended overhead on a contemporary construction with a glass ground, so guests can peer up and examine its historical inscriptions from an angle by no means earlier than potential.
LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP through Getty Photographs
Past is the Grand Staircase, with 108 steps bringing folks up the equal of six flooring to the primary galleries, with colossal statues on view the entire approach up.
The GEM has 12 main exhibition halls, overlaying about 194,000 sq. ft.
The variety of artifacts on show has practically doubled preliminary expectations because of Egypt’s wealth of antiquities, with officers saying about 100,000 gadgets will likely be housed within the halls.
To place that in perspective, if a customer have been to spend one minute taking a look at every artifact on show within the museum, it will take nearly 70 sleepless days to view the whole assortment.
The museum’s triangular structure radiates outward from its entrance towards the three principal 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 buildings, out of respect for his or her builders.
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The museum’s inside gives gorgeous panoramic views of the pyramids. The idea could sound easy, nevertheless it required a major reshaping of the native topography, together with the excavation and removing of some 79 million cubic ft of sand, which took staff 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.
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The 83-ton statue’s journey took 10 hours, processing slowly by means of the streets of Egypt below heavy safety as folks watched on TV.
Later Ramses was moved to a brand new everlasting dwelling, about 400 yards away, and the museum was constructed round it.
King Tut’s full assortment
The GEM’s principal attraction, it may very well be argued, is the entire assortment of the well-known King Tutankhamun, the golden boy.
All 5,398 gadgets from the tomb of the thirteenth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of historical Egypt, who dominated from round 1333 to 1323 B.C., will likely be displayed collectively in a single place for the primary time since they have 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 outdated 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 have been designed for use within the journey to the afterlife.
The 2 royal boats have been found in 1954 close to the Pyramid of Khufu. It took consultants greater than 10 years to reassemble the primary boat. It’s now totally reconstructed and was moved to the museum in 2021. Guests of the museum also can view the conservation work underway on the second.
Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS 
Students consider they have been both utilized in Khufu’s funeral procession or they have been supposed for his journey with the solar god Re within the afterlife.
The lengthy street 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 undertaking on the location in 1992.
On the very starting of 2002, Egypt launched an enormous worldwide architectural competitors to discover a profitable design for the museum. A complete of two,227 architects from 103 nations utilized to submit designs, and by August of that 12 months, 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.
AP Photograph/Amr Nabil 
The plan was initially for the museum to open in 2010, however a sequence 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 a lot of different senior officers from world wide, although no names have been confirmed.
Egyptian officers hope the brand new museum will enhance the nation’s tourism business, and with it, the still-struggling financial system. They’ve predicted that the GEM will entice some 5 million guests per 12 months.
