Egypt opens colossal new antiquities museum after two-decade wait

CAIRO: Prime ministers, presidents and royalty descended on Cairo on Saturday to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the Pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities.

The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, pandemic and wars in neighbouring countries.

We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a country whose history goes back more than 7,000 years.”

Spectators including President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gathered late on Saturday before an enormous screen outside the museum, which projected images of the country’s most famous cultural sites as dancers in glittering pharaonic-style garb waved glowing orbs and scepters.

‘NEW CHAPTER’ FOR EGYPT

They were accompanied by Egyptian pop stars and an international orchestra decked out in white beneath a sky lit with lasers, fireworks and hovering lights that formed into moving hieroglyphics.

By opening the museum, Egypt was “writing a new chapter in the story of this ancient nation’s present and future,” 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 heavily promoted attraction is the expansive collection of treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb, uncovered in 1922, including the boy-king’s golden burial mask, throne and sarcophagus, and thousands of other objects.

A colossal statue of Ramses II that sat for decades in a downtown Cairo square bearing the pharaoh’s name now adorns the grand entry hall.

The complex’s sleek design evoking the Pyramids cuts a marked contrast to the dusty and often outmoded displays in the neoclassical Egyptian Museum that opened over a century ago in central Cairo overlooking Tahrir Square.

The old museum suffered indignities in recent years, including the looting of several display cases during Egypt’s 2011 uprising, when antiquities theft was rife.

In 2014, the beard of Tutankhamun’s burial mask broke off when workers were changing the lights in the display case, then clumsily glued back on. The following year the mask was more properly restored and put back on display.

Officials hope the new museum can end a perception fueled by such events that Egypt has been remiss in caring for its priceless treasures, and add weight to its claims for Egyptian objects held in museums abroad to be returned.

“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 state-run Al-Ahram Weekly devoted to the museum, which it called “a philosophy as much as it is a building.”

“The GEM is not a replica of the Louvre or the British Museum. It is Egypt’s response to both. Those museums were born of empire; this one is born of authenticity.”

The museum’s more than $1 billion price tag was funded in large part by Japanese development loans. Designed by an Irish firm, Heneghan Peng Architects, it covers some 120 acres, making it roughly the same size as Vatican City.

Officials are also betting that the museum, the latest in a series of mega-projects launched or completed since 2014, can accelerate a revival of tourism, a vital source of foreign currency for an economy battered by years of regional conflicts and economic uncertainty.

A series of galleries had been opened late last year but many exhibits were not accessible to the public.