The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) was inaugurated on Saturday evening near the Great Pyramids of Giza. The long-awaited exhibition space is the largest museum in the world dedicated to a single civilization, ancient Egypt, and the country promises to strengthen tourism and economy from it. TASR writes about it according to AFP and AP agencies.
“Today, as we celebrate together the opening of the Great Egyptian Museum, we are writing a new chapter in the history of the present and the future for the sake of this ancient homeland,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi said in a speech at the event, which took place after several delays and two decades of construction.
Opening ceremony
Members of royal families, presidents, prime ministers and other representatives of almost 80 countries took part in the opening ceremony. Slovakia was represented by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Juraj Blanár.
The public can book a visit from Tuesday, November 4.
The goal of GEM is to introduce ancient monuments to five million visitors a year. The massive billion-dollar complex details life in ancient Egypt, displaying more than 50,000 artifacts ranging from treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb to Pharaoh Khufu’s famous “solar ship.” By comparison, the Louvre Museum in Paris has approximately 35,000 artifacts on display.
President Sisi’s mega project
The museum is one of the mega-projects that President Sísí has been promoting since taking office in 2014. The goal of massive investments in infrastructure is to revive the country’s economy.
Construction began in 2005, work stopped for three years after political unrest in 2011. The author of GEM is Irish architect Roisin Heneghan. The building’s imposing triangular glass facade mimics the nearby pyramids, and the structures used help regulate internal temperatures, reducing dependence on air conditioning.
Modern solutions
The museum has 22,000 square meters of permanent exhibition space, and the main building is connected by an underground tunnel to specialized laboratories. They work to protect ancient Egyptian heritage, from fragile papyri to sculpture fragments and human remains.
In the entrance hall stands a 3200-year-old granite statue of Pharaoh Ramesses the Great, which stood in front of the main railway station in Cairo since 1954. From the atrium overlooking the nearby pyramids, a magnificent six-story staircase lined with ancient sculptures leads to the main galleries. The surrounding gardens were inspired by the lush vegetation of the Nile Valley.
