I VISITED THE NEW GRAND EGYPTIAN MUSEUM 🇪🇬 (often its abbreviated as GEM),
as the team of Orascom Construction (the partners in building the museum) celebrated the opening of 11 new Galleries in the building (one gallery is still being worked on) – the Tutankhamun section is yet to have an opening date announced.
Orascom Construction – who built the GEM – is headquartered in Dubai, UAE and will doubtless be involved in the development of Ras El Hekma peninsula west of Alexandria which could eventually attract as much as $150 billion in investments.
Almost 40 years ago – I first visited the old Egyptian Museum. Tourism numbers in Egypt have increased dramatically since then, and the old museum is overcrowded even during the “off-season”. It’s also in desperate need of refurbishment. In 2002 a previous Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, laid the foundation stone for the Grand Egyptian Museum on the edge of the Giza Plateau.
Since then, Egypt has had several regime changes, suffered during the financial crisis of 2008, and had a tourism slump during the COVID pandemic. During all this time the work on the museum has continued – with its opening being expected at any time over the last decade.
I suspect that the US$35 Billion received by Egypt in 2024 from the UAE (second cash payment of US$14 billion made in May 2024) for Ras El Hekma is enabling much if not all of this – a similar sum has been received over the last decade from Saudi Arabia. Two strategic islands – Tiran Island and Sanafir Island at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba were ceded officially by Egypt to Saudi Arabia in 2017.
In 2022, I witnessed Eid Mertah, the author and conservator at the Egyptian Museum, dismantling Tutankhamun’s shrines in the old museum for their transfer to the Grand Egyptian Museum. He was studiously photographing each stage. Despite losing his shrines, Tutankhamun’s mask and coffin still remain in the old Egyptian Museum, along with other highlights such as the throne.
GEM Design
The Grand Egyptian Museum bears a passing resemblance in its blocky style to the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit. That’s hardly surprising, as Heneghan Peng Architects, who have an office in Dublin, designed both.
GEM is a vast, indeed overwhelming, building that is clearly built to accommodate and impress far more visitors than the original Egyptian Museum.
After buying the ticket (EGP1,200 US$24 as a foreigner for the currently open galleries), the entrance is through a massive open courtyard, the size will reduce crowd crush and accommodate many tour groups standing around and listening to their guide. Then it’s through the relatively narrow pyramidal entrance into the vast atrium.
This atrium space is home to an 11-meter tall statue of Ramesses II, who would doubtless appreciate the vast scale of his new home. As its surrounded by a reflecting pool with no barriers – doubtless many tourists will accidentally join Ramesses in the water.
This statue was probably one of a pair in Memphis (now Mit Rahina), an ancient capital of Pharaonic Egypt. In the 1950s, archaeologists reassembled the statue, which had been found in pieces, before relocating it to the front of Cairo’s Ramesses rail station. It was relocated again into the museum in 2018.
The probable pair to this statue is in far better condition (as far as its face & torso go – unfortunately it’s legless) and is recumbent in its own building at Mit Rahina – near Saqqara. Originally, it may have been taller than the one in the GEM – at around 13m.
The GEM atrium must be well over 100meters long, and almost as wide – I guess its capacity is up to many thousands of visitors (who knows – around 10,000) at any one time.
Museum Highlights
For me the most memorable feature of this entrance area is the Grand Staircase itself, rather than Ramesses II.
The Grand Staircase rises the entire height of the GEM.
It has endless statues and monuments as it does so.
The Grand Staircase ends with a panoramic view of the pyramids, which are so large that, even though they are almost 2 kilometres away, they dominate the skyline.
Walk up the Grand Staircase – and when you leave, take the moving walkway down. If walking down, the lack of stair edge grips and low intensity lighting in the area of the staircase may make judging a step edge difficult and it would then be easy to fall.
The galleries that have been opened are just to the left of this panorama (see my video walk through). There eventually will be 24,000msq m of space. Hold onto your ticket – as here is a third set of ticket barriers! – when the museum is fully opened the various areas may have separate entrance charges.
Grand Egyptian Museum themes
Inside, this opened section of the museum has galleries – in three themes: Society, Kingship and Beliefs.
Each of these is divided into 4 time periods, firstly the Pre-Historic, Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom and First Intermediate period (a vast time frame) – secondly the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period – thirdly the New Kingdom and fourthly the Third Intermediate Period through to the Greco (Ptolemaic) and Roman periods – so 12 galleries. Though in essence its a grid of spaces 4 x 3 – I found the finished floor layout not especially easy to follow – in my video I repeated spaces as a result.
The GEM is focused on historical artefacts – which are displayed either in glass cases – or larger objects, such as statues are free-standing.
There is little interactive display or multi-sensory areas and I came across only one video wall – in essence, it is an old-fashioned museum. Like old-fashioned museums, the information about items on display wasn’t particularly enlightening – the lack of a high-tech focus means that information cannot be brought up. The monochromatic interior – with granite floors and walls, means the statuary melts into the background, after all in many cases the granite is exactly the same. The largely subdued lighting unfortunately, also underplays the larger statues – which the museum has an abundance. Hopefully, Tutankhamun’s galleries will have more information and appeal.
I think GEM has a similar atmosphere to the Grand Gallery and King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid – and also their stupendous scale.
With few exceptions, the current selection of artefacts is overshadowed by their equivalents that will stay in the old Egyptian Museum and the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation. So many statues, and there are a lot, have extensive damage and there is a plethora of statuary of only a few pharaohs. A good example is the collection of statues of King Senwosret I.
This despite the Grand Egyptian Museum’s future as a driver of Egypt’s tourism.
This may well be deliberate – as the Tutankhamun galleries will in themselves be a greater draw than all the other assembled pieces and the other two museums will need their own pulling power. The other museums are well over 30mins drive from the Grand Egyptian Museum and Pyramids – which together have an exceptional, almost gravitational attraction.
I uploaded two videos on YouTube one in vertical format just below – and right at the bottom of this Blog – a Horizontal one
I will certainly fly in when the Tutankhamun galleries open. Currently, the GEM museum is an island of calm – amid an incomplete road system and the planned Line 4 of the Cairo Metro still years from being finished (the cut & cover work on Al Ahram Avenue appeared to be well underway when I visited in 2022) – they are not using magical shabti workers to speed it all up.
So, when the complete museum will open might only be revealed when the mask of Tutankhamun makes the doubtless well-publicised journey from the old to the new museum.
In 2026 the main website is https://gem.eg/– with online booking essential; by time-slot.
The earlier site still functions https://visit-gem.com/en/home Review restrictions regarding cameras – as some types may be restricted or banned.
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