The Grand Egyptian Museum is finally open. Here’s why you should see it too

There are many, myself included, who think the old Egyptian Museum should be declared a Unesco world heritage site. The pink building, decorated with incongruous Latin inscriptions and Greek keys, fills a whole side of Tahrir Square and houses one of the world’s greatest collections of antiquities, most famously the treasures of Tutankhamun. True, the building has no air-conditioning, the roof leaks and until very recently the lighting was much as it was when the place opened 120 years ago. But it has charm, glory and perhaps most importantly, the ability to surprise — each time I have stepped off into a side room, as I have done hundreds of times, I have always found something to amaze me. But …

The Egyptian Museum was designed when a few hundred people constituted a crowd. Tourism is now one of the central pillars of the Egyptian economy and this year the government is hoping for 18 million visitors, 30 million by 2030. The old museum cannot accommodate such numbers. So in 2002, the former president Mubarak laid the foundation stone for a new museum at the foot of the pyramids of Giza and a competition was launched to design the building. This was won not by one of the obvious starchitects, but by a Dublin-based practice, Heneghan Peng, whose most significant standalone project was the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit. Now, after decades of construction and many years of delay and rumours, the new Grand Egyptian Museum has finally, almost opened.

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Last year I went to the GEM, as the new museum is universally referred to in Cairo, because you could buy a ticket to visit the grand lobby: a magnificent statue of the pharaoh Ramses II (moved from in front of Cairo’s main railway station) stood in state and Starbucks was open. I went back at the beginning of this year to see the new grand staircase, showcasing large sculptural pieces. Some more food outlets, a jewellery and a carpet shop had opened. Two weeks ago, word spread that the GEM was opening its galleries, and two days later the turnstiles were operating, the galleries open. But not all of them.

With 872,000 sq feet of floor space, the Grand Egyptian Museum is the largest archaeological museum in the world

SAYED HASSAN/GETTY IMAGES

For now, Tutankhamun’s gold mask, sarcophagus and other key treasures remain in the old museum in Tahrir Square — presumably no one thinks it appropriate to have a splashy opening party with a war going on in neighbouring Palestine and Lebanon. The Tutankhamun treasures that have been moved, and there are more than 5,000 in all, are not yet on show. The other missing highlight is the solar barge, a 42m-long cedarwood boat that was buried beside the Great Pyramid in about 2,500BC. Intended to take the resurrected Pharaoh Khufu across the heavens, it remains one of the most spectacular things I have seen from the ancient world and for now, it is not on show. But there is still plenty to see.

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When I visited the GEM in the spring, the structure felt not unlike a new airport. Now that it is functioning and has people in it, it feels different. Across the lobby, past Ramses II, an escalator takes you up the grand staircase past sculptures of some of the great rulers, past some of their stone sarcophagi, past gods and goddesses to a huge picture window which frames the pyramids. “We are making a physical journey,” my guide Karim Mousa pointed out, “and a symbolic one, from this life to eternity.” It is also a journey from the Nile floodplain to the Giza plateau, from what was fertile to the desert, from the lobby to the 12 opened galleries.

Archaeology is at the heart of Egypt’s attempts to get 30 million visitors by 2030

SAYED HASSAN/GETTY IMAGES

Ancient Egyptian art is so exquisite, so perfect in form, function and finish, so in line with our ideas of beauty that you could take anything out of the old museum’s dusty display cases, mount and light it properly and it will look exceptional. This is what curators have done and the effect is dazzling, perhaps nowhere more so than with the treasures of Queen Hetepheres, mother of the builder of the Great Pyramid. The queen’s treasures had been on show in a dark side chamber in the old museum, where few people paid them much attention. Now, brought to light, the queen’s armchair, alabaster sarcophagus, bed and a box with her bangles look magnificent.

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The dozen galleries are arranged chronologically over 3,000 years, from pre-history and the Old Kingdom through the Middle and New Kingdoms to the Greeks and Romans. (But no early Copts, surely the last iteration of ancient Egypt.) Objects from each period are divided into “Society”, “Kingship” and “Beliefs”. Now, just hours after seeing the collection, it is the objects from Society that stand out sharpest in my memory — a shard of stone painted with a couple embracing, the mirrors that once reflected ancient faces, what Mousa called “the guardian mothers” who were protective deities and also expressed the power of women in ancient Egypt, a scrap of linen wrapped around small funerary figures, pieces of papyrus written by uneven hand … these, the human traces, have left their mark on me as much as the grand beauty of the royal and divine images. This was something you really got from the mostly unvisited side chambers of the old museum, where the main chambers were devoted to kingship and divinity.

A pharaonic status displayed at the grand staircase of the GEM

SAYED HASSAN/GETTY IMAGES

As I was leaving the museum through its vast alabaster entrance arch, I asked Mousa when the other galleries would open and he pointed to the sky. “Only God knows …”

One day, perhaps soon, Tutankhamun’s mask and sarcophagus will process from the old museum to the GEM and Khufu’s cedarwood boat will also go on show. When that happens, most visitors will only visit the new museum and for good reason — it houses an amazing collection of ancient art and artefacts arranged in a way that is easier for a first-time visitor to understand. But there will still be some, myself included, who will go back to Tahrir Square, to wander around the dusty cases of the old museum, to be surprised and amazed.
Anthony Sattin was a guest of Abercrombie & Kent, which has four nights’ B&B from £3,200pp, including flights, transfers, guiding and excursions (abercrombiekent.co.uk). Entry to the Grand Egyptian Museum is £19 (grandegyptianmuseum.org)

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