With pharaoh-fanfare, Egypt unveils a huge new museum dedicated to its ancient civilization

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CAIRO (AP) — In an extravaganza of pharaonic imagery with a drone light show depicting ancient gods and pyramids in the sky, Egypt on Saturday inaugurated its long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum, a megaproject aiming to give the country’s millennia-old heritage a rich, modern display.

Two decades in the making, the museum located near the Giza Pyramids and Sphinx is the centerpiece of the government’s bid to boost Egypt’s tourism industry and bring cash into the troubled economy.

At the elaborate grand opening ceremony, attended by a number of European and Arab royals and other presidents and prime ministers, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi sought to give the event an international scale.

He called on attendees to “make this museum a platform for dialogue, a destination for knowledge, a forum for humanity, and a beacon for all who love life and believe in the value of humankind.”

The museum, known as GEM, is one of several megaprojects championed by el-Sissi since he took office in 2014, embarking on massive investments in infrastructure with the aim of reviving an economy weakened by decades of stagnation and battered by the unrest that followed the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.

Egypt’s pharaonic history has long made it a tourist magnet. But it has also long struggled to organize and display the sheer huge amount of artifacts – everything from tiny pieces of jewelry and colorful tomb murals to towering statues of pharaohs and animal-headed gods, with more discoveries are constantly being made across the country.

Touted as the world's biggest museum dedicated to a single ancient civilization, the new building, in a contemporary style, aims to correct that. Its large, open halls give space and rich explanations for some 50,000 artifacts on display, along with virtual reality exhibits. It displays the entire collection of treasures from the tomb of the famed King Tutankhamun for the first time since its discovery in 1922.

The museum replaces the Egyptian Museum, housed in building more than a century old in downtown Cairo that – while elegant in its Neo-Classical style -- had become antiquated and was often compared to a warehouse, overpacked with artifacts with little explanation.

Construction on the $1 billion project began in 2005 under then-President Hosni Mubarak. But work was interrupted by turmoil surrounding the 2011 uprising that brought down Mubarak. Further delays ensued, and a planned grand opening over the summer had to be put off after the 12-day-long war between Israel and Iran erupted in June.

GEM is expected to attract 5 million visitors annually, said Egypt’s tourism and antiquities minister, Sherif Fathy. That would put it in the realm of the most popular museums in the world. In 2024, by comparison, Paris’s Louvre brought in 8.7 million, the British Museum 6.5 million and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York 5.7 million.

Saturday night’s grand opening stoked the pharaoh-mania.

As an orchestra played fanfares, lines of actors dressed in ancient Egyptian garb arrayed around the museum, the pyramids and the Sphinx. Hundreds of drones created a light show in the sky, depicting well-known Egyptian gods like Isis and Osiris and the pyramids.

El-Sissi posed with delegates from more than 70 countries, including members of the royal families from Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Jordan, Gulf nations and Japan, and a number of European and regional presidents and prime ministers. It was a throwback to the grand opening of another megaproject in Egypt, the 1869 inauguration of the Suez Canal, when Egypt’s rulers gathered a host of European royal families.

The museum boasts a towering, triangular glass façade imitating the nearby pyramids, with 24,000 square meters (258,000 square feet) of permanent exhibition space.

It opens to a granite colossus of Ramses the Great, one of ancient Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs who reigned for around 60 years, from 1279-1213 B.C., and is credited with expanding ancient Egypt’s reach as far as modern Syria to the east and modern Sudan to the south. The statue greets visitors once they step inside the museum’s angular atrium.

The museum’s 12 main galleries, which opened last year, exhibit antiquities spanning from prehistoric times to the Roman era, organized by era and by themes.

Two halls that will be opened for the first time after Saturday are dedicated to the 5,000 artifacts from the collection of King Tutankhamun — a boy pharaoh who ruled from 1361-1352 B.C. The tomb was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922 in the southern city of Luxor. But the old Egyptian Museum didn’t have enough room to display the whole collection.

The collection includes the boy pharaoh’s three funeral beds and six chariots, his golden throne, his gold-covered sarcophagus and his burial mask, made of gold, quartzite, lapis lazuli and colored glass.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s most renowned archaeologist and former minister of antiquities, said the Tutankhamun collection is the museum’s masterpiece.

“Why this museum is so important, and everyone is waiting for the opening?” he told The Associated Press. “Because of Tutankhamun.”

Officials hope the museum will draw more tourists who will stay for longer periods and provide the foreign currency needed to shore up Egypt’s battered economy.

The government has also revamped the area around the museum and the nearby pyramids and the Sphinx. New highways were built, and a metro station is being constructed nearby. An airport, Sphinx International Airport, has also opened west of Cairo — 40 minutes from the museum.

The tourism sector has suffered during years of political turmoil and violence following the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. In recent years, the sector has started to recover after the coronavirus pandemic and amid Russia’s war on Ukraine — both countries are major sources of tourists visiting Egypt.

A record number of about 15.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2024, contributing about 8% of the country’s GDP, according to official figures. Fathy, the tourism minister, said about 18 million tourists are expected this year, with authorities hoping for 30 million visitors annually by 2032.

This will translate into more jobs and pump foreign currency into the economy, said Walid el-Batouty, a tour guide.

“It will be boost the economy of Egypt tremendously not just the hotels and the museum itself,” he said. Whenever a tourist rides a cab or even just buys a bottle of water, “that is pumping money” into Egypt’s coffers, he added.

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Associated Press journalist Ahmed Hatem in Cairo contributed to this report.