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CAIRO: After two decades of anticipation and countless delays, the Grand Egyptian Museum is finally having its grand reveal. The museum, which is set to officially open Saturday, highlights Egypt's ancient civilization and is a centerpiece of the government’s drive to boost the tourist industry, a major source of foreign currency in the cash-strapped country. Located just outside Cairo next to the famed Giza Pyramids , the $1 billion mammoth facility is poised to become the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single civilization with over 50,000 artifacts detailing the life in ancient Egypt. By comparison, the Louvre Museum in Paris has about 35,000 pieces on display. The museum is one of the mega-projects championed by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who since taking office in 2014 embarked 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. The museum’s construction began in 2005, but work stopped for three years during the political turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising. The grand opening was postponed multiple times , most recently in July this year because of conflicts in the Middle East. World leaders are expected to attend the opening ceremony Saturday. Giant building with a view of the Giza Pyramids Designed by the Irish firm Heneghan Peng Architects, the museum, known as GEM, boasts a towering, triangular glass façade imitating the nearby pyramids. In its entrance atrium stands the granite colossus of one of Egypt’s most famed pharaohs, Ramesses the Great. The 3,200-year-old, 11-meters-tall (36-foot-tall) statue was moved to the museum after decades of standing in the center of a traffic-clogged roundabout in front of Cairo’s main train station. From the atrium, a grand six-story staircase lined with ancient statues leads up to the main galleries and a view of the nearby pyramids. A bridge links the museum to the pyramids, allowing tourists to move between them either on foot or via electric, environment-friendly vehicles, according to museum officials. The museum includes 24,000 square meters (258,000 square feet) of permanent exhibition space, a children’s museum and conference and educational facilities, and a commercial area as well as a large conservation center. The 12 main galleries, which opened last year , exhibit antiquities spanning from prehistoric times to the Roman era, organized by era and by themes. Many of the 50,000 artifacts in the GEM were moved from the Egyptian Museum , a packed, century-old building in downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Others were recently unearthed from ancient cemeteries, including the Saqqara necropolis, another complex of pyramids and tombs about 14 miles (22 kilometers) south of the museum. The halls are equipped with advanced technology and feature multimedia presentations including mixed-reality shows to help explain ancient Egypt to new generations, said Ahmed Ghoneim, the museum’s CEO. “We’re using the language that the Gen Z uses right now,” he said in an interview. “Gen Z doesn’t use anymore the labels that we read as old people but rather use technology.” Tutankhamun collection in one place for the first time Saturday's grand opening will include the inauguration of two halls dedicated to the 5,000 artifacts from the collection of King Tutankhamun. The collection is being displayed in its entirety for the first time since British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut's tomb in 1922 in the southern city of Luxor. The old Egyptian Museum didn't have enough space to show all the tomb's treasures at once. Some masterpieces were restored at the museum’s conservation center, including the boy pharaoh's three funeral beds and six chariots , said Jailan Mohamed, chief restorer at the conservation center. They will be displayed along with his golden throne, his gold-covered sarcophagus and his burial mask , made of gold, quartzite, lapis lazuli and colored glass. The mask’s beard was accidentally knocked off and hastily glued back on with epoxy in 2014, before a German-Egyptian team of experts fixed it the following year. Another centerpiece of the museum is the 4,600-year-old solar boat of King Khufu , the pharaoh who is credited with building the Great Pyramid of Giza. The 43-meter-long (140-foot) wooden boat, discovered in the 1950s, was buried next to the Great Pyramid for Khufu — or Cheops as he is also known — to use in the afterlife. In 2021, it was moved from its display site by the pyramids into the Grand Egyptian...
