After two decades of anticipation and countless delays, the Grand Egyptian Museum is finally having its grand reveal.
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The museum, which was set to officially open on Saturday, highlights Egypt’s ancient civilisation and is a centrepiece 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 US$1 billion mammoth facility is poised to become the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single civilisation with over 50,000 artefacts detailing 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-Sisi, 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.
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