The Grand Egyptian Museum Is Finally Open. (Well, Mostly.)

The colossal complex in the desert attracted me to the outskirts of Cairo, an imposing site that arose for decades, building at the expense of noimagaged, with precision with precision collected from local quantities; A set of buildings whose construction, full of extraordinary challenges, covered the reigns of several rulers; A collective cultural testament, the greatest or his son, full of real history.

No, I don’t mean Giza’s famous pyramids. I came to see the great Egyptian museum.

Perhaps there is no institution on Earth whose opening has been long, or so amazingly delayed, as the great Egyptian museum on the outskirts of Cairo. Its construction has bone of such fiasco, wrapped in funds of funds, logistics obstacles, a pandemic, nearby wars, revolutions (yes, plural) – That are compared to that of the pyramids that are approximately one mile away in the Giza plateau.

(The Great Pyramid of Giza, 4,600 years old, built with around 2.3 million blocks of stone and without the use of wheels, pulleys or iron tools, approximately 25 years tok to build, according to some estimates. Then 20 far away, the great Egypt, the Grand, the Grand, the Grand, ))))))))))))))))

The planned openings have gone and come since 2012. to early opening appointments and then delays “, one of Museum’s travelers. “I wanted to visit since I was a child and the museum’s promise and constant delays is ruining that experience for so many people.”

Another wrote: “We will all be dead longer than King Tut himself for when this place is open!”

The wait is over. Well, above all.

When I visited in mid -February, much of the museum was open: 11 of the 12 main exhibition galleries, along with the cavernous entrance hall and a large staircase covered with artifact grills.

But the biggest tie of the museum, the Tutankhamen galleries, which will show more than 5,000 artifacts of the tomb of the King child, remained closed. (For now, the funeral gold mask of Tutankhams, among the most emblematic archaeological artifacts in the world, is still exhibited in the Egyptian Old Museum in the Tahrir Square.

These parts of the museum are expected to open this summer, with an official ceremony scheduled for July 3. could Take that date with a grain or two or salt).

Even so, only the museum’s incomplete citations, next to the self -building and its views of one billion dollars are amazing.

Upon entering the main hall, I was surprised both the scale of the structure and by the textural charm of its surfaces.

Just inside the pyramid weighs more than 80 tons. The figure of red granite has a legendary modern history: it was found on its side, divided into six pieces by an Italian Egyptologist in 1820; In 1954 it was installed in a circle of traffic in the center of Cairo, where it was found for half a century before being thoroughly transported to the new museum site in 2006.

From the atrium, I rose the great staircase first through a long mechanical staircase and on the foot, after having returned to the bottom, to see more closely the boxes of large -scale statues, columns and sarcophagi that are aligned in the line.

At the top of the stairs there was another impressive surprise: an obstacle view of the giza pyramids, perfectly framed in a set of floor by roof windows.

I got before the windows, transformed by impotence, for most of the one hour. If there is a better vision made by man on the planet, I still have to take it.

From the top of the stairs I entered the first main galleries of the museums, which are organized both chronological and by theme, the emotion of prehistory to the era of the novel.

To summarize the exhibition rooms would be an ungrateful task, and in addition, the joy of visiting any fixed museum is discovering the peculiar selection of articles that stand out only for you. Some outstanding aspects cling to me as you are: the vertiginous exhibition of the blue ushabti, the figures that left as servants for the dead. An immense mummified crocodile. A 3,100 -year wig made of braided human hair.

The particular wig dragged the old world forward, joining what is felt in the museum as an unwavering division. Leave a delicate human characteristic, preserved in silence for thousands of years, to give life to the past.

The arrival of the great Egyptian museum establishes a trio of unmissable museums in Cairo and its surroundings. In the Tahrir Square is the oldest: the Egyptian Museum, a beautiful Beaux-Arts building that has exhibited one of the world’s great collections in the world for more than a century. (To a large extent without modernizing, the museum has transferred and will continue to transfer, many of its most precious articles to Giza, Prompding Conerns about its future).

Also in the mixture is the National Museum of Egyptian civilization, another milestone that was completely inaugurated in 2021 and whose main attraction is its disturbing collection of real mummies.

The three are worthy of extended visits.

But in many ways, the great Egyptian museum is now alone. Party as the world’s largest archaeological museum, as well as the largest museum dedicated to a single civilization, was initial proposed by Hosni Mubarak, the authoritarian president of Egypt for a long time PERON plans a pear plan -you have for a new flag date. Stone was placed 10 years later, and the firm Heneghan Peng Architects, based in Dublin, won a competition to design the building in 2003. The construction Begó in 2005.

Then came the long series of spectacular setbacks: the global economic crisis of 2008, Arab spring (and the subsequent decimation of the Egyptian tourism industry), the Covid-19 pandemic and the wars in Gaza and Sudan. Approximately, the emotion by the museum eclipsed by the coverage of its postponement.

But I doubt that epic delays obtain the center of attention for much longer.

If my experience is an indication, then everything that is needed to ignore the long wait is a quiet walk through the museum’s timeless collection, and an extended look from the top of its staircase.

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