from Cairo (Egypt)
“I saw amazing things,” said British archaeologist Howard Carter after peering into the tomb of Tutankhamun, the young king, for the first time. It was November 4, 1922 and more than a century later, but always on the same date, those “wonderful things” and many others finally found adequate exhibition space in the Grand Egyptian Museum, which was opened by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with a lavish inauguration ceremony broadcast around the world.
It took more than twenty years of work between departure, setbacks, the Arab Spring and the pandemic, its costs exceeded a billion dollars (Japan’s economic support was excellent), but now the museum, which partially opened last summer, can be visited throughout its territory. 500 thousand square meters, which is equivalent to sixty football fields or two Louvres. This is the largest museum in the world, a work of the pharaohs: could it be otherwise?
The Grand Egyptian Museum – which local marketing calls GEM, targeting 5 million visitors a year to revive tourism crippled by the crisis in the Middle East – is sponsored across the city. To see it you have to go to Giza, about 20 km from downtown Cairo. In a metropolis of 10 million people and with an unspeakably creative traffic of trains and limousines traversing the sand and smog, Giza is now a tourism center, and hotels are popping up everywhere. GEM is free to enter throughout November: you can buy tickets for around 23 euros at the box office, but given the chaos of the last few days (with a peak of 27,000 entries out of the 20,000 tickets theoretically allowed), online booking will be required from December (40% of seats are reserved for Egyptians, at controlled prices). If you’ve ever seen the ancient Egyptian Museum in Tahir Square, a charming and decadent gem from the early twentieth century of which only the Greco-Roman collection remains, reset everything: the GEM is something else, it is the Fourth Pyramid of Giza.
The architectural project was designed by little-known Dublin firm Heneghan Peng Architects: some mean-spirited people said Egypt couldn’t afford a Normar Fosters or Frank Gerhys like its richest neighbors in the Gulf, others compared the building to a shopping mall. A GEM, on the other hand, is a jewel. Built in the lower Giza area, this does not interfere with the tips of the Pyramids: from whatever angle you look at them, they are always higher than the museum. Complex perspective studies then allow them to be viewed from every angle of the window, which is a significant plus. A gallery with a cafe and shop will open soon, connecting GEM with the archaeological area: al-Sisi will inaugurate it in due course, Robin Abdalla, of Marmonil Marble&Granite, told us, whose marble model of the museum was shown by the president at the inauguration.
His signature design work will arrive in Milan at the next Design Week under the ABI brand, just to say that the local creative scene is anything but dusty, as demonstrated by the success of the current Forever temporary exhibition, curated by Nadine Abdel Ghaffar for Art d’Egypte with works of contemporary art in front of the Pyramids, among which our Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Third Heaven also stands out (until 6/12).
GEM has a pointed facade and a pyramid-shaped entrance that is perfect for mass selfies: the triangular exterior decoration, in concrete and marble, is a great feature. Inside, you can move freely: there are no mandatory routes, but wait at least three hours (the collection exceeds 100 thousand pieces). Guarding the first floor is a 3,200-year-old, 11-meter statue of Ramesses II: once the centerpiece of Cairo’s roundabout, it now directs traffic through the museum. The central staircase is spectacular where you walk among sphinxes, portals, inscriptions (real, yes) that trace 5 thousand years of Ancient Egyptian history. The museum’s twelve galleries have important room panels and are multilingual (including Italian), with no special changes: simple sentences guide visitors, but there is no shortage of educational workshops and audio guides in 10 languages.
The jewel of GEM is definitely the young King Tut: there are over 5 thousand works in this gallery, well arranged with soft lighting. There are finds on display for the first time after years of restoration such as gilded wooden benches, translucent alabaster vases in the shape of lotus flowers, impressive leather armors arranged in fish scales, chariots, thrones, sarcophagi and then him, the funerary mask of Tutankhamun that we see in school books: protected by bulletproof cases and special guards regulating the flow of visitors (say the Monnalisa effect). The entire collection is full of jewelry, figurines of women with strange hairstyles, animal figurines, everyday objects (like shoes, very valuable). Also important are the Narner tablets, which prove the birth of Ancient Egypt, and Khufu’s forty meter long boat is very impressive.
A powerful political-cultural operation, GEM inspires local pride: just look at the eyes of many of the Egyptian children who visit (“These are my people,” a nine-year-old girl tells us). With three hundred restoration staff, GEM also wants to become the new center of gravity for Egyptology, which has long been led by Western universities and therefore the topic of restitution is hot in the local media.
Among the most claimed works are the bust of Nefertiti from the Neues Museum in Berlin, the Rosetta Stone from England in London and the Dendera Zodiac from the Louvre, however
The Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mohamed Ismail Khaled, is very circumspect on this issue. Let’s see: GEM’s impact on local communities and foreign tourists is only just beginning.
