I was drawn to the outskirts of Cairo by the colossal complex in the desert — a towering site that arose over decades, built at unimaginable expense, with precisely cut stones sourced from local quarries; a set of buildings whose construction, plagued by extraordinary challenges, spanned the reigns of several rulers; a collective cultural testament, the largest of its kind, teeming with royal history.
No, I’m not referring to Giza’s famous pyramids. I came to see the Grand Egyptian Museum.
There is perhaps no institution on Earth whose opening has been as wildly anticipated, or as mind-bogglingly delayed, as the Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo. Its construction has been such a fiasco — mired by funding lapses, logistical hurdles, a pandemic, nearby wars, revolutions (yes, plural) — that it begs comparison to that of the pyramids that lie just over a mile away on the Giza Plateau. (The 4,600-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, built from around 2.3 million stone blocks and without the use of wheels, pulleys, or iron tools, took about 25 years to build, by some estimates. So far, the Grand Egyptian Museum has taken more than 20.)
Planned openings have come and gone since 2012. (Even The New York Times got it wrong; its list of 52 Places to Go in 2020 prematurely referred to the “fancy new digs for King Tut and company.”) In time, frustrations bubbled over for would-be visitors, many of whom had planned vacations around the new museum.
“I have canceled two trips to Cairo because of anticipated opening dates and then delays,” one traveler wrote on the museum’s Instagram page this year. “I have wanted to visit since I was a child, and the promise of the museum and constant delays is ruining that experience for so many people.”
Another wrote: “We’ll all be dead longer than King Tut himself by the time this place is open!”
The wait is now over. Well, mostly.
When I visited in mid-February, 11 of the 12 main exhibition galleries were open, along with the cavernous entrance hall and a broad staircase strewn with dozens of artifacts.
But arguably the museum’s biggest draw, the Tutankhamen galleries, which will showcase more than 5,000 artifacts from the boy king’s tomb, remained closed. (For now, Tutankhamen’s gold funeral mask, among the most iconic archaeological artifacts in the world, is still on display at the old Egyptian Museum in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.) Also inaccessible was a separate annex that will showcase two royal boats discovered near the Great Pyramid in 1954.
Those portions of the museum are expected to open this summer, with an official ceremony scheduled for July 3. (You might take that date with a grain of salt.)
Still, even the museum’s incomplete offerings — along with the building itself and its billion-dollar views — are staggering.
Entering the main hall, I was struck by both the scale of the structure and the textural allure of its surfaces.
Just inside the pyramidal entryway (the motifs aren’t exactly subtle), I was greeted by one of the museum’s many showstoppers: a 3,200-year-old statue of Ramses II, widely regarded as the most powerful of ancient Egypt’s pharaohs, that stands more than 30 feet tall and weighs more than 80 tons. The red-granite figure has a fabled modern history: It was found — lying on its side, broken into six pieces — by an Italian Egyptologist in 1820; in 1954 it was installed at a traffic circle in downtown Cairo, where it stood for half a century before being painstakingly transported to the new museum site in 2006.
From the atrium I ascended the Grand Staircase, first via a long escalator and then again on foot, having returned to the bottom for a closer look at the dozens of large-scale statues, columns and sarcophagi that line the ascent.
Atop the stairs was another breathtaking surprise: an unobstructed view of the Giza pyramids, perfectly framed in a set of floor-to-ceiling windows.
I stood before the windows, helplessly transfixed, for the better part of an hour. If there’s a better human-made view on the planet, I’ve yet to take it in.
From the top of the stairs, I entered the first of the museum’s 12 main galleries, which are organized both chronologically and by theme, spanning from prehistory to the Roman era.
Summarizing the exhibition halls would be a thankless task, and besides, the joy of visiting any vast museum is uncovering the peculiar selection of items that stand out to you alone. A few highlights cling to me like burrs: The dizzying display of blue ushabti, the figurines left as servants for the dead. An immense mummified crocodile. A 3,100-year-old wig made from braided human hair.
The wig in particular dragged the ancient world to the fore, bridging what at many museums feels like an unbridgeable divide. Leave it to a delicate human feature, quietly preserved for thousands of years, to bring the past to life.
The arrival of the Grand Egyptian Museum establishes a trio of must-see museums in and around Cairo. In Tahrir Square stands the oldest: the Egyptian Museum, a beautiful beaux-arts building that for more than a century has showcased one of the world’s great collections of antiquities. (Largely unmodernized, the museum has transferred, and will continue transferring, many of its most prized items to Giza, prompting concerns about its future.)
Also in the mix is the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, another landmark that fully opened in 2021 and whose main draw is its haunting collection of royal mummies.
All three are worthy of extended visits.
But in many respects, the Grand Egyptian Museum now stands alone. Billed as the largest archaeological museum in the world, as well as the largest museum devoted to a single civilization, it was initially proposed by Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s longtime authoritarian president, who announced his plans for a new flagship institution in 1992. A ceremonial foundation stone was laid 10 years later, and Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects won a competition to design the building in 2003. Construction began in 2005.
Then came the long series of spectacular setbacks: the 2008 global economic crisis, the Arab Spring (and the subsequent decimation of Egypt’s tourism industry), the COVID-19 pandemic, and wars in the Gaza Strip and Sudan. Over time, excitement for the museum was eclipsed by coverage of its postponement.
But I doubt the epic delays will get the spotlight for much longer.
If my experience is any indication, then all it takes to overlook the long wait is a stroll through the museum’s timeless collection — and an extended gaze from the top of its staircase.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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