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Egypt · 2025

Day 3 - Grand Egyptian Museum

A modern museum's sloping facade rises in triangular stone and glass.
A towering ancient pharaoh statue stands in a grand museum hall. A vast staircase flanked by seated pharaoh statues climbs toward the museum entrance. Sunlight patterns fall across a museum atrium where ancient statues stand. A giant ancient Egyptian stone pharaoh face gazes outward under a modern canopy. Seated ancient rulers line the broad stone steps of a great hall. Two standing statues greet walkers in a glass-railed museum plaza. A crowned pharaoh statue stands before a geometric wall of tilted beams. A vast staircase climbs between glass rails beneath an open ceiling. Two monumental royal figures stand side by side before a wall of stone slats. Seated and standing pharaohs glow softly in a dim columned hall. A stone slab is engraved with rows of hieroglyphs and royal cartouches. A dark granite pharaoh statue seated in a bright modern museum hall. A lone visitor crosses the wide floor of a modern museum atrium. A weathered bust of a pharaoh in a nemes headdress faces forward. Several ancient pharaoh statues stand tall inside a bright museum hall. Seen from below, a dark pharaoh head wears its nemes headdress and uraeus. A weathered stone pharaoh bust with a uraeus tilts its face upward. An eroded pharaoh face in streaked stone gazes forward in close-up. A colossal sandstone pharaoh head rests on a stand in a museum. Ancient Egyptian pharaoh statues stand in a line inside a modern, sunlit gallery. Deeply carved hieroglyphs and oval cartouches cover the surface of an ancient stone block. An eroded, reddish granite bust of a pharaoh stands in a modern museum. A long stone lintel bearing hieroglyphs rests above carved capital stones. A weathered stone column is covered in carved hieroglyphs and cartouches. A dark carved head of an ancient Egyptian deity wears a striped headdress and braided beard. A sunken-relief block shows hieroglyphs and a royal cartouche in reddish stone. A stone doorway covered in hieroglyphs and cartouches frames a museum walkway. Close-up of ancient Egyptian carved stone bearing a pair of royal cartouches. Ancient sandstone slab carved with hieroglyphs and an ibis cartouche. Sandstone band carved with standing figures, a person and an ibis. Museum display of a carved lintel atop two bundle-shaped columns. Weathered stone slab covered in neat rows of round hollows. Square stone slab marked with a grid of round depressions. Pair of stone columns incised with hieroglyphs and oval cartouches. Tall stone pillar crowded with rows of carved cartouches in a museum. Sunken hieroglyphs and a royal cartouche fill an ancient stone lintel. Light-filled museum hall showcasing colossal pharaoh statues on plinths. A crowned pharaoh carved in sunken relief stands amid gods and ankhs. An incised profile of a head with an ankh and cartouche on weathered granite. A granite figure's profile with an ankh and a raised praising hand. A museum column dense with royal name cartouches in neat rows. A seated god with a tall plumed crown rises in relief on a granite slab. A seated deity with a plumed headdress is incised on a pyramidal stone block. A pyramid-shaped block bearing carved hieroglyphs and a seated pharaoh. A granite sphinx with a pharaoh's face and a nemes headdress. A red stone sarcophagus decorated with relief figures and hieroglyphic text. A pillar carved with bands of hieroglyphs and royal cartouches. A carved row of hieroglyphs runs across a red granite block. A stone pillar etched with hieroglyphs and relief figures stands in a museum. Two colossal statues, one with a pharaoh's face and one with a falcon head. A colossal pharaoh statue with a nemes headdress and a false beard. Weathered granite statue of a pharaoh with crossed arms in a modern museum hall. Seated granite statue of a lion-headed goddess carved in ancient Egyptian style. Tight view of a carved lioness face framed by a radiating mane. A granite triad showing a pharaoh between a crowned god and a lion-headed goddess. A stone slab covered in rows of carved hieroglyphs and royal name rings. Rows of hieroglyphs, cartouches and duck motifs fill this carved stone panel. A tall sandstone monument covered with hieroglyphic text beneath a relief carving. A royal granite statue showing a pharaoh beside a companion with tall crowns. A close-up of two carved pharaoh faces in warm golden stone. Carved statues of an Egyptian royal couple in warm sandstone. An Egyptian lintel relief with a winged sun disk over standing figures. An Egyptian temple wall covered in rows of carved hieroglyphs. A tilting close-up of an Egyptian lintel with a winged sun and figures. Rows of Egyptian hieroglyphs etched across a weathered stone wall. An Egyptian stone wall patterned by dense rows of carved hieroglyphs. Ancient hieroglyphs carved in long rows across warm temple stone. Close-up of ancient carved hieroglyphs in golden sandstone. Detailed rows of carved Egyptian hieroglyphs on old stone. A broad temple wall of hieroglyphs with a decorated lower band. Rows of hieroglyphs carved across old temple stone. A carved stone stele showing four figures and a sun disk. Close-up of three carved stone faces with striped headdresses. A colossal granite pharaoh head resting in a grand hall. A huge ancient stone sarcophagus set at the base of stairs. A weathered stone sarcophagus carved with hieroglyphs glows in the museum light. A sleek granite pyramid capstone sits on a dark stone base. An engraved red granite coffin shows a kneeling figure and columns of hieroglyphs. Engraved columns show two standing figures beside rows of hieroglyphs. Wedjat eyes and cartouches flank a relief of a standing ancient figure. Two engraved figures stand between columns of hieroglyphs on red stone. Wedjat eyes and hieroglyphs surround a carved false door and a figure. Two ancient pyramids loom beyond a sweeping modern glass building and gardens. A weathered grey stone statue of a seated Egyptian official with his hands on his knees. Ancient Egyptian limestone relief showing men leading antelopes by the horns. Ancient Egyptian relief of a man leading a long-horned ox by a cord. Ancient Egyptian relief of a man raising a spear over a hippopotamus beside hieroglyphs. Ancient Egyptian painted panel of a crouching figure beside a herd of oxen. Ancient Egyptian relief of three women in a row facing a taller striding man. Ancient Egyptian painted statues of a man and a woman standing side by side. Ancient Egyptian painted panel of striding figures above a band of fish. A bright modern museum gallery lined with glass display cases and a tall portrait banner. Glass museum cases filled with rows of reddish terracotta vessels beside carved Egyptian statues. A cracked, faded ancient Egyptian painting of a long boat with rowers and a tall mast. A wide shallow alabaster dish beside a small handled alabaster vessel on a plinth. A weathered painted bust of an Egyptian figure with striking eyes and worn red pigments. A damaged painted Egyptian statue of a figure seated cross-legged with hands on his lap. A museum case with a striped round jar, a tall cylinder, and an incised bowl against blue. A red terracotta jar displayed on a stand beside an arrangement of pointed flint blades. Display case holding a flared clay vessel, round plate, curved blade, and speckled stone palette. Small standing Egyptian figure wearing a red and white bead necklace against a blue panel. Rounded pottery bowl ringed by a painted frieze of stylized gazelles. Several standing male Egyptian figures displayed in a glass case with reflections. Red granite seated statue of a man wearing a traditional Egyptian wig. Cube-shaped Egyptian statue of a man with a wig and visible feet. Limestone statue of a seated bald man resting hands on his knees. Pair of beaded armbands in blue, turquoise, and red with gold terminals. An ancient Egyptian faience bracelet of turquoise, orange and blue beads framed by gold bands. A weathered painted wooden bust of an ancient Egyptian face framed by a black wig. A sandstone stele covered in horizontal rows of carved ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. A tight shot of weathered stone covered with deeply incised rows of Egyptian hieroglyphs. A rounded-top Egyptian stele incised with an ankh, cartouche, birds and a seated figure. A dark stone relief carving of a seated figure with an offering table and an attendant. A row of small brown finger-shaped artifacts hung in a museum display case. Hanging chains of interlocking metal rings displayed against a dark museum backdrop. A chain of linked gold rings displayed in a museum case. Gold armbands, a ring chain and small gold pieces arranged on a dark blue museum stand. Tiny gold nuggets and a ring stand on pins before a chain of gold rings. A row of gold rings, a flat gold sheet and a twisted arm ring on a blue museum mount. A glazed turquoise bowl decorated with painted fish and birds around its inner rim. A dark stone bust of a pharaoh with a striped nemes headdress and false beard. A translucent calcite box divided into four compartments, with its lid leaning beside it. A wooden chair with gold-gilt edges and a dark band of hieroglyphs across the back. A gold-trimmed wooden carrying frame with rope rests in a museum case. A glowing gilded alabaster bust of a pharaoh wearing a nemes headdress. A sandstone temple wall bears raised reliefs of hieroglyphs and offering bearers. Two hazy pyramids appear beyond a mesh window screen from afar. A pink granite statue of a kneeling Egyptian figure shows heavy erosion. A dark stone torso of a pharaoh shows broad shoulders and a pleated kilt. A weathered dark-stone pharaoh sits with hands resting on his knees. A raised limestone relief shows a falcon, a bow, and ceremonial tools. A carved red and grey granite sarcophagus box standing in a museum display. A blackened wooden Egyptian sarcophagus with worn ochre and white paint under a museum vitrine. Two cream alabaster canopic jars topped with carved human faces and wigs in a display case. A pair of alabaster canopic jars with human-headed lids lined up together in a museum. A dark wall densely hung with rounded ancient Egyptian stone grave markers carrying hieroglyphs and painted figures. A tall reddish-brown stone statue of a pharaoh wearing a crown, false beard, and pleated kilt beside a window. A sandstone relief carving of a king in the White Crown making an offering before two deities. Two carved limestone blocks bearing sunken hieroglyphs and royal cartouches with traces of blue and green pigment. A weathered Egyptian stone slab carved with hieroglyphs, cartouches and ritual scenes, mounted on a dark museum wall. A small painted Egyptian limestone tile decorated with green lotus petals, a figure and hieroglyphs, fixed in a museum mount. A rectangular Egyptian stone panel carved with hieroglyphs, an eye emblem and a standing figure, displayed in a museum. A large carved Egyptian torso statue with a striated wig and arms at the sides, displayed in a museum gallery. A worn Egyptian stone head preserving a striped wig and one eye, the lower face broken away, resting on a museum pedestal. Three standing Egyptian statues of a pharaoh in tall crowns with crossed arms, holding crook and flail, in a museum. Three standing Egyptian pharaoh statues in conical crowns with crossed arms, each propped against a pillar in a museum. Rows of painted wooden model Egyptian soldiers holding shields and spears, seen through a museum glass case. A reddish sandstone stele carved with a winged sun disk and offering figures. Deeply incised hieroglyphs crowd a red-brown wall in vertical columns. Three seated pharaoh statues with nemes headdresses stand in a row against gray and blue. A carved figure leans back in profile while drawing a bow in shallow relief. Deities crowned with sun disks stand beside a doorway as hieroglyphs frame the wall. A falcon-headed god holds an ankh and staff while a king stands in profile before him. Vertical inscriptions and oval cartouches cover a light-gray stone wall. Sunken hieroglyphs with ankhs and cartouches fill the pale stone surface. Falcon-headed Egyptian deity holding an ankh and a staff carved into pale sandstone. Ancient limestone block carved with hieroglyph columns and a winged sun disc above a ram's head. Sunken relief shows a goddess reaching to crown a robed pharaoh beneath a winged sun disc. A dark stone seated Egyptian figure with arms crossed sits on a pedestal in a museum. Three ancient Egyptian stone heads, one dark, one striped, one crowned, line a museum wall. A dark granite anthropoid sarcophagus with a carved face and columns of hieroglyphs lies in a museum. The side of a dark Egyptian sarcophagus is covered in hieroglyph columns and standing deity figures. A pale stone sarcophagus lid with a carved face, collar and winged sun disc glows under museum skylights. Ancient stone sarcophagus lid carved with hieroglyphic texts. Golden stone coffin panel flanked by the winged sun disk. A tall obelisk stands in the center of an open city plaza. A row of palms lines a wide paved esplanade beside a busy road. Two broken pharaoh statues pieced back together on display. A seated dark-stone pharaoh statue rests with hands on its knees. Rows of carved hieroglyphs fill the dark stone surface. A carved relief shows winged figures on each side of a central column. A weathered limestone lattice carved with winged falcon figures around central cartouches. A weathered dark stone statue of a seated official wearing a long striped wig. A shattered limestone stela showing a king offering to gods above rows of hieroglyphs. An ancient bronze mirror whose handle is a small standing female figure supporting the disc. A rounded-top limestone stela carved with rows of seated people before offering tables. A rectangular stela carved with seated men before offering tables above rows of hieroglyphs. A carved stone panel framing a recessed niche holding a seated god before an offering table. A stone relief divided into registers showing seated figures at tables and a line of standing men. A grey granite statue of a seated ancient Egyptian official wearing a broad wig. A cube-shaped Egyptian block statue whose front is covered in columns of carved hieroglyphs. A dark stone statue of a kneeling Egyptian official presenting a rectangular offering table. A standing ancient Egyptian statue in reddish sandstone, arms at his sides and a broad headdress. A grey granite statue of a standing Egyptian man with a bald head and a pleated kilt. A weathered ancient Egyptian standing statue with a round cap and a damaged body on a display mount. A reddish terracotta vessel whose neck is shaped like a human face above a decorated dish. A carved stone relief showing Egyptian deities under a winged sun disk and a Greek inscription below. A trio of colorful Egyptian amulets mounted on a board in a museum case. A tall stone stele filled with rows of carved hieroglyphs against a blue panel. Rows of intricately carved hieroglyphs fill a stone wall close-up. A dark carved stele showing a winged sun disk and four standing figures. A stone sarcophagus lid bearing a serene carved face and hieroglyph texts. A carved stone block showing a seated figure with raised arms amid hieroglyphs. Hundreds of pale blue faience ushabti figurines arranged in tidy rows. A gold funerary mask resting on intricate turquoise and gold beadwork. Ancient turquoise shabti statuettes line a museum display case behind glass. A dark metal ibis, sacred bird of Thoth, stands on a display plinth behind glass. A weathered historic stone tower rises against a clear blue sky.
Journal Notes

General

The Grand Egyptian Museum stands on a high desert terrace at the western edge of Greater Cairo, in Giza, barely two kilometres from the pyramid complex it was built to face. It is the largest museum in the world devoted to a single civilisation: more than 100,000 artefacts spanning Egyptian history from the Predynastic period to the Graeco-Roman age, of which at least 20,000 are displayed for the first time, among them the complete burial treasure of Tutankhamun, 5,398 pieces, exhibited together for the first time in the museum’s own halls. The building is the outcome of the second-largest architectural competition in history: announced in 2002 with 1,557 entries from 82 countries, it was won by the Irish practice Heneghan Peng, whose chamfered triangular design steps the museum down the desert slope towards the pyramids.

The mass of the building, clad in panels of translucent Egyptian alabaster and glass and inscribed with the cartouches of kings and queens, is aligned with mathematical precision on the monuments it serves: the north and south walls of the museum line up directly with the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the pyramid of Menkaure. Before the main gate a plaza of date palms carries the great leaning obelisk of Ramesses II, and behind the translucent facade the museum opens into a vast glazed atrium through which the pyramids are visible from the interior: a building designed, in the words of its architects, as a threshold between the city of Cairo and the desert of the Giza Plateau.

The terrace on which the museum stands is itself part of the ancient landscape: it lies at the foot of the Giza Plateau, on the desert shelf between the monuments and the cultivation, where the ground rises above the floodplain of the Nile. From the museum’s upper terraces the visitor sees the whole theatre of the Memphite pyramid fields, with Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure to the west and the hazy metropolis of Cairo to the east, so that the collection and its monuments face one another across the sand.

The museum began its public life in stages: the Grand Staircase and atrium admitted limited visitors from early 2023, the twelve chronological main galleries opened in trial operation on 16 October 2024, and after a final postponement caused by the regional war of summer 2025 the official opening took place on 1 November 2025. With its completion, the most ambitious project in the history of Egyptology, two decades in the making and built at a cost of 1.2 billion US dollars, finally gave the civilisation of the Nile a museum worthy of its depth.

History

The idea of a great national museum is as old as Egyptology itself. The first organised antiquities collection was assembled in Cairo in 1835; in 1858 the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, appointed by the viceroy Said Pasha, founded a state museum in the Boulaq district of Cairo, which moved to the Giza palace of the Khedive in 1891 and in 1902 into the purpose-built neoclassical museum on Tahrir Square, designed by the French architect Marcel Durbourg and inaugurated by the Khedive Abbas Hilmi II. The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir became one of the great repositories of the world, enriched by the discoveries of Mariette at Saqqara, of Maspero and his successors, and above all by the tomb of Tutankhamun, found by Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, whose five thousand objects filled a new wing of the old building, while the royal tombs of Tanis, opened by Pierre Montet in 1939, brought the gold and silver funerary equipment of the Third Intermediate Period kings to the museum.

By the late twentieth century the Tahrir museum, its galleries and storerooms overflowing, could no longer do justice to the collection, and in 1992 the government of Hosni Mubarak announced the construction of a new Grand Egyptian Museum, to rise on the desert terrace west of Cairo, facing the pyramids. The project was driven by the then Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, who dismissed the old museum as a relic of another age; the foundation stone was laid in 2002, the year in which the architectural competition, the second largest in history, was announced. The winning scheme of Heneghan Peng was developed together with the engineering consultancies Buro Happold and Arup. Construction began in 2005 under a joint venture of the Egyptian firm Orascom and the Belgian group BESIX, and the museum’s Conservation Center, one of the largest of its kind in the world, opened in 2010.

The path to completion was long. The revolution of 2011, the economic crises that followed and the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the opening again and again; the building was finished only in 2023, at a total cost of 1.2 billion US dollars. Meanwhile the collection itself was moving: the colossal 11-metre statue of Ramesses II was brought from Ramses Square in Cairo to the museum site and installed in the Grand Hall in 2018; in August 2021 the 4,600-year-old Khufu ship, the oldest intact vessel of antiquity, was transferred intact on a specially constructed cradle from its old museum at the foot of the Great Pyramid to the GEM, where a new hall was prepared for the two solar boats of the king; and the treasures of Tutankhamun were transported from Tahrir, piece by piece, to the two halls that now display the complete collection. The royal mummies, by contrast, were not destined for Giza: in April 2021 the twenty-two royal mummies were paraded through Cairo to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, which displays them in its Royal Mummies Hall.

The first public access came in early 2023, when limited numbers of visitors were admitted to the atrium and the Grand Staircase; the twelve main galleries, arranged chronologically from prehistory to the Roman age and holding more than 24,000 objects, followed in trial operation from 16 October 2024. The official opening, postponed repeatedly and once more in July 2025, when the outbreak of the Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel forced another delay, finally took place on 1 November 2025, inaugurating what its directors describe as the largest archaeological museum for a single civilisation in the world.

The GEM is thus the culmination of more than a century and a half of Egyptian museology: from Mariette’s rooms in Boulaq, through the neoclassical galleries of Tahrir, to this glass-and-alabaster machine for the preservation and display of an entire civilisation. Among the newly restored treasures shown for the first time are the burial equipment of Queen Hetepheres, the mother of Khufu, discovered at Giza in 1925, and the tomb group of Yuya and Thuya, the parents of Queen Tiye, found in the Valley of the Kings in 1905. With more than 100,000 objects, half of them on show or in visible storage and a fifth exhibited for the first time, it has become the principal showcase of ancient Egypt, while the old museum in Tahrir continues as the museum of the revolution-era city, keeping its own collections and its place in the history of the discipline.

Geology

The museum stands on the same geological ground as the monuments it houses. The desert terrace west of Cairo is underlain by the Mokattam Formation, the sequence of nummulitic marine limestones of Middle Eocene age (late Lutetian to Bartonian, roughly 41 to 38 million years ago) that forms both the Mokattam Hills and the Giza Plateau across the river valley: the very rock from which the pyramids were built and the Sphinx was carved. The building’s foundation rests on this limestone shelf, above the level of the Nile floodplain; its facing is of translucent Egyptian alabaster, the white banded calcite of the ancient stonecutters, quarried in Middle Egypt, set against glass and granite, so that the architecture itself is a sample of the country’s lithology.

The collection is, in a real sense, a geological museum of Egypt. Every major stone of the Nile valley and the surrounding deserts appears in the halls: the red and grey granites of Aswan that furnished the colossal royal statuary, including the great Ramesses II that presides over the atrium; the fine white limestone of Tura and the nummulitic beds of the plateau used for reliefs and stelae; the Nubian sandstone of the temple walls from Upper Egypt; the hard silicified sandstone, or quartzite, of the eastern desert quarries at Gebel el-Ahmar, chosen for the finest royal sculpture; the greywacke of Wadi Hammamat from which the Menkaure triads were cut; the calcite alabaster of the canopic jars and vessels; the basalts of the northern lava fields; and the glazed silica of Egyptian faience, which mimics the turquoise of Sinai in its brilliant blue-green. The metalwork adds the mineral wealth of the Eastern Desert and Nubia: the gold of the jewellery and funerary masks, the copper of Sinai, the bronze of the later tools and votives.

Ancient and modern engineering meet in the museum’s logistics. The Egyptians moved their granite from Aswan, more than 800 km upriver, by barge on the Nile flood, and dragged their sandstone and quartzite over desert roads on sledges; the builders of the GEM performed the same feat in reverse, moving the 11-metre colossus of Ramesses II through the streets of Cairo, transferring the 4,600-year-old Khufu ship intact across the desert on a purpose-built cradle, and raising the great leaning obelisk of Ramesses II, more than three thousand years old, above the museum gate with modern cranes. The problems of weight, transport and installation that the ancient quarrymen solved with ramps and muscle are here repeated with steel and hydraulics, in the same landscape.

Conservation, finally, is a geological discipline. The most fragile objects in the museum are not the stones but the organic materials such as wood, textiles, leather and the gilded surfaces of the Tutankhamun treasure, whose decay is governed by humidity and temperature; the two Tutankhamun halls are therefore sealed and climate-controlled, and the museum’s Conservation Center, founded before the main building was finished, restores the stone, metal and wood of the collection under laboratory conditions. In this the GEM continues the oldest dialogue of Egyptology: the fight of dry desert stone against damp, salt and time, which the ancient Egyptians themselves began when they chose the desert edge for their tombs.

Things to See

The entrance sequence crosses the plaza in front of the museum, where the great red-granite obelisk of Ramesses II leans against the sky above the gate, an ancient monument pressed into service as a modern signpost, and where the date palms of the esplanade frame the chamfered triangular mass of the building. Behind the glass facade the pyramids are already present: from the atrium and from the upper terraces of the museum the three monuments of Giza close the western view, reappearing between the walls and windows as the visitor moves through the halls.

The Grand Hall, a glazed atrium of ten thousand square metres, forms the ceremonial heart of the museum. It is dominated by the colossal seated statue of Ramesses II, more than eleven metres high and hewn from Aswan granite, which was moved from Ramses Square in central Cairo and installed in the hall in 2018. Around the colossus stand the monumental figures of the introductory displays: seated and standing kings with striped nemes headdresses, weathered portrait heads in red and grey granite and paired statues of a pharaoh with a falcon god, their surfaces modelled by daylight falling through the glass roof.

The Grand Staircase rises from the atrium for six storeys, its broad steps lined with more than sixty statues and architectural fragments arranged in four thematic sequences: the Royal Image, which gathers the seated and standing statues of the kings; the Divine Houses, with temple lintels, cartouche-covered pillars and columns from the sanctuaries of Upper Egypt; Gods and Kings, where the deities appear beside their rulers; and the funerary sequence, where stone sarcophagi from many periods rest beside a small granite pyramidion of the Thirteenth Dynasty. The royal portraits range from the Old Kingdom to the Roman age, so that the ascent of the staircase reads like a survey of three thousand years of royal iconography. From the top of the staircase the museum opens again onto the pyramids, seen across the desert terrace that separates the collection from the monuments themselves.

Beyond the staircase, the twelve chronological main galleries carry the visitor from prehistory to the Roman age. The painted reliefs of the Old Kingdom show herdsmen driving antelope and long-horned cattle, a spearman hunting hippopotamus from a boat and processions of offering bearers; the wooden models of soldiers and workshops, the statue pairs and the block statues of officials illustrate the Middle Kingdom; and the alabaster vessels, the canopic jars, the jewellery of faience and gold (bracelets, rings and armbands, among them pieces from the royal tombs of Tanis whose metalwork rivals the treasure of Tutankhamun), the walls of blue ushabti figurines, the amulets, the bronze mirrors and the sacred ibis of Thoth fill the galleries of the later periods, together with the great carved sarcophagi and their lids, from the red granite of the royal burials to the painted wood of the provincial cemeteries.

At the heart of the museum two halls hold the complete burial equipment of Tutankhamun: all 5,398 objects of the tomb displayed together for the first time, among them the golden mask, the three nested coffins, the golden throne, the shrines, the canopic chest, the jewellery and the everyday objects of the boy king. The gold of the royal caches forms the climax of the collection. From the terrace at the summit of the building the museum turns back to its subject: across the sand the pyramids of Giza, and behind them the desert in which the civilisation of the Nile built its most enduring monuments, face the halls that preserve four thousand years of its memory.

References

  1. Arnold, D. (1991). Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry. New York: Oxford University Press.
  2. Klemm, R. & Klemm, D. (2008). Stones and Quarries in Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press.
  3. Reeves, N. (1990). The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, the Tomb, the Royal Treasure. London: Thames & Hudson.
  4. Said, R. (1990). The Geology of Egypt. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema.
  5. Grand Egyptian Museum (2026). Official website. grandegyptianmuseum.org/
  6. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Grand Egyptian Museum. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Egyptian_Museum
  7. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Egyptian Museum. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Museum
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  11. Wikipedia contributors (2026). National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Egyptian_Civilization
  12. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Heneghan Peng. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heneghan_Peng
  13. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Old Kingdom of Egypt. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Kingdom_of_Egypt
  14. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Middle Kingdom of Egypt. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Kingdom_of_Egypt
  15. Wikipedia contributors (2026). New Kingdom of Egypt. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kingdom_of_Egypt