Egypt hopes vast new museum by Pyramids will boost tourism

Egyptian officials are hoping the inauguration of a vast new museum on Saturday will accelerate the revival of a tourism industry hampered for more than a decade by internal upheaval, a pandemic and regional conflicts.

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Officials believe the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, alone could draw as many as 7 million additional visitors annually after it opens on Saturday, helping boost total visitors to around 30 million by 2030.

Located just outside Cairo next to the famed Giza Pyramids, the $1 billion mammoth facility is poised to become the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single civilisation with over 50,000 artifacts detailing the 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 Al Sissi.

Overlooking the Giza Pyramids, the 500,000-square-metre edifice will house tens of thousands of artefacts, including what is billed as the complete collection of the treasures of the boy-king Tutankhamun, many displayed for the first time. The new space includes immersive exhibits and virtual-reality devices, in contrast to cluttered, old-fashioned displays in the older Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo. Egypt, which has needed repeated bailouts to stabilise its economy, uses the foreign currency it collects from tourism to pay for crucial imports such as fuel and wheat.