ANCIENT EGYPT REBORN

From the sands of the Giza desert rises the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest devoted to a single civilisation, which took more than 20 years to build

- Chantal Sajan Senior Correspondent

Egypt's ancient past is as much studied by schoolchildren in classrooms around the world as it is by expert Egyptologists.

Today, that shared wonder has finally found a home in the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) on the Giza Plateau, about 2km from the capital city of Cairo.

The museum's main building, which opened to the public on Nov 1, features a massive atrium housing an Ilm statue of King Ramesses II, 12 permanent galleries and a children's museum.

Designed by architecture firm Heneghan Peng Architects - based in Dublin in Ireland and Berlin in Germany - the museum is an emblem of the scale and longevity of ancient Egyptian civilisation.

The firm's vision for the museum drew admiration and praise when it was chosen as the winner of a 2003 design competition by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, which drew more than 1,500 entries from about 80 countries.

The architects designed the museum in direct relation to the positioning of the pyramids, thoughtfully bridging the gap between history and modernity.

The museum was planned in close alignment with the Giza Pyramids, its fan-shaped walls and sloping roof laid out along sightlines that point to the three pyramid peaks.

Inside, a grand staircase and a series of framed views lead visitors from cool glass-and-alabaster halls towards the pyramids' silhouettes, quietly stitching together modern museum design with a view that dates back more than 4,500 years.

But it was an odyssey of more than 20 years from competition win to museum opening, stymied by financial shocks, the Arab Spring revolution of 2011, the Covid-19 pandemic and regional wars.

LEGACY OF "KING TUT"

Today, the museum is billed as the largest in the world focusing on a single civilisation, spanning 500,000 sq m of desert land and built at a cost of more than US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion).