Cairo Magazine - Priceless GEM

Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni (right) explained why the new museum will be worth every penny of its $550 million price tag.

Dana Smillie

Over the past two years, a patch of land near the Giza plateau has been quietly transformed into the headquarters of what could become the largest museum in the world. Last week, Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni officially unveiled the plans for the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), which when finished will house some of the country’s most precious antiquities, including the mummy and sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun.

“The Grand Museum of Egypt will be a

world museum, standing alongside the Metropolitan, Louvre, Hermitage and the British Museum,” declared Steven Greenberg of the museum’s Irish design team, while giving journalists an animated tour of the new museum, due to open in 2009. “But above all else, it has to be Egyptian.”

And Egyptian it will be, from the proposed 100,000 artefacts on display, to the 480 square kilometers of land it will occupy–facing the Pyramids in Giza–to the greater part of its funding. A statue of Ramses II will greet visitors as they enter. Tutankhamun and his treasures will be there too, the famous mask displayed at the center of an amphitheatre that will allow for prolonged admiration.

The museum master plan, unveiled on 22 June, is impressive. An enormous main courtyard extends toward the Pyramids like five fingers, each facilitating alternate tours through the 24-square-kilometer permanent exhibition space. The winning Henegan Ping design team looked to monuments and archaeological sites throughout Egypt for inspiration. “The exhibition floor is large enough to feel like an archaeological site. With mastabas and temples, and causeways, steps, pylons and colonnades… we can bring the stones of Egypt,” Greenberg said.

Computer animated simulations (illustrating scenes like Carter’s first glimpse of Tutankhamun’s tomb), a children’s learning center and special-needs access make the museum sound futuristic compared to the century-old Egyptian Museum in Midan Tahrir. But according to officials, preserving Egypt’s heritage for future generations is a top priority. “The most important thing is to build the conservation center with a storage room,” said Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni.

Since the museum is located at a crossroads of desert plateau and habitable fertile land, agricultural themes have been integrated into the overall plan. Ancient Egyptian civilization was born between mountains, desert and the Nile, and a display outside the museum will attempt to recreate this reality. The museum will link to the Pyramids via a tree-lined esplanade, through which tourists will be able to walk, take a shuttle bus or perhaps even negotiate a camel ride.

Foreign expertise will come into play with the museum’s proposed research center, designed to meet “international standards.” The center could grant distinguished scholars easy access to monuments and archaeological sites. Yet authorities would do well to avoid the mistakes of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which was hailed as the new center of learning and research in the Mediterranean. It has yet to be more than a conference forum and sightseeing stop for the city’s visitors.

Questions remain regarding who will pay the estimated $550 million initial investment and $12.5 million in annual operation costs. While the government will pick up a portion of the tab and loan negotiations are underway with the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation, authorities are pinning their hopes on fundraising.

A dizzying array of sponsorships aims to lure international and local philanthropists, ranging from the Adopt-an-Artifact program (a $1 million gift lands donors in Club Pharaoh, which counts among its benefits a dinner with the Minister of Culture), to sponsoring one of the five exhibition themes (“Land of Egypt” will go for $7,450,000) to myriad naming opportunities (a translucent wall could bear your name for just $30 million). Those with shallower pockets can also contribute; for $500 you can have your name inscribed on a brick in the wall leading from the Museum to the Pyramids.

Another issue that has yet to be solved is that a nearby military officers’ club blocks the way to the Pyramids. Cultural authorities have yet to resolve the problem with the military.

Still, officials say construction is to begin later this year. “There can be no mistakes. Just like the Pyramids, whose fault percentage is zero, we want this museum to have a zero fault percentage,” Hosni said. When it begins operation, the museum will employ an estimated 400 people directly and thousands more in support industries. Authorities hope that it will draw an additional two million tourists per year, bringing an estimated $11.5 million in revenue in its first year.

Once GEM opens, the fate of the crowded, confusing old Egyptian Museum will be in jeopardy. Though much smaller than its successor, it hosts as many as 2.5 million visitors annually, who come to see the roughly 120,000 artifacts on display. “We can’t close it and leave it because of its historical value,” Hosni said. “It will host the masterpieces.” But without King Tut’s treasures, will it still draw the crowds?