Egypt's New Mega-Museum Set to Open in 2020
A new museum near Cairo – the Grand Egyptian Museum – is expected to open in 2020. Once complete, the museum will exhibit 50,000 artifacts from the time of the pharaohs, including the well-known mask of Tutankhamun, or "King Tut."
The museum has been under construction for more than 10 years and has faced a number of delays. Construction costs have increased from $650 million to over $1 billion, with most of the money coming from Japan.
"It [will be] a place where you can… enjoy ancient Egypt," project director Tarek Tawfik said on a recent tour of the site, which will also include a conference center, a cinema, 28 shops, 10 restaurants, and a hotel. The museum will feature a statue of Ramesses II and huge windows so visitors can look out over the 5,000-year-old pyramids.
Tawfik says the museum will allow tourists to experience ancient Egypt in a "modern [and] comfortable" way. That would be a major change from the current setup, as tourists visiting the pyramids and the Sphinx are often hassled by ticket-sellers.
Tawfik expects 8 million people a year to visit the museum once it opens. An estimated 8 million tourists will have visited Egypt in 2018, an increase from previous years but well below a peak of 14.7 million before the anti-government uprising in 2011.
Workers at the Grand Egyptian Museum in front of the Pyramids in Giza, Egypt.
