MAJOR EGYPTIAN MUSEUM

Once completed, the GEM - an acronym for Grand Egyptian Museum, as it's already known - will be the world's largest museum dedicated to ancient Egyptian civilizations, from prehistory to the Greco-Roman era. Its opening has been a long time coming. The foundation stone was laid in 2002, but the project is so enormous that it will probably take several decades to complete. Its construction is financed by the Egyptian government and loans from the Japanese Cooperation Agency. Like most architectural projects currently underway, it will be mainly state-owned. The building will cover 168,000^m2 and will showcase some 50,000 works of art. The first rooms to be shown to the public will be devoted to Tutankhamun's treasures. The rest of the galleries will follow chronological order, detailing the history and beliefs associated with each period. The concrete basements, capable of withstanding a bombardment, house 17 ultra-modern laboratories. Hydrometry and temperature are constantly measured to preserve the collections. A huge bay window offers a view of the entire Giza plateau and all the pyramids. It promises to be superb!

Tutankhamun Gallery. For the first time, all the pieces found in the tomb of Tutankhamen, discovered on November 4 in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter, will be brought together in a single room, or rather in two 7,000^m2 halls. That's 70% of the surface area of the current Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square! Several pieces, which had been languishing in its dusty storerooms, have been restored, including Tutankhamun's leather armour.

The solar bark. The royal bark of Cheops, long displayed in a small museum at the foot of the pyramids, is 4,500 years old. It was discovered in 1950 by Egyptologist Kamal el-Mallakh in one of the two pits dug alongside the pyramid, covered by a massive pavement. It had been deposited there, dismantled from its 1,224 constituent parts. Kamal el-Mallakh undertook its reconstruction. It was installed in 1968 and again in 2023 at the GEM. This boat belongs to Pharaoh's funerary furniture. It measures 43.3 meters in length and 5.9 meters in width.