5 Things You Didn't Know: The Grand Egyptian Museum

Egypt’s monumental ancient wonders continue to fascinate and impress, drawing millions of visitors each year. Among the most well-known of them all, the Great Pyramids of Giza were built by three successive kings during the prosperous Fourth Dynasty. The oldest and largest of these pyramids, built for King Khufu, took over 20 years to complete.

In this long tradition, it seems fitting that, more than four millennia later, just down the road from the legendary necropolis, a new museum dedicated to these wonders is finally opening its doors.

After over two decades, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM)—a megalithic institution with an estimated cost exceeding $1 billion—welcomes visitors to explore its treasures this summer.

While the museum galleries have been partially open for a while, the iconic treasures from King Tutankhamen's royal tomb are still housed at the Museum of Antiquities in Tahrir Square. However, as part of the grand opening on July 3, 2025, these iconic artifacts will be relocated, marking the completion of the museum’s extraordinary collections.

Beginning with Egypt voyages departing in September 2025, guests of National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions will have the opportunity to explore the full scope of the GEM’s offerings, including more than 5,000 awe-inspiring artifacts from the legendary Boy King.

Read on to learn more about the museum’s impending full launch and the abundant treasures waiting within.

 

The GEM is billed to be the largest archaeological museum devoted to a single civilization.

 

Encompassing a massive 490,000 square-meters, the Grand Egyptian Museum displays around 100,000 ancient artifacts spanning 7,000 years of Egyptian history. The main galleries are divided along four eras: predynastic and Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom and Greco-Roman. 

One highlight of the Middle Kingdom is a spectacularly preserved 140-foot-long solar barque found buried next to Khufu’s pyramid, making it the oldest and largest wooden boat discovered in Egypt. Scholars believe solar boats were symbolic vessels, meant to transport the pharaoh on his journey through the cosmic waters of the afterlife.

More recent discoveries from the famed necropolis Saqqara, at Memphis, Egypt’s ancient capital, include painted sarcophagi, preserved mummies, bronze statues and ritual vessels that are also in the museum’s collection.

Besides gallery space, gardens and a conservation studio, the museum also includes a conference center, restaurants, shops, a library, a theater and a dedicated children’s museum, inviting younger visitors to discover the magic of ancient Egypt through interactive activities and workshops. 

 

It has taken more than 20 years to near completion.

 

Over two decades in the making, the GEM is one of the longest-awaited and most-anticipated museum openings in the world. Plans for the museum began in 2002, when the Egyptian government held a competition inviting designs for the new complex.

More than 1,550 architecture firms from 83 countries entered, making it one of the largest such design competitions in history. Irish firm Heneghan Peng Architects won the main contract with their modern approach, a chamfered triangle oriented as a series of layered spaces through which the visitor moves, complete with planned views of the pyramids in the distance. According to the Egyptian government, a total team from 13 different companies contributed to the final design.

Although construction began in 2005, setbacks soon caused delays; in 2011, the Arab Spring halted the project completely until 2014. Planned openings in 2018 and 2019 were likewise delayed, and the start of the pandemic, in 2020, continued to put things on hold. Now this long-anticipated museum finally comes to fruition as it fully opens its doors to the public on July 3, 2025.

 

 

It marks the first time King Tutankhamen’s artifacts will be displayed together.

 

An undisputed highlight of this new institution is the expansive galleries devoted to one of the most well-known of Egypt’s rulers, the Boy King, Tutankhamen. When his tomb was discovered in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter, it captured public imagination and transformed the once-forgotten ruler into an eternal icon.

Unlike most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings which were heavily looted over time, Tutankhamen’s burial chamber was found almost entirely intact. Carter and his team spent months cataloging the more than 5,000 riches—from statues and death masks, to furniture, chariots and jewelry.

Four immersive galleries totaling 7,000 square feet display nearly all of the objects from the collection installed together for the first time. With dramatic lighting and a faux night sky, the exhibit recalls the order of the discovery, while also marking a symbolic journey from death into the afterlife.

A replica tomb completed by the Factum Foundation and previously installed near Carter’s House has been moved to the museum, giving visitors their own experience of entering the small, sacred space. Tutankhamen’s three nested coffins are also on view together for the first time. The outer two coffins feature wondrously glided wood inlaid with glass and semiprecious gemstones, while the inner one is made of more than 240 pounds of gold and similarly adorned.

 

The museum’s state-of-the-art conservation studio is one of the world's largest. 

 

With 17 labs employing around 100 specialists, the museum houses one of the largest conservation centers in the world. In the lead up to the opening, the team was tasked with preparing the items in the collection for display—some of which have sat in storage for decades.

Tutankhamen’s magnificent outer coffin underwent an eight-month treatment in 2019. Conservators also treated the pharaoh's golden chariot in their dedicated Wood Laboratory, where new microscopic analysis revealed it as Elmwood not native to Egypt.

Other pieces requiring more extensive intervention, like his 3,500-year-old sandals with tattered soles and missing beading, were restored through innovations developed in the lab. His cuirass—a military garment made of intertwined leather on a linen backing—will be on view to the public for the first time ever thanks to months-long analysis and conservation of the fragile pieces by the Organic Lab.

 

The museum's facade and atrium had to be built around its largest artifact. 

 

Measuring 36 feet high and weighing 83 tons, the commanding red granite statue of King Ramses II was rediscovered by Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Caviglia in 1820. In the 1950s, the statue pieces were assembled to full height and displayed for many decades in the center of a traffic circle in Cairo known as Ramses Square.

Now, it's permanent home is in the museum’s soaring, glass-roofed atrium, which had to be built around the massive statue. When Ramses arrived for installment, after a 10-hour journey, he was met by a celebratory display of fanfare, led by a military procession and serenaded by the Egyptian national anthem. Behind the great king, the grand staircase hosts 87 other statues of gods and kings, a grand and historic assembly to welcome visitors through this first space of the museum.