We have a Gate 1 tour in January and the itinerary says we visit the Egyptian Museum. Not sure which one we will visit.
I read that the new museum is open now at Giza. Also, I understand that much of the items from the old museum were to be moved to the new, therefore it should be closed.
Does anyone know?
The new museum in Giza is expected to open in 2023.
The original museum was expected to stay open with some special antiquities on display. At least that is what we were told when we were in Cairo in January 2020.
We were oblivious to COVID then and surrounded by mostly bus loads of Chinese tourists! We loved our time in Egypt and Jordan.
geovagriffith, here's some useful websites:
https://grandegyptianmuseum.org
https://egymonuments.gov.eg/en
The 2023 opening date hasn't been announced yet. November's National Geographic had a nice piece on the GEM, if you can find a copy? Because of the pandemic and Arab Spring uprisings, its original 2011 opening date had been significantly delayed.
The Grand Egyptian is scheduled to open in 2023. If the mummy parade that they did to accompany the opening of the Foustat museum a year or so ago is any indication, I imagine there will be a lot of fanfare when the GEM finally opens. Honestly, they have been saying "opening soon" for quite a few years. When we went to Egypt in 2020, they were claiming an expected opening in 2020; when we visited in 2021, they were saying 3rd quarter 2021; when I checked last summer, they were saying November 2022. Now, they're saying 2023. I'll believe it when I see it.
You will most likely see the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo. A huge amount has already been moved to the GEM, but there's still plenty to see, including the Tutankhamun death mask. Also, the museum itself, with its open windows and manually typed labels, is worth seeing. I really liked the old Egyptian Museum.
The mummies have all been moved to the new museum in Foustat -- the Museum of Egyptian History, or something like that.
Last I heard -- and it always changes -- is that they were planning to keep the downtown museum open even after the GEM opens.
Unfortunately the GEM is not open and I doubt it will open during '23 or there would already be a lot of publicity about it. We'll be there in March and will visit the Museum and if we're lucky our guide will arrange to informally get us into the GEM for a quick peek.
Have fun and look forward to hearing about your experience when you return.
Mark, I don't know as I'd hold my breath on a sneak peek. The author of the GEM piece in the Oct. 2022 issue of National Geographic didn't get beyond the atrium, and that was with Maj. Gen. Atef Moftah, the museum's director.
Then he turns and zaps his beam up one of the staircases (leading out
the atrium). “And that is where Tutankhamun lives,” he says. Two
exhibition halls are devoted entirely to Egypt’s most famous pharaoh
and will display, for the first time, nearly all of the more than
5,000 objects discovered in King Tut’s tomb. When I request a sneak
peek, General Moftah smiles and shakes his head. “Out of the question.
President El Sisi’s orders. Nobody enters until the inauguration.
But never say never!
