Sunday, April 08, 2007

Update on the Grand Egyptian Museum

A comprehensive overview of the Grand Egyptian Museum, currently under construction near the pyramids of Giza:
"The modern world has not been kind to the pyramids of Giza. Just a generation ago they were out in the desert, which is how they still look in the postcards, shot from carefully selected angles. But rampant development has hemmed them in with the accoutrements of the tourist trade - cafes, restaurants, souvenir workshops, stables for horses and camels, tacky little establishments of every sort, and slummy accommodation into which tourist hawkers are crammed.
Then comes the Cairo ring road and the undistinguished modern hotels that line it; the road itself is solid with traffic. Forty-five centuries of history - that's how long the oldest of these pyramids has held sway here - look down on our contribution and are not, one suspects, greatly impressed. The visitor's experience of the place is a cocktail of wonder and torment: wonder - if you pick the right time of day, the closer to nightfall the better - at the ineffable presence of mankind's oldest monuments, torment at the antics of the touts, who if you are not incredibly vigilant will sell you a can of Sprite for a week's (Egyptian) wages, stick you on a horse, haul you off the horse and stick you in Arabian costume on a camel, take your snap, all of this without any consultation, as if it is somehow your duty - and leave you impressively poorer than when you arrived.
It's unforgettable, all right. But apart from the papyrus workshops and the like, the experience is strangely lacking in depth. What are the pyramids all about? Who built them and how and why, and what came next? You can ask your guide as you plod along on horse or camel, but don't expect much enlightenment.
All that is about to change. On a desert site within view of the pyramids, an immense museum, built by the Chinese-American architect Shih-Fu Peng, is about to rise which will transform the Giza experience. The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM)will be the biggest museum of Egyptology in the world, and (it is claimed) the largest archaeological museum of any sort. It is designed to become the modern complement the pyramids have always lacked. . . . The rest of the 100,000 works destined for the museum will begin arriving next March. They will be greeted in the first part of the museum to be built, the underground Conservation and Energy Centre that is already under construction and due to be completed by the end of the year. Every item that arrives here, whether from the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo or from the many other sites around the country, will first be inspected and documented in the centre's nine laboratories."

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