2025/11/4
The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM)
On 1st of November there was a big official opening of The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM). It is one of the biggest museums of the world and so many famous people from all over the world were invited. Because of that this was reported on all the news channels all over the world. Even my mother contacted me and asked if I know that GEM got opened in Cairo…🙂 Of course I knew.
But for the general public the opening day was actually 4th of November, which is today. And I just happened to be in Cairo and go there from the early morning. And actually early morning (before 9am) in GEM was pretty good, because cafeterias were completely empty and I could enjoy a nice breakfast🙂 After that the people kept coming and coming… and by 11 o’clock, when I planned to make another meal break, all the places in all cafeterias were completely full.
Note: actually GEM was partially open already in 2024, but the Tutankhamun galleries were not fully ready until now (this is considered to be the most important set of artefacts in the museum). There are still few things around the museum which they are still building, so they might have even more “openings” in the future🙂
My overall experience from GEM was mixed.
Good things first:
- the museum is indeed quite big, and it includes quite a lot of massively big statues, which are kind of impressive to look at. Possibly the big building is one of the most impressive things about the museum. It is kind of a “modern pyramid building”🙂
- the Tutankhamun gallery is pretty big and impressive… it is indeed fantastic that all these items were found in one single tomb. There are quite many golden items from the Tutankhamun tomb, which considering their age, look very good.
- there is a lot of space in the museum, so everyone should be able to find some interesting things to study
- from the window you can see the Giza pyramids very nicely
- I think the cafeterias were very good
- Also the toilet near the cafeterias was very nice and clean (and modern)
- I also think that it is nice that taking photos with phones (without flash) was allowed. This was the game everybody could play – find new things and take photos🙂 Now, for example Tutankhamun gallery is supposed to contain 15000 items. But I think I took only about 60 or 70 photos from there. So there might be some randomness or magic involved, but not every item gets photographed.
- Good thing is also that everybody knows about the pyramids and Egypt. And now thanks to the news they might know about the GEM as well. So it is a good thing to scratch off on the list of places to visit once in a life.
Not so good things:
- Even though the museum is big, there were way too many people there (and the people only kept coming even when I left at around 15:00). So most of the time you can’t just stop and enjoy the display. You kind of feel as if in a busy metro station needing to keep moving.
- The items on the display have texts, but pretty much all these texts are located “near the floor”. If you are young and have good eyesight, then this is probably not a problem – but for me I was not able to read almost any of these (without a deep yoga forward bend). In TEMC the texts were smaller, but at least they were at person’s chest level. Also in TEMC the text included nice thoughtful comments… but I kind of felt the GEM comments were way too simplified. Due to these reasons I pretty much gave up trying to read the comments, which resulted in very non-involved museum experience. I looked at a lot of statues, but I do not who’s statues they were and if there was any significance to them or were they just completely random…
- I was dreaming that in the future there could be an AR system used in museums, which would display the information to a screen in front of one eye. This would massively improve the experience.
- Also I found it annoying that they did not include basic arrows on the floor with a suggested movement order. In the guidebook they explain that there are 3 ways to go through the floors… but I think it is too confusing and does just not work with the amount of people that were there. Now I had a lot of energy and walked everything through 2 times (using different patterns) and found all the items which interested me.
- Getting to the museum and back from the museum is not that nice experience (when you use local taxis). There is a plan to build a metro extension and it should really be speeded up I think. Also it would be very nice to combine trip to pyramids with the museum visit… and they have not been able to finish the 2km walkway between the GEM and pyramids also… This is also completely necessary I think.
Final comments:
- My experience in GEM happened after visiting TEMC and NMEC (which are 2 kind of similarly themed museums). If it would have been my first Egyptian museum, then possibly I would have been more excited. The more good things you consume, the less enjoyment you get🙂
- There were so many people in the museum chatting on the phone or messaging on the phone. Because there was so much space, then this was not that distracting. Maybe this is the modern museum experience – you go there, take a few photos, and then chat to your friends “look where I am”🙂 And maybe there is no need to care about the actual exponents or history or stories at all…
The Nile river
Many people will do evening boat cruise on Nile while in Cairo. The sunset over the river is very beautiful I think (actually the sunsets in hot middle east are always very amazing, even in the city). There are various levels of boats and tours available. But I decided to not do the river boating this time.
But I still wanted to take some pictures of Nile and to get some “Nile experience”. Luckily I managed to do it by going to northern tip of Zamelek island (from metro station Safaa Hegazy). There was a very beautiful walkway at the bank of Nile. It was very quiet and beautiful and probably also a good spot for watching sunset. The Nile views were very good. (Even though for whatever reason the mentioned beautiful walkway was actually not open yet and I had to enjoy it all from behind the fence… but everyone else was doing the same and all the seating spots on the fence were taken for hundred meters)🙂
