The end of our journey on the S.S. Sphinx, stepping out of the ship for the last time at the dock at Luxor. Tips were included in our experience, but of course we added a little extra for the cleaning staff and our great bartender Mosen (nicknamed Moses). I thought three hours for a regional airport seemed a bit overboard, but boy was I mistaken. The Luxor airport was *chaos*. There are multiple security checkpoints in the airport, the first o be at the front door, and there was a huge “line” to get through. I put line in quotes there because there were so many people trying to push through, cut in line, and generally be the main character of the story. It was an absolute mess of people vying to get their boxes through the x-ray, and the guards were doing little to help the situation.
A half-hour of that, and we entered the main airport, where we then had to go to the ticket counter and check our bags as usual. After that another security line, this one with the full ritual of shoe and belt removal and all the things you’d do in a US airport, only with the added chaos of Egypt. People jumped queues rapaciously, forcing themselves in front of us, making new lines to wedge their way into a longer line. Lots of people (including our lovely guide Walid) were starting to lose their patience at this point. Lucky we had those three hours, but by the time we got through security and into the gate area, there was still a little wait before the plane arrived and was ready to board. So our 10am flight left around 10:45 “on time”, which is what we’ve dubbed “Egyptian time”.
An hour flight and then the large group separated into two. A third returned directly to the hotel, and the rest of us took an hour long bus trip to the site of the brand new sparkly Grand Egyptian Museum.
You’ll recall at the very beginning of the trip, on Day 2, we visited the old Egyptian Museum. While impressive, the original museum was built in 1902. Over 100,000 artifacts have been discovered since then, 80,000 of which are stored in the warehouses in the lower floors. There is simply not enough room to showcase all of the pieces. This has also been an excuse for countries like the US, Great Britain, and many many other international museums that are showcasing Egyptian artifacts *not* to return them to Egypt. Because there’s “no room” to display them. After the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which I will now refer to as GEM, that excuse will vanish.
The GEM is vast. Easily the largest museum in the world, with a floor space of 81,000 square meters (872,000 square feet.) The largest museum currently is the Louvre, with 72,735 square meters (782,910 square feet) of gallery space. It will house nearly all of the currently discovered artifacts in Egypt’s possession, and negotiations are taking place to reclaim many of Egypt’s stolen or traded treasures from around the world.
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| Exterior of the entrance to the GEM |
The GEM is part of a wider program called Giza 2030, which includes a massive rennovation of the flow of tourists around the pyramids, as well as a new subway station and a private bridge that connects the GEM to the Giza plateau directly, which will be home to a caravan of electric busses to cart people back and forth to the pyramids, which are less than 2 miles away from the museum.
The facade of the building is decked out in Pyramid shapes resembling the Sierpinsky triangle and above the main entrance is a massive pyramid shaped covering made of alabaster, which glows with light from the inside at night. Around the entrance are cartouches to all of the Egyptian pharaohs. The only one that is currently missing (probably much to his eternal frustration) is the cartouche of Ramses II, although apparently the missing cartouche allows the sun to shine of the face of his large statue in the central atrium.
It’s hard to describe how vast and gorgeously modern the space is. Polished granite floors, alabaster, basalt, and marble bedeck the whole place. The design of the building was the result of an international contest. A Dublin design firm named Heneghen Peng won the contract, and the entire project has already cost over 1 billion US to complete, with much more to come in the remaining parts of the Giza 2030 project.
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| Large statue of, you guessed it, Ramses II, in the atrium of the GEM |
While the museum is technically not yet open, private tours allow tour companies like Uniworld access to the main atrium, the grand staircase, shops, and the “Tutankhamen Experience”, an 20 minute, heavily cg immersive show projected against all six surfaces of a rectangular room that houses maybe 100 people at a time.
The coolest part of the section of the museum open to tourists was the Grand Staircase, featuring a procession of Pharaoic statuary, obelisks, and sarcophagi, all leading up to a breaktaking view of the great pyramids on the Giza plateau. While the Tutankhamen Experience was a bit too low-rent CG for my taste, the grand staircase and atrium made up for it.
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| The Grand Staircase at the GEM |
I will say, that the building as we saw it was not quite complete. Benches are still being built in some places on the grand staircase, and the whole thing probably wouldn’t meet US safety standards, as there are exposed open pools of water all over the atrium, and. Staircases with unusual angles and drop offs that would make a US safety inspector jump out of their skin. But the entire place is going to be *amazing* and will easily rank among the top, if not *the* top, museum to visit in the world.
That was pretty much our day. A farewell dinner in the hotel was a good, but relatively quiet affair, with no speeches or goodbyes. We all are still meeting tomorrow for one of the biggest tour days of the trip — to Sakarah, the Giza Plateau, the Sphinx, and two stores, a rug academy and a cotton store. It’s an early start tomorrow so after dinner we all just sort of faded back to our hotel rooms to rest for the early start tomorrow.
As always, thanks for entertaining my ramblings and keep traveling!
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