Prime ministers, presidents and royalty descended on Cairo on Saturday to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the Pyramids to house one of the world's richest collections of antiquities.

The Grand Egyptian Museum has taken 30 years to become a reality, but it is finally set to open its doors, with an equally grand opening ceremony.

The hotly anticipated new museum boasts some of the greatest treasures of antiquity. But there are some notable exceptions.

Many of the 50,000 artifacts in the GEM were moved from the Egyptian Museum, a packed, century-old building in downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Others were recently unearthed from ancient cemeteries, including the Saqqara necropolis, another complex of pyramids and tombs about 14 miles (22 kilometers) south of the museum.

Lightning effects depicting the sarcophagus Egyptian King Tutankhamun light up the sky during the opening ceremony of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Giza, on the southwestern outskirts of the capital Cairo on November 1, 2025. — AFP pic

Egyptian officials are hoping the inauguration of a vast new museum on Saturday will accelerate the revival of a tourism industry hampered for more than a decade by internal upheaval, a pandemic and regional conflicts.

After two decades of anticipation and countless delays, the Grand Egyptian Museum is finally having its grand reveal. Located just outside Cairo, the $1 billion facility is poised to become the world's largest museum dedicated to a single civilisation.

It's been more than a decade since the last big ancient Egypt show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now comes “Divine Egypt.”

A MAJOR new museum is opening and it will be the largest archaeology museum in the world. The Grand Egyptian Museum based in the winter sun spot of Cairo, will officially open to the public this