Egypt: Tutankhamun's golden mask to be moved to the Grand Cairo Museum

After nearly a century on display in the ancient Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the famous golden mask of Tutankhamun and other iconic treasures will join the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is scheduled to open on July 3 near the Pyramids of Giza.

For a few more days, visitors can admire the world-famous gold funerary mask of the young pharaoh before it joins more than 5,000 of his artifacts in the new GEM museum, a billion-dollar megaproject west of Cairo.

"Only 26 objects from the Tutankhamun collection, including the golden mask and two coffins, are still here" in the Tahrir Square museum, its director, Ali Abdel Halim, told AFP.

"All should be moved soon," he added, without giving a date for the transfer. Among the latest items are a gold coffin, a gilded coffin, a gold dagger, a cosmetic box, miniature coffins, a royal tiara, and pectorals.

Tutankhamun's treasures, transferred to the Egyptian Museum in 1934, were long its crown jewels. But the neoclassical building, with its faded display cases and aging infrastructure, now stands in stark contrast to the GEM's high-tech facilities.

The museum is expected to become the world's largest dedicated to a single civilization, housing more than 100,000 objects, more than half of which will be on display.

In a dedicated wing, most of Tutankhamun's treasures will be displayed together for the first time since British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the pharaoh's intact tomb in 1922.

His mummy will remain in its original resting place, the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, as it is "a vital part of the archaeological site," Egyptian officials said. A virtual replica, however, will be displayed at the GEM.

The Tahrir Museum, which was long the historical heart of Egyptology, had already lost, in 2021, 22 royal mummies, including Ramses II and Queen Hatshepsut, which were transferred in an imposing procession to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Old Cairo.

However, it still houses around 170,000 objects, according to its director, including treasures from Yuya and Tuya, Tutankhamun's ancestors, and objects from ancient Tanis, such as the gold funerary mask of King Amenemope.

A total of 32,000 objects have already been moved from the Egyptian Museum's storage and exhibition halls to the GEM. The museum's director said the space vacated by Tutankhamun's collection would be filled with a new exhibition "befitting the importance of the pharaoh's treasures."