GEM Update
CAIRO - 25 January 2021
Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum construction work is about 97% complete.
Egypt’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled el-Enany previously announced that the Grand Egyptian Museum will be inaugurated on June,2021.
The display vitrines for the King Tutankhamun galleries are 100% completed and are currently undergoing testing.
He added that 90% of the artifacts for the Grand Staircase have been installed, and the control systems and surveillance cameras are also being finalized.
GEM’s Executive Affairs for Restoration and Transportation of Antiquities Eissa Zidan previously said that the restoration and construction of the world's first hanging obelisk was completed and placed in front of the main facade of the museum, the bottom of the obelisk will contain the cartouches of King Ramses II.
More than 49,603 artifacts were moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum so far.
On October 19, 2019 ministry of antiquities announced the discovery of the largest cache in the cemetery of El-Assasif in Saqqara. The 30 archaeological coffins have been transferred to the Grand Egyptian Museum and will be displayed the halls of the GEM to be called the ‘Hidden Hall’ to hold the coffins. Excavations at the Saqqara necropolis since then have resulted in the discovery of even larger caches.
One of the most important transferred artifacts were the statues of King Ramses II, Sekhmet and Seti, in addition to a huge pink-granite statue of Ramses VI, and another distinguished set of statues that express the mastery of ancient Egyptian art.
A statue of King Khafra made of alabaster and a statue of the priest Kay made of colored limestone, depicting the priest sitting on a seat with a half backrest and a small statue of his wife, and a sarcophagus of king Senusert I were transferred to GEM.
Comments
AlanS - Based on the track record and the statement made during the Tauck webinar I wouldn't bet on the GEM opening to the public in June 2021. Perhaps inaugurated and opening to the public aren't the same thing. The way they've been going, in terms of meeting dates, I just hope it's fully open to the public for our October 2022 tour.
Let's make that March 2022
- have grand opening and (though the anniversary actually doesn't happen until November 2022) the 100th anniversary of Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb in January. That gives them two months to iron out the kinks for large numbers of regular visitors by mid-March 2022. Could happen? 
By having the opening and anniversary in January it puts pressure on the Egyptians to have everything ready for what could be large numbers of visiting international dignitaries.
AlanS - I like your plan.
By Decree of AlanS the GEM shall be OPEN by March 2022!!!!
We are going to hold Alan to it! Our twice postponed Egypt of the Nile trip will begin March 24th, 2022 !
I want it open sooner. My trip is in Nov 2021.
BKMD - You should have spoken to AlanS before he decreed a March 2022 open. It will take serious payola to get the Decree moved to a November date!
https://egyptindependent.com/grand-egyptian-museum-has-finalized-98-of-engineering-work-says-official/
Making progress; however, I do not see the GEM being open to visitors in 2021. Article states construction of display halls are to be completed by end of year.
Well, we just punted from October 2021 (which we consider unlikely to occur and/or that we wouldn't feel good about it) to September 2022, so maybe the GEM!
I just saw this....
)
https://egyptindependent.com/on-top-of-gem-egypts-tourism-ministry-to-inaugurate-4-museums-in-2021/
I cross my fingers for something to happen soon.... and if not, I would hope for Tauck to pulled one of it's amazing surprises and nail a private tour inside the complex...
A few years ago Egypt was running special small group tours of the GEM. I think they were mostly behind-the-scenes tours of the restoration labs which are in a separate building. The tours were expensive. I was hoping Tauck would spring for one of those for our 2020 J&E but in the Fall of 2019(?) they stopped the special tours because it was unsafe and people were getting in the way of restorations and construction work which going full bore at that time. Of course, we all know how all that turned out.
Here is the latest COVID 19 info from the US Embassy in Egypt.
Making progress...but still not confident GEM will open in 2021. "Insha'llah"
https://egyptindependent.com/consortium-led-by-hassan-allam-wins-operation-of-services-in-grand-egyptian-museum/
I haven’t heard good things about vaccinations in Egypt. Are people not worried about countries with low vaccination rates? My feeling is that some countries won’t have their majority population vaccinated until at least the end of 2022. Have others heard otherwise?
I only hope when other countries approach being fully vaccinated they will share excess and assist other countries in obtaining vaccines- Egypt, Tanzania, etc. The Egyptians have partnered with Japan and others on the construction of the GEM, so I hope that help also carries over to other areas.
In the news: "CAIRO (Reuters) 4 Mar- Egypt on Thursday expanded its coronavirus vaccination rollout to include the elderly and people with chronic diseases after several weeks of vaccinating medical staff, the cabinet said." They have been getting the Chinese and AstraZenica vaccines and the Egyptian Drug Authority just approved Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
They have about a year to get their act together!
We have to hope that more countries open up their borders. It seems that that may be a bigger hurdle for us than actually being vaccinated. If our numbers don’t go down significantly and.there continues to be what appears to be a significant number of us being against vaccination, it’s not going to look good to other countries and they will open up for other country imstead. Egypt of course is eager from the return of tourists, but I don’t want to go there.
We booked Egypt for Christmas 2020 and then cancelled when we read about the GEM being delayed again and again. Then the virus hit. I’m so looking forward to going, but I have an awful feeling that it won’t be until at least 2023 because of the virus and their vaccine rollout. Sigh.
I’m rooting for your trip, Alan. Don’t let me get you down.