The Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) last week launched a fund-raising campaign to support the construction work of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), which is planned to be officially inaugurated in 2015. The LE5 billion project is 65 per cent funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is providing a $300 million soft loan to be repaid over 30 years at an interest rate of 1.5 per cent. Repayments will be made in instalments after a 10-year grace period following the GEM's official inauguration. Another $27 million has been donated by businessmen, while the Ministry of Culture provided $150 million during the regime of toppled former president Hosni Mubarak. A joint venture between Hill International and EHAF consulting engineers is providing project-management services during the design and construction phases of the project. Up to now, only the first and second phases of the GEM project have been completed, these consisting of the construction of a power plant, fire security facilities, and fully equipped conservation centre with 12 laboratories for restoring, scanning and studying mummies as well as objects made from pottery, wood, textiles and glass. Four storage galleries have also been built, and these have been filled with 10,000 objects, 6,800 of which are being restored and will be in the GEM's permanent collection. The new museum's conservation centre, built 10 metres below ground level, is thought to be the largest such facility in the world and is intended for use not only to restore Egyptian artefacts but also as a regional conservation centre. It incorporates a documentation unit charged with creating a computerised database of all the artefacts in the museum. The storage rooms are equipped with movable units designed for secure storage and easy access. The environment is determined by the materials kept in the individual rooms, for example whether they are organic or non-organic, or whether they require low temperatures to optimise their preservation. The museum complex itself, which represents the third phase of the project, will centre on the “Dunnal Eye”, an area containing the main exhibition spaces. From this central hub a network of streets, piazzas and bridges will link the museum's many sections. The design is by Shih-Fu Peng of the Dublin firm Heneghan, winners of the international architectural competition held in 2003. According to Peng, the museum, which will be partly ringed by a desert wall containing half a million semi-precious stones, will act as a link between modern Cairo and the ancient pyramids. According to the design, the GEM will also house a conference centre with an auditorium seating 1,000 and catering to theatrical performances, concerts, conferences and business meetings. The main auditorium will be supplemented with seminar rooms, meeting rooms, a multi-purpose hall suitable for a variety of events, and an open plan gallery for accompanying exhibitions. A 7,000 square metre commercial area with shops, cafeterias, restaurants, and leisure and recreational activities is planned for the ground-floor level, as well as a 250-seat cinema. Hussein Abdel-Bassir, technical director of the GEM, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the museum would have 100,000 ancient Egyptian and early Graeco-Roman artefacts on display. Visitors will be greeted by the red granite colossus of the 19th-Dynasty Pharaoh Ramses II, he said, which was moved five years ago from Ramses Square in downtown Cairo, and a statue of his daughter Merit-Amun, now exhibited at the Sohag open air museum in Upper Egypt. This spectacle will take them back in time so that they will be able to learn more about ancient Egyptian civilisation in situ, he said. Abdel-Bassir added that the collection itself would be organised thematically, beginning with the physical environment of the Nile Valley and the surrounding desert and oases. Other displays will focus on kingship and the state, religious practices over the span of the ancient Egyptian era, especially the Amarna period, and the daily lives of the ancient Egyptians and their sports, games, music, arts and crafts and cultural and social practices. A special section for children will be created to encourage young people to learn about their heritage. The Pharaoh Khufu's solar boats, now in the Solar Boat Museum on the Giza Plateau, will also be among the items on permanent display in the GEM, as will the unique funerary objects of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and objects associated with Khufu's mother Hetepheres and Akhenaten's grandparents Yuya and Thuya. Unfortunately, the decline of tourism in Egypt in the aftermath of the 25 January Revolution has had a negative impact on budgets, meaning that the museum has hit financial problems. In order to speed up construction work on the GEM, Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim launched the fundraising campaign at the GEM site, asking the world to help in the construction of the GEM, one of the world's major cultural landmarks. During the press conference associated with the appeal, Ibrahim said that according to a protocol signed between the ministry of tourism and the Chamber of Tourism Establishments and the MSA, the latter will levy a $1 charge on every night a tourist spends in any hotel in Egypt. The levy would be optional, however, and would only be levied if the visitor concerned agreed to help in the construction of the GEM. The Al-Ahly National Bank had given the museum a grant of $1.5 million for the construction of its display building and another $3.5 million for its library, he added. Banque Misr has granted LE12 million for the equipment required for the GEM's children's facilities. Meanwhile, the Sawiris family has contributed LE5 million. The Ministry of Tourism is contributing LE5 million this year and a further LE 25 million over a five-year period. “Once the GEM is completed, it will be a world-class museum equivalent to the Louvre, the Metropolitan or the British Museum. We are grateful for all the assistance we have received,” Ibrahim said.
