The most prestigious pieces of Tutankhamun's treasure are gradually leaving the old Egyptian Museum where they had been on display for a century to reach the Grand Egyptian Museum , built very close to the pyramids.
Tutankhamun's royal chariot, clad in gold leaf and encrusted with colored glass and precious stones.
In the middle of the crowd that presses on the road to Giza, they advance in step, framed by the police and the army. Two trucks loaded with huge crates bearing on their sides the image of three thousand year old treasures:a gilded wooden bed, the gleaming nacelle of a chariot… major pieces of Tutankhamun's treasure accomplishing a slow migration. Out of time. For several months now, the little king's precious heritage has been making the same journey regularly. Piece after piece, it leaves the old Egyptian Museum, a mythical but decrepit building in Tahrir Square, in the heart of Cairo, where it has been kept for a century. To reach the futuristic Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), whose site is twenty kilometers away, facing the pyramids.
A first for the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM)
The GEM was initiated in the 1990s by Farouk Hosni, Minister of Culture of President Hosni Mubarak, to welcome with dignity the legacies of Ancient Egypt. "Royalty and eternity are the two words that define his identity ", declares Tarek Sayed Tawfik, its director. Tutankhamun will be the soul. A little king, certainly, so ephemeral (around 1354-1346 BC). Howard Carter, in 1922, of his almost inviolate tomb - the famous KV62 in the Valley of the Kings - and his sumptuous bric-a-brac:5,000 objects in all, two tons of gold. "Only a third of the treasure has been exhibited so far, the GEM will present it for the first time in its entirety" , boasts Tarek Sayed Tawfik.
BALLET. Four thousand pieces are already between the walls, all those from the reserves of the old museum. But now begins the ballet of the most prestigious, shown in its windows. The tank that has just arrived is one of the four ceremonial vehicles discovered in the antechamber of the tomb. As for the bed, it is part of an exceptional set of three funerary beds in animal shapes, which were arranged right next to it. "We will continue the transfers during the coming year, continues the director. The gold coins will be the last to be moved, the last being the Mask of Tutankhamun, mid-2018, when we have scheduled a partial opening of the GEM. "
The thorny issue of funding
If the exhibition building is finished, to see the state of the site, one begins to doubt. Between technical problems and political crises, the project, which began in 2002, has continued to be delayed. The main structure, imagined as a scintillating arrow of glass and alabaster rushing towards the colossi of Giza, is still gutted, invaded by sand. And the money is missing. The biggest patrons are… Japanese! They have already endowed the GEM with nearly 300 million dollars, the museum hopes for another 450 million. But Europeans and Americans seem in no hurry to contribute. Their archaeologists are however very present, and for decades, on the prestigious excavation sites of the country...
IN IMAGES, IN PICTURES. In Egypt, Tutankhamun moves
