MICHEL SAILHAN, Cairo | Thursday
TUTANKHAMUN’S golden treasures are due to be moved from downtown Cairo to a new state-of-the-art museum complex which will be built near the Great Pyramids in the next few years, officials said on Wednesday.
The collection, including the famous pharaonic boy king’s gold funerary mask, has been on display for decades at the 150-year-old Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the mask as well as other artefacts have toured the world.
“We cannot divide a collection, and all the items – or around more than 3 500 artefacts – will be transported to the new museum,” which will be opened in four or five years, Culture Minister Faruq Hosni told a press conference.
International architecture firms have until April 7 to bid for the $350-million project to build “The Grand Egyptian Museum,” within sight of the pyramids on the desert plateau outside Cairo.
The current museum is not big enough to display the quantity of Pharaonic artefacts available, much of which is in storage rooms. The new complex will be built around three kilometres from the three pyramids.
The treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb, one of the few to escape grave robbers, were discovered by British archeologist Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, an arid mountainous area on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor.
The best known artefact is the gold funerary mask, which stares out from a case in the first floor of the Egyptian Museum. The head is covered by the nemes headcloth with the cobra and vulture emblems on the forehead. The eyes and eyelids are inlaid with lapis lazuli.
Tutankhamun ascended the throne as a boy in 1354 BC and ruled for around nine years until he died at around the age of 18. His mummy is still at the gravesite in Luxor.
Using the latest in computer technology, the “complex will furnish all its visitors with an enjoyable, entertaining, educational and cultural experience,” the ministry of culture said in a brochure.
Computers, for example, will be used in a way “that allows visitors to relive Carter’s emotions at the time of the discovery,” it added.
The Egyptian government hopes to attract international contributions to the project, which is sponsored by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco).
The government hopes it will initially lure at least three million visitors a year.
Tourism, which is the main source of foreign currency, suffered heavily from the fallout of the alleged Islamist terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11. – AFP