in-cyprus 1 November 2025
President Nikos Christodoulides will travel to Cairo this afternoon to attend the official opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum at the invitation of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
The new Grand Egyptian Museum, which stands beside the Pyramids of Giza, is a landmark project spanning approximately 500,000 square metres and housing more than 100,000 artefacts that tell seven millennia of Egyptian history, from the Pharaonic period to the Hellenistic and Roman eras.
The president’s presence at the museum opening represents tangible recognition both of Egypt’s invaluable cultural wealth, which influenced and inspired the wider region, and of the deep and long-standing history connecting Cyprus and Egypt.
It also underscores the close, stable and friendly ties that continue to characterise relations between the two countries.
The president will be accompanied by Government Spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis, Deputy Minister of Culture Dr Vasiliki Kassianidou, Director of the Presidential Diplomatic Office Doros Venezis and officials. Christodoulides will return from Egypt the same evening.
The museum, described as the world’s largest archaeological museum, officially opens on 4 November near one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza.
A main draw will be the entire contents of boy king Tutankhamun’s intact tomb, displayed together for the first time since British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered it. The collection includes Tutankhamun’s spectacular gold mask, throne and chariots.
“I had the idea of displaying the complete tomb, which means nothing remains in storage, nothing remains in other museums, and you get to have the complete experience, the way Howard Carter had it over a hundred years ago,” Dr Tarek Tawfik, president of the International Association of Egyptologists and former head of the museum, told the BBC.
The vast museum complex, which cost some $1.2 billion, is expected to attract up to 8 million visitors a year, giving a huge boost to Egyptian tourism hit by regional crises.
Apart from the Tutankhamun exhibit and a new display of the spectacular 4,500-year-old funerary boat of Khufu—one of the oldest and best-preserved vessels from antiquity—most galleries at the site have been open to the public since last year.
The museum’s exterior is covered in hieroglyphs and translucent alabaster cut into triangles with a pyramid-shaped entrance. Among the showstoppers are a 3,200-year-old, 16-metre-long suspended obelisk of Pharaoh Ramesses II and his massive 11-metre-high statue.
A giant staircase is lined with statues of other ancient kings and queens, and an upper-floor window offers a perfectly framed view of the Giza pyramids.
The museum was first proposed in 1992 during President Hosni Mubarak’s rule, with construction beginning in 2005. The project was hit by financial crises, the 2011 Arab Spring—which deposed Mubarak and led to years of turmoil—the Covid-19 pandemic and regional wars.
Prominent Egyptologists argue the museum’s establishment strengthens their demand for key Egyptian antiquities held in other countries to be returned—including the famed Rosetta Stone displayed at the British Museum.
“Now I want two things: number one, museums to stop buying stolen artefacts and number two, I need three objects to come back: the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum, the Zodiac from the Louvre and the Bust of Nefertiti from Berlin,” said Dr Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former long-time minister of tourism and antiquities told the BBC.
The British Museum told the BBC it had received “no formal requests for either the return or the loan of the Rosetta Stone from the Egyptian Government”.
(with information from The BBC)
