grand egyptian museum

Mid-2012 was confirmed last week as the projected point of opening for the Grand Egyptian Museum, as pen was put to paper on a deal between the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and engineering firms Hill International and EHAF Consulting Engineers to commence work on stage three of Egypt’s new cultural mecca.

Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosni looked on as Dr Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, and Raouf Ghali, board chairman of Hill International, signed the deal. Hosni stated that it will take 26 months to complete the massive building project, in the desert west of Cairo at Giza, just two kilometres from the pyramids.

Finished in 2560 BC, the Great Pyramid of Giza took 20 years to build. 3,000 years on, it doesn’t look like major Egyptian construction projects have hurried up any.

It was recently announced that the opening date for the Grand Egyptian Museum – the massive centerpiece attraction of the epic new vision for the Giza plateau, two and a half kilometres from the pyramids – has been pushed back to 2013, after the latest in a long-running series of delays for the building. The project was officially commenced in 1992, which means that even if the GEM does open on schedule now, it will itself have taken at least a full 20 years to finally come to fruition. History never lacks a sense of irony, does it?

Does Zahi Hawass want the Rosetta Stone on loan or not? It's hard to know if you read the news often enough. Last night saw Egypt's antiquities boss come to the British Museum in London to promote his new book A Secret Voyage. Yet among the niceties between Dr Hawass and BM director Neil MacGregor, trouble was already brewing behind the scenes.

With the recent reopening of the Neues Museum on Berlin's Museum Island, the argument over ownership of the Bust of Nefertiti has once again been stoked. The Germans have made the priceless, beautiful, 3,400-year-old sculpture of the famous Egyptian Queen one of the centerpiece attractions of the €200-million Neues. It seems to have only caused the Egyptians to become more resolute in their efforts to get her back.

The British Museum houses a suspiciously large stash of ancient relics, pillaged from around the world by British explorers back when there were no laws against that kind of thing.

But the countries of origin of many of these treasures now want them back, and the repatriation of artefacts has become a hot potato between the UK and countries such as Egypt, Turkey and China.

Image of the New Acropolis Museum by Skoobie99.

The UK’s argument had, in the past, been that the origin countries do not have appropriate venues to house and display the ancient artefacts. With two major new museums  - the New Acropolis Museum in Athens and the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo - about to nullify this argument big style, the world holds its breath to see whether the British Museum will comply with demands to allow Greek and Egyptian artefacts to be repatriated.