The Grand Egyptian Museum, Giza's new wonder
Celebrating the opening of the GEM and offering advice on discovering Egypt for first-time visitors.
The GEM—the Grand Egyptian Museum—in Giza has just officially opened. Yes, it has been a very long wait. But neither Rome nor the pyramids were built in one day. Was it worth the wait?
Your intrepid art historian went last summer to find out for you, dear reader. So, let’s discover the Grand Egyptian Museum together.
The GEM, a museum with a view of the Pyramids of Giza, the only surviving one of the Seven Wonders of the World
Past articles have illustrated that museums are time-travel machines. This story will be an authentic travel experience, dear reader, assuming you’ve long dreamed of visiting Egypt but have yet to do so. We begin our journey from within the Grand Egyptian Museum, marveling at the view outside.
The museum offers a stunning panoramic view of the only one of the Seven Wonders still standing—the Giza pyramids. The photo introducing this article shows two of the three pyramids, those of Khufu (Cheops) and Khafre (Chephren), poking out of the Sahara Desert.
Yes, Egypt is in Africa. The Nile is a thin line of water carving its way through the Sahara Desert. From that spot, if you turn right and manage to walk across 3,000 miles of sand, you will find yourself on a beach, looking at the Atlantic Ocean.
On the left, there is the modern city of Giza, and then the Nile. Zoom out from above, and you can see the Nile is bordered by green banks on both sides, set within an immense desert. That contrast between the lifeless hot desert and fertile green fields has defined Egypt for millennia.
The GEM, an immense island of relaxation, a cool and quiet haven away from bustling Cairo
Cairo’s old Egyptian Museum opened in 1902. While it has a lot going for it, it barely shelters you from the honking concert outside, and, of course, there is no air conditioning. That is why, to make sense of how the new museum is a significant improvement, we need to set the stage, dear reader, for what it feels like to visit Egypt for the first time.
Cairo is one of the world’s largest cities
Greater Cairo is home to 23 million people. It should not come as a surprise, then, that its traffic is pretty mad. There are even traffic jams at night. How? If you needed to buy shoes late at night, come to Downtown Cairo, which is always buzzing with activity.
You may be overwhelmed by the organized chaos or see its charm. In my case, walking Cairo’s sidewalks on my very first visit to the country, in 1999, revealed a lot about the people who live there.
Egyptians are a welcoming people
Wherever I went, people greeted me with ‘Welcome to Egypt’. I don’t mean people at the hotel desk, but passersby and even drivers who slowed to shout “Welcome” from their car windows.
Like everywhere else, at tourist sites, some people try to take advantage of tourists. Step a bit further and slow down, and the situation will change drastically. One example, I purchased a student’s card at a store and sat down to talk with the shopkeepers.
Result, every single evening of my stay, they invited me to drink fruit juice and to smoke the waterpipe. I was not allowed to pay for anything. So, I confess, I fell in love with Egypt and its people, and have been back regularly ever since.
And I did the stupid things myself, so you don’t have to! I swam in the Nile, and I got a preview of the mummification process by being unprepared for the scorching Egyptian sun. I took the time to experience the magic and charm of Egypt, allowing me to share advice on how to discover the country.
It also means that if you have preconceived ideas about Egypt, let me say there’s probably only one that is true: it can be pretty hot!
Egypt is either cold or warm, with little in between
In winter, when the sun is out, it feels like spring; night is like a change of season, when one needs ski clothes. In summer, it is a hot day and night. But how hot? One summer, a lady advised me to avoid going inside the Great Pyramid at the end of the day. I asked why, and she told me, “Because the walls are wet with sweat...”
Obviously, I did not listen, so when I came out of the pyramid, a guy took one look at me and asked why I swam with my clothes on... That was inside a space with no ventilation, but outside, it is dry heat, and it can easily be above 110°F.
Now you have some idea of what it feels like on the other side of the window overlooking the pyramids. It was scorching hot outside, yet cool enough inside without being too cold. Let’s walk around the museum.
The GEM, a major museum dedicated to one civilization
Before you ask: no, I could not visit the one-third of the museum dedicated to Tutankhamun, as it was not yet ready. Some context: Tutankhamun was a minor Pharaoh who ruled for ten years, dying aged 18 or 19.
There were over 300 Pharaohs during the three millennia of Pharaonic Egypt. Only a handful of royal tombs were found intact or nearly so, like Tutankhamun’s. Sneferu, above, and Khufu and Khafre, present in this photo with their pyramids in the background, built monuments that likely will still stand in four millennia.
It is like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre: there is more to a museum than one masterpiece. In fact, did you know, dear reader, that while all the tombs of the Kings and nobles at Giza had been looted, one was found intact?
Queen Hetepheres I’s intact treasure
While Khufu (Cheops) built the largest stone monument ever, it is probable that his mother’s tomb was looted and then reburied near her son’s pyramid. In 1925, a deep shaft was discovered right in front of the Great Pyramid.
It contained the Queen’s sarcophagus, sealed but empty. And her nearly intact furnishings and jewelry, which, at 4,600 years old, are among ancient Egypt’s most important and rare treasures.
Pharaoh Hatshepsut
No, there is no typo; her title was not Queen, but King. To begin with, the word “Queen” doesn’t even exist in the ancient Egyptian language; the word is “King’s wife.” An important Queen, like Nefertari, may have been called “Great King’s Wife”; it was her husband, Ramses II, who sat on the throne.
Hatshepsut sat on the throne, not as regent, the stepmother of young Thutmose III, but as Pharaoh. She wears a false beard, as the magnificent statue above is that of one of a handful of female Pharaohs among three millennia of Kings.
Since I had not mentioned it previously — hoping the photos did the talking — it must be said that the quality of the displays, lighting, and presentation is top-notch. So was it worth the wait? Yes, a resounding yes.
I did spend an entire day in the museum, and that was before the 5,000 objects of Tutankhamun’s treasure and Khufu’s solar boat were available.
So, you will be glad to know there is a food court inside the GEM, where one can choose a restaurant or café to stop by and recharge for an artistic marathon. With the old museum and the other brand-new museum—the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization—discovering the museums of Cairo easily takes two full days.
If one needs two days for Cairo’s museums, not counting the step-pyramid at Saqqara and the pyramids of Giza, it begs the question: how long does it take to discover Egypt?
Discovering Egypt for a lifetime experience
The romantic cruises of the late 1800s took 50 days to sail from Cairo to Aswan, traveling aboard a dahabiya, a beautiful sailing boat like the one above. Steamboats did the same cruise in 19 days.
It is not possible to do the same thing in four to five days, like most cruises do today, from Luxor to Aswan. The distance from Cairo to Abu Simbel is 750 miles. There is no denying the charm of a Nile cruise, but a ship needs one day to travel the distance covered in one hour by car or train.
In other words, if you come to Egypt to experience its monuments, over a distance of 750 miles and over a three-thousand-year time span, you need time. As it is likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime holiday, you need at least 14 days, ideally 21.
That is the secret to accessing sites such as the one below:
And it is the magic formula for enjoying the pyramids and royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings alone or nearly alone. As for Abu Simbel, it is also possible to experience it alone or nearly alone.
But the only way it is feasible is to have both the time and the experts setting the journey for you.
From the Grand Egyptian Museum to Abu Simbel, a once-in-a-lifetime private tour of Egypt
That is the benefit of my 25 years of travel to Egypt and of my studies in art history and Egyptology. There is no need to take my word for it:
Guillaume, Saber and Saleem did a professional and wonderful job from pick up at airport to drop off at cruise, their knowledge on the ground of the history and what we experienced was paramount and the local knowledge of when and where to be to avoid crowds invaluable in the seamless planning and experience.
I am so impressed with this group I already have 2 or 3 close friends and family I will be meeting in coming weeks wanting to know what our trip was like and to do the same, I think the personalised service and the planning was excellent.
Thank you all was a wonderful experience and hope to be back. Can not speak more highly of this group. I had very high expectations due to the time spent planning the trip and overall cost and will state that both Jane and my expectations where not only met but surpassed.
Again cannot say enough great things about something I waited so long to do and sometimes in these situations your expectations are not met because you have had so much time dreaming, again my expectations met and exceeded, worth every cent and the most disappointing part was flying home.
That wonderful testimony came from a person who had waited 47 years to see Egypt. The focus was on delivering that lifelong dream, not by offering camel rides, but by providing a genuine experience.
A once-in-a-lifetime adventure, a private tour the length of Egypt
Embark on the experience of a lifetime this winter —late 2025 or early 2026 —with a genuine private discovery of Egypt, from Cairo to Luxor, for 2 to 6 visitors.
This is not a regular tour, but a Friends on an adventure, where three experts take care of you from the moment you land in Cairo to the tearful goodbyes in Aswan two to three weeks later.
And it is not a group tour either, meaning there are no set dates you must adapt to.
Please visit the website for more information and illustrations.
Do inquire about setting up a Journey of Wonder, a visit that will become the trip of a lifetime.
Private tour of Egypt from Cairo to Abu Simbel
