On 1 November, leaders from across the globe will arrive in Cairo to take part in a one-of-a-kind international event: the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) on the Pyramids Plateau and its unparalleled collection of Pharaonic treasures.
The event has been rescheduled twice due to regional political developments and is now set to be one of the world’s largest gatherings of world leaders, with a high-level attendance that is expected to come second only to the UN General Assembly.
The number of participants will certainly exceed those who were in Sharm El-Sheikh for the international conference to end the war in Gaza in the second week of October. A government source said that most of the leaders who were in Sharm El-Sheikh are expected also to take part in the opening of the GEM.
The final list of participants was not available when Al-Ahram Weekly went to press. However, around 55 leaders were expected to attend, with some coming just for the opening and others planning a longer stay. Most of the leaders, according to a government source, will be arriving on 31 and 1 November, but others are expected to fly into Cairo a day earlier.
The invitations extended by the Egyptian Presidency include the spouses of the leaders, the government official said. Leaders who are planning to arrive earlier or stay later will probably also take tours of the Pyramids Plateau or other sites.
The source said that President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and his top aides will be receiving the dignitaries as they arrive at three airports in Cairo, with some of them planning to stay at hotels near the Pyramids and others at the residences of their respective embassies.
He said that with leaders from the Arab world, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas expected to show up for the opening, it is expected that there will also be political and economic talks on the sidelines of the event, either with President Al-Sisi or among the leaders themselves.
The opening of the GEM comes over a century after the November 1902 opening of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo during the reign of the Khedive Abbas Helmy II. However, at that time the international attendance was limited, especially when compared to that at the inauguration of the Suez Canal under Khedive Ismail in 1869.
However, the world’s fascination with ancient Egypt civilisation was already growing. Twenty years later, with Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in November 1922, this fascination reached unprecedented levels.
Several international museums today display collections, large and small, of pieces from ancient Egyptian civilisation. They include the British Museum, which has over 100,000 pieces, and the Neues Museum in Berlin, which houses around 80,000 pieces including the famous Nefertiti bust. The Louvre in Paris has 50,000 pieces in its Department of Egyptian Antiquities, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has over 30,000 pieces.
However, the GEM will offer a unique experience, not just in the number of pieces it contains but also in the value of the collections to be displayed, which include the Tutankhamun collection that has been taken from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the GEM.
According to three former Egyptian ambassadors who have served during their careers in cities having museums with significant collections from ancient Egypt, Pharaonic history and monuments are infallible sources of attention. Every visiting dignitary to Egypt requests to see them.
“It is always a treat to send travel packages to dignitaries who want to see Pharaonic monuments during their stay in Egypt,” recalled one of the ambassadors. It is not unusual for world leaders to arrive in Egypt on unannounced visits to visit Pharaonic sites, he said.
“These are mostly Europeans,” he said, recalling the affinity that late French president François Mitterrand felt towards Aswan in Upper Egypt. Mitterrand chose to spend his final Christmas in the city just days before he passed away on 8 January 1996.
Jacques Chirac, another former French president, was also heavily supportive of the display and promotion of ancient Egyptian civilisation. This passion was behind the building of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, which opened in 2006.
The Japanese, according to the same ambassador, have developed an immense interest in the history of ancient Egypt during the past few decades, he said. When he served in Japan towards the end of the last century, there were huge numbers of books on Pharaonic history that were being translated and published in Japanese, he said, encouraging more and more Japanese tourists to visit Egypt.
Four tour guides who have been working in the industry since the late 1980s said that the opening of the GEM will reinvigorate the world’s attention on Pharaonic history. “All eyes will be on Egypt in the next few days, and reporting on the opening and the presence of world dignitaries will only be part of the coverage,” said Noha, a guide who works with German-speaking tourists.
She added that beyond the coverage there will be more material put out the history of ancient Egypt in the papers and on TV channels.
Should the region be spared further hiccups, these tour guides said that they hoped the opening of the GEM and the international presence at it would lead to an ever-greater number of tourists coming to Egypt.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 30 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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