Overview
- Egypt staged a tightly managed opening ceremony on Nov. 1 near the pyramids, with an audiovisual show of drones, lights, music and fireworks.
- The event drew roughly 39 heads of state, kings and princes alongside dozens of other delegations, including Spain’s King Felipe VI.
- The museum consolidates more than 100,000 artifacts with about 5,000 objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb displayed together for the first time, and a monumental 11‑meter statue of Ramses II in the atrium.
- Authorities accredited hundreds of international correspondents but restricted access to the site and limited coverage to official imagery during the inauguration.
- Costing about $1–1.2 billion with major Japanese financing, the Heneghan Peng–designed complex offers 24,000 square meters of permanent galleries, conservation labs and modern visitor facilities, with officials projecting around five million visitors a year and touting new roads, a planned metro link and the nearby Sphinx airport.