The first impression when visiting the newly inaugurated Grand Egyptian Museum as a tourist is its vastness.
It’s infrastructural, on the scale of a major airport or train terminal, its high-flung ceiling of glass and steel arching far above the colossal statue of Ramses II, all 83 tonnes of the red granite pharaoh bearing down towards you as you enter.
Over on the left the exhibits begin, with a monumental staircase that ascends to a panoramic view of the pyramids of Giza, statues laid out along it in a sequence that charts out the ancient Egyptians’ quest for immortality.
Much has been made of the museum’s Irish link, as it was the Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects that won out over 1,500 entries to secure the commission to build it back in 2003.
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Perhaps less in focus is the hard-headed strategy behind the museum and its launch with full pageantry by an Egyptian government keen to cultivate its economic interests and image both internally and abroad.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, financed with a loans of about $800 million (€690 million) from Japan, is one of various mega construction projects aimed to attract international investment into Egypt and to boost construction and tourism, both major components of the Egyptian economy.
Yezid Sayigh, senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, sees the mega projects as one of the defining policies of the government of president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi since the former army commander took power in a military coup in 2013.
“Almost everything Sisi has ever done in the last 10 or more years ultimately is about the same thing: demonstrating determination, seriousness, energy and activity, and therefore strengthening Egypt’s requests or claims to receive various forms of foreign financial capital,” Sayigh said.
“He’s tried from the very beginning to launch massive projects ... The Grand Egyptian Museum is partly in and of itself a mega project, through which Egypt managed to raise something like a billion dollars worth of foreign investment.”
The breakneck pace of construction is clearly visible in night-time satellite images of Egypt from space, which show the orange-hued street lights of the new satellite city developments of 6th of October City and New Cairo advancing into the desert on a scale that rivals the original capital city of Cairo itself. Along the new highways, endless billboards promote glitzy new real estate developments.
A $35 billion deal with a United Arab Emirates sovereign investment fund last year was followed this month by an almost $30 billion deal with the real estate branch of the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, both to build large new developments along strips of Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
Egypt’s embassy to the United States has promoted the “national mega projects” as a way “to enhance the competitiveness of the economy, create employment opportunities and attract foreign and domestic private investments”.
The International Monetary Fund has described the Egyptian economy as “dominated by public-driven investments”, with state and military-owned companies playing an outsized role.
Attracting inward investment is a vital counterweight to Egypt’s debt obligations. The cost of repaying debt increased to take up 38 per cent of current receipts in 2024, according to the central bank, a sharp increase from the previous year.
The ratings agency S&P recently upgraded Egypt’s credit rating to B, partly due to the government’s decision to no longer control the exchange rate of the Egyptian Pound. But the move has left both Egyptian citizens and the state itself vulnerable to the currency’s fluctuation in value: both imports, and much of Egypt’s debt, are denominated in foreign currencies.
Despite strong economic growth, Egypt’s poverty rate increased to 35 per cent in 2022 compared to 28 per cent in 2015, according to the World Bank.
The shock to commodity prices caused by the invasion of Ukraine has been particularly punishing, as Egypt is one of the world’s top importers of Ukrainian wheat and corn. At one point in September 2023, the central bank recorded an annual inflation rate in food prices of 74 per cent.
Keeping the public on board is crucial, and no effort to promote the museum has been spared. In 2021, a glittering Pharoahs’ Golden Parade transferred 18 kings and four queens from their smaller display room in the 1901 Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on Tahrir Square in central Cairo to a grander, low-lit resting place in the new museum’s Royal Mummies Hall.
The livestreamed event included prolonged footage of president Sisi standing alone, overseeing the mummies’ arrival, leaving no doubt as to whom the glory should go.
