A red-granite colossus of Ramses II, the 13th-century BC “king of kings”, rises three storeys from a triangular pool in the atrium of the new Grand Egyptian Museum, just west of Cairo. This Grand Hall, open at both ends to obviate the need for air-conditioning, has a 21st-century sophistication more readily associated with “starchitect” museums in the Gulf. Its triangular portals, framed by hieroglyphics in the translucent alabaster facade, glow gold at sunset.
The 80-ton statue of a king was moved to the GEM site from outside Cairo’s central railway station in 2006, during the rule of Hosni Mubarak — the 30-year president who conceived the museum in 1992 and was deposed in the 2011 Arab Spring. “After the 1952 revolution expelling the British army from Egypt,” the label reads, then prime minister Gamal Abdel Nasser had brought it from Memphis. “The symbolic link between the two Egyptian military strongmen, ancient and modern, was clear.”
Also clear from the captioning is that if successive modern regimes have used pharaonic history to project their own power, this intelligently curated collection contains the tools to deconstruct it. Like all good museums — and the GEM has the makings of a great one — it provides food for critical thinking as well as wonder.