614 artifacts transferred from Egyptian Museum to GEM

CAIRO – 6 November 2018: On Monday, November 5, 614 artifacts were transferred from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM).

The transferred collection comprises 11 objects from the treasures of King Tutankhamun, with the king’s diadem among them.

The transferred artifacts date back to the Old Kingdom and the Late Period. The artifacts include King Amenhotep II’s wooden box covered with a layer of white mortar and engraved with the king's cartridge and a hieratic text; a group of Osirian statuettes; a limestone statue of Senefer, the fifth dynasty’s top official; and a 26th dynasty relief bearing the image of a sphinx.

"The transfer of Tutankhamun’s diadem was really a challenge,” Eissa Zaidan, head of the First Aid Restoration Department at the GEM, told Ahram Online.

Zaidan elaborated that the transfer procedure was very critical because the diadem was in a very poor conservation condition.

The restoration team exerted their maximum effort and applied all the scientific methods to protect King Tutankhamun's diadem.

The restoration team covered the diadem with a special kind of antibacterial and anti-acidic foam.

The transferred artifacts were stored inside the GEM’s Conservation Centre.
GEM is set to open in 2020.

Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anany said in his speech during the inauguration of the fourth International Tutankhamun Conference held on May 5 that the Grand Egyptian Museum will be a great global museum that will dazzle the whole world, adding that the museum is expected to be one of the largest museums in the world.

“Two years ago, the achievement percentage of establishing GEM was less than 20 percent; now it is over 70 percent. At this precise moment, 43,257 artifacts have been transferred to GEM, in addition to 4,549 artifacts from Tutankhamun’ s belongings; his total belongings amount to 5,000 pieces,” said Anany.

GEM’s lobby will host the statue of King Rameses II and the column of his son King Merneptah; the grand staircase will include 87 royal statues and large architectural elements, including statues of kings Khafre, Menkaure, Senusret, Akhenaten and Amenhotep III.

After the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) had launched its logo in June, citizens and experts claimed that the logo is quite mundane and that it does not represent the Ancient Egyptian collection displayed in the museum.

Minister of Antiquities Anany told Egypt Today that the logo is temporary, and that it is a part of the promotional campaign executed by the German company Atelier Bruckner which had won the bid to work on the design out of 12 companies.

The minister declared that a competition will be held for local and international designers to submit their proposals of the logo prior to the inauguration in 2020. Tutankhamun’s division was supposed to open by the end of this year but President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi decided to inaugurate the entire museum in 2020.