Grand Egyptian Museum to open in 2015

Cairo - The Grand Egyptian Museum, which will house more than 100,000 artefacts and monuments from the pharaonic era, is to be inaugurated in 2015, Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said Tuesday.

It is considered to be the world's largest museum. Work on the third and final stage has started and will take up to three-and-a-half years and cost 300 million dollars, the minister said.

The 5-billion-Egyptian-pound (828-million-dollar) project is being built on 117 acres of land on the outskirts of Cairo.

It will also provide 20,000 new jobs at a time when the economy, in particular the tourism sector, has taken a major hit because of the unrest in the country since the popular revolt that led to the ouster of president Hosny Mubarak in February.

The current museum, which was inaugurated in 1902, is situated in central Cairo's Tahrir Square, which was the epicentre of the protests that forced Mubarak out of power.

The government listed 18 items that have disappeared during clashes between protesters and security forces.
The foundation stone of the new Grand Egyptian Museum was laid in 2002, to offer visitors more space as the Tahrir museum is overcrowded with artefacts that are not properly displayed.