Inside Egypt’s $1 Billion Grand Egyptian Museum (Opening Day!)

Look at this massive structure back here. I am in Egypt and this is the Grand Egyptian Museum. It's the first day that it is open to the public and I'm definitely not an expert on Egyptian history but we will see what's inside. Okay first how to get there. At this point there's really no other way to get here than by taxi either in drive or uber. They're building a metro station nearby but it's not open yet. It's about five kilometers from the Giza Pyramids which I actually went to earlier that morning but walking isn't exactly ideal. The streets can get pretty chaotic so the 15-minute taxi is recommended. While I do think seeing the pyramids in real life was surreal, let's be honest that's been covered in about a thousand other YouTube videos so I'll just stick to the museum. We bought the online tickets a couple of weeks ago because we were kind of expecting the lines to be this long so I guess we can just go through this line here. Scanning the QR codes took all of five seconds and when walking in, wow, first impressions, it is huge. You can already see from the outside so many details. They have all the names of Egypt in many different languages and also like names that it used to be called like Black Land or I don't know, Egyptaland. I've never heard of that but it must have been a thing at some point. With every architectural intricacy you can tell that it's been in the making for over 20 years. The lighting is gorgeous, the hieroglyphics are everywhere and it feels half futuristic, half ancient at the same time. I guess it is the world's largest museum dedicated to a single civilization. Probably because it's opening day it is extremely crowded in here. The first artifact you notice when you walk in is this 3,200 year old statue of King Ramesses II. Apparently the missing nose doesn't have to do with time or damage but in ancient Egypt breaking the king's nose meant taking away the statue's breath or its spirit. So basically kind of a way to silence the king's power even till today. Oh the details on all of these, all the hieroglyphics are insane. Before even checking out really any of the exhibits we're kind of hungry so we're gonna see what the restaurants offer here. Okay we're in the restaurant complex area and I heard Zuba is really good over here. Falafel Hameya sandwich with tahini and this one is street hawawishi sandwich with tahini. Oh my god the inside is insanely green. Wow this is the best falafel I've had here. That was delicious but now time to actually explore the museum so I guess it's organized into four floors going from the oldest part of the civilization and then the top will be the newest and it looks like right here there is this giant stairway and also a ramp on the side and we have these statues of the kings maybe pharaohs here and they give like a good amount of information about who they were, their families, whatever. I also love that we have a queen here amongst all these kings she's worshiping some gods, female representation. It's also pretty cool just walking through these columns and statues of the kings and sphinxes and queens. As you can see everyone is just walking up and down and through all the different steps making it a really immersive experience. Today is the day I'm learning the meaning of the sphinx which is the head of the king with the body of the lion to show the strength of the lion kind of representing or matching that of the strength of the king. As I was walking up the staircase one thing about the hieroglyphics really stood out. They all kind of look the same and I guess that's on purpose. They were seen as the language of the gods so scribes had to copy them perfectly. They had quicker scripts for everyday writing but the hieroglyphics stayed the same for thousands of years. Along the staircase there are dozens of these massive statues that are watching over every step and it's pretty wild to think that they were carved thousands of years ago and they're still standing here super well preserved and detailed somehow. In short I think this part you can just really appreciate how vast the entirety of ancient Egypt is. And finally when you finish the staircase of all that stuff there's a really beautiful view of the pyramids. All right so how does this work? Basically four levels and there are like three sections on each floor. Society, kingship, and beliefs. This first gallery is kind of like Egypt's origin story before the pyramids and before the grand temples. You see these early tools, early signs of inscription, early wall paintings that hint at what was coming. It's pretty wild to think how these simple beginnings eventually led to one of the longest and most powerful civilizations in history. We got some dudes making beer and bread here and over here on this floor there's an incredibly cool display of a small section of modern Egypt. So it basically is showing the sites of parts of the early civilization like life along the Nile River and then how it went from hunter-gatherer to a more settled society. To complement the super super old stuff there are a bunch of digital displays throughout the museum. I really like these immersive animations that show both bigger concepts like pyramid building but also just parts of everyday life. This museum is genuinely so massive. We just spent an hour and a half exploring just the staircase and the first gallery of I think 12 galleries. So we're probably going to need to speed up unless we want to spend 11 hours here which wouldn't even be possible. Look at this massive tomb structure of one of the queens. Wouldn't it be nice to die in something like this? Wow more beautiful tombs. A lot of gallery two dives into how obsessed the ancient Egyptians were with the afterlife. Everything here like the tombs, the carvings, the offerings are about making sure life didn't just end with death but continued somewhere else. Their burial chambers were so cool so I guess there were temples made for the gods and then the pyramids were made for the kings and queens and then there were the burial tombs for the elite. Okay now made it to the fourth gallery and this one has a lot more colossal statues which I guess became more of a thing in dynasty 12. Galleries three and four went deeper into this obsession with the afterlife that ancient Egypt had. Showcasing not only intricately detailed coffins and tombs but also the rituals and symbols they believed would carry someone into eternity. I think we're now getting into the mummy part. Here they have some masks, mummy masks of men because putting it over the head would give a more natural appearance to the dead body. Look at this giant head. Apparently that king set up huge statues of himself all over the country. What an ego. And in this part gallery five it's showing different ideas of how kingship might have been run in the middle kingdom. A lot of gallery five and gallery six too is all about the kings and pharaohs how they presented themselves as both human and divine. You can really feel how the image the representation of who they were and the power they had were basically the same thing here. Here they have a ton of these old papyrus documents. Some of them are like religious or scientific or literary texts but most of them are just ordinary thoughts of ordinary people. So I kind of fell off filming the artifacts themselves after gallery six. Not gonna lie there's just a lot of ancient Egypt to take in. Gallery seven through twelve cover the later dynasties from the height of the new kingdom to the roman times. You see new styles, new influences but the same obsession with the afterlife. Anyways let's skip to what many consider the highlight of the Grand Egyptian Museum. Okay this last part here is the King Tut gallery which I think was one of the final finishing touches after the soft opening of the museum and just by walking into it it is insane. Also I really appreciate the lighting in here it's like nothing I've ever walked through before. For the very first time the complete collection of King Tut's treasures over 5,000 artifacts are all displayed in one place whereas before there were only 1,800 pieces on display. For someone who ascended to the throne at age nine he seemed to have had a pretty luxurious life. Just look at these luxury sandals, jewelry, chairs, footstools, storage vessels, massive shrines and so much more. Ooh a cinema. I guess you can watch a movie in here. And inside too. I feel like I keep saying this but the detail on all of this is just next level. Assessing by the crowds here I think this part is the equivalent of the Mona Lisa of the Grand Egyptian Museum. This golden mask is probably the most famous artifact in all of ancient Egypt but beyond all this history I was curious how others were experiencing the place so I started chatting with a few people to see what they thought. What do you think about the museum? It was great yeah like you hear that the greatest museum in the world in your country and we have most of the artifacts in the world so it was great to hear that the greatest museum or the biggest museum in the world is here in Egypt. What do you think was the biggest challenge to open it? I think to collect all these parts from all over Egypt I think that's really challenging. It's really hard and there's a lot of things from Rome and Greek. Did you come to Egypt for the museum? No. The museum we recently knew about the new inauguration of this museum but we came for the pyramids yeah it's my dream of my life so. Wow and you're from? Argentina from Mendoza. What do you think is like the most impressive part of the museum? We have to look at the Tutankhamen part but the part of the boats is really shocking for us. Age of that boat did the museum live up to the hype do you think? Yeah so much yeah cool to the rooftop. So the King Tut part of the museum is the last part of the museum and I didn't think I'd spend that long at the museum but it really pulls you in it's very modern it's very clean so much detail it's pretty overwhelming but at the same time it has me thinking well first of all how much of life they spent preparing towards the afterlife is pretty crazy and secondly it also makes me want to see a lot more of the country. I guess there's just a lot a lot to see in Egypt and yeah not an average museum so I would definitely recommend it. Also gotta say just tested the bathroom on the way out and it's quite bougie. After a full day or what felt like a full day of exploring the museum by just raw dogging it here are some of my thoughts. Beyond the mystery and mystique of ancient Egypt it's really crazy to me how much they embraced the inevitability of death so much so that they built their lives around it. Not seeing it as something sad but a natural part of life it feels like one of the most human things there is. Also you would probably need 10 visits to really see everything you want to see inside the museum but after one my brain was already full as was my camera roll.