Cairo ¨C Egypt officially opened on Saturday the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), a long-awaited, billion-dollar showcase of pharaonic grandeur that Cairo hopes will revive tourism and boost its battered economy.
¡°Today, as we celebrate together the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, we are writing a new chapter in the history of the present and the future,¡± Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi told a gathering of dignitaries, sitting in the museum¡¯s square.
Spanning half a million square meters, the museum houses around 100,000 artifacts ¡ª half of them on display ¡ª dating back more than six millennia.
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