CAIRO: As a teenager, Eid Mertah would pore over books about King Tutankhamun, tracing hieroglyphs and dreaming of holding the boy pharaoh’s golden mask in his hands.

Years later, the Egyptian conservator found himself gently brushing centuries-old dust off one of Tut’s gilded ceremonial shrines — a piece he had only seen in textbooks.

“I studied archaeology because of Tut,” Mertah, 36, said. “It was my dream to work on his treasures — and that dream came true.” Mertah is one of more than 150 conservators and 100 archaeologists who have laboured quietly for over a decade to restore thousands of artefacts ahead of the long-awaited opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) — a $1 billion project on the edge of the Giza Plateau.

Originally slated for July 3, the launch has once again been postponed — now expected in the final months of the year — due to regional security concerns. The museum’s opening has faced delays over the years for various reasons, ranging from political upheaval to the Covid-19 pandemic. But when it finally opens, the GEM will be the world’s largest archaeological museum devoted to a single civilisation.

It will house more than 100,000 artefacts, with over half on public display, and will include a unique feature: a live conservation lab. From behind glass walls, visitors will be able to watch in real time as experts work over the next three years to restore a 4,500-year-old boat buried near the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu and intended to ferry his soul across the sky with the sun god Ra.

But the star of the museum remains King Tut’s collection of more than 5,000 objects — many to be displayed together for the first time.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2025