Glory on Display, Ruin Outside: Egypt Opens the Grand Museum
Egypt Security Sector Report
While fireworks lit the sky above Giza for the Grand Egyptian Museum’s long-delayed opening, Israel’s energy minister quietly refused to sign the US$35 billion Leviathan export deal to Egypt. At home, repression remains routine: Gaza solidarity detainees still behind bars, police killings in Aswan, sectarian expulsions in Minya. The army expands its presence in the workplace and classroom alike, as debt climbs and officials continue to speak of “resilience.” A portrait of a state locked in performance—assertive abroad, brittle within.
Mummies for the Living: How Sisi’s Regime Turned the Pharaohs into Propaganda
For the Sisi regime, the pharaohs never really died. They were resurrected again under floodlights and fireworks as the Grand Egyptian Museum finally opened its gates in Giza on 1 November. After two decades of delays, billions of pounds, and endless promises, the spectacle unfolded exactly as the regime had planned: a pageant of greatness staged to proclaim that Egypt’s past still speaks, and it speaks for Sisi.
By the time the president and his wife arrived at the site on Saturday evening, the entire operation had taken on the character of a coronation. Streets around the pyramids were sealed off. Screens were set up in public squares. The state declared a holiday so that citizens could stay home and watch. Ahram Online reported that thirty-nine heads of state and seventy-nine delegations attended, while TikTok livestreamed the ceremony in partnership with the state’s media conglomerate. The production was handled by the advertising duo Mohamed al-Saadi and Ihab Gohar of MediaHub, the same team behind the 2021 royal mummies parade that had carried embalmed kings through Cairo like obedient ghosts.
This time, the ghosts were made to preside over the living. Actors in ancient costumes marched before the pyramids and the Sphinx while orchestras played and sopranos sang in Nubian and Arabic. Fireworks flared above Giza. Cameras lingered on Sisi’s solemn face as he delivered a sermon disguised as a speech. Egypt, he said, was the oldest nation known to history, the cradle of civilization, the birthplace of art and writing. “Today,” he announced, “we are writing a new chapter in the history of the present and the future.” It was an incantation rather than a statement, a way to fuse past and present into one eternal regime.
The museum was presented not only as a cultural milestone but as a moral one. It was described as proof that Egypt’s destiny is greatness, and that the current ruler is merely fulfilling what the ancients began. The president gifted world leaders miniature granite replicas of the museum to commemorate the “landmark occasion.” His ministers repeated the phrase “Egypt’s gift to the world,” which had become the event’s slogan. Even mobile networks displayed the message “Egyptian and proud” in place of their names. The entire nation was drafted into a single act of self-admiration.
Seated among the foreign dignitaries were some of the most notorious faces of Egypt’s crony capitalism—men once branded as symbols of the Mubarak-era rot. Hisham Talaat Mostafa, the convicted murderer and property tycoon, sat beside steel magnate Ahmed Ezz, the regime’s former monopolist, and Mohamed Mansour, billionaire and financier of Britain’s Conservative Party. Their presence underscored what the spectacle truly celebrated: not cultural revival, but the rehabilitation of a disgraced elite that has survived every supposed political “new republic.” The pageant of national pride doubled as a reunion for the regime’s oligarchs, confirming that in Egypt, impunity and influence are forever intertwined.
Invitations to foreign dignitaries had been sent in velvet-lined boxes containing golden replicas of Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus. The symbolism was unsubtle. Egypt was not just opening a museum; it was rewrapping itself as a pharaonic gift for global consumption. UNESCO hailed it as a bridge between history and modernity. The prime minister called it the fulfillment of a dream. The finance minister spoke of it as an economic model. Each played a part in the same choreography, where culture replaces politics and myth replaces memory. The museum’s long and messy history of construction was sanitized into a triumphal narrative of perseverance.
The real story is less divine. The project began in the early 2000s, stumbled through financial crises and revolutions, and was revived under Sisi with Japanese loans totaling about 750 million dollars. The rest came from state coffers. The museum is now legally defined as an economic entity under the supervision of the Minister of Antiquities, empowered to generate profit, rent its halls, and run commercial ventures. Tickets were priced at LE200 for Egyptians and LE1,450 for foreigners. Heritage, once imagined as a public good, was turned into a commodity with a security perimeter.
Inside, the scale is staggering. Built on nearly half a million square meters overlooking the pyramids, the museum houses over 100,000 artifacts, including the eleven-meter statue of Ramses II that greets visitors and the full 5,400-piece collection from Tutankhamun’s tomb displayed together for the first time. A grand staircase rises six stories, lined with colossal statues and temple walls, ending in a glass wall framing the desert. It is breathtaking, and also revealing. Every architectural choice conveys an ideology of order, cleanliness, and control. The chaos of Cairo has been erased. Air is filtered, the light precise, the crowds disciplined. It is an Egypt without noise, an Egypt without Egyptians.
Nazlet al-Semman—once a busy informal tourism-service neighbourhood beside the pyramids—has been targeted for large-scale evacuation and redevelopment under the guise of “tourist infrastructure.” Vendors and horsemen who made their living guiding tourists to the pyramids were removed. Orascom, owned by billionaire Naguib Sawiris, took over management of the plateau under an agreement with the state, while the Armed Forces Engineering Authority oversaw redevelopment. What remains is a sanitized landscape where the only workers who appear are those wearing uniforms and badges. The pyramids have been converted into a backdrop for elite tourism and presidential spectacle. The people who once lived beside them have been largely erased from view.
The regime’s purpose in all this is not subtle. It uses the pharaonic past to claim continuity and sanctity. The ancient kings become stand-ins for the modern ruler, and obedience becomes tradition. In Sisi’s Egypt, heritage is not a mirror for understanding but a shield against criticism. The pharaohs are pressed into service once again, this time not to build pyramids but to lend their aura to a system that fears decay. Their silence is useful. They cannot contradict the narrative.
Yet beneath the marble and gold lies a more fragile reality. Inflation has eaten away at wages, debt service swallows the budget, and poverty spreads through the same society that is told it lives in the cradle of civilization. The grandeur of the museum cannot hide the hunger outside its gates. The fireworks that illuminated the sky above Giza only made the darkness elsewhere more visible. A government that cannot feed its people invests in spectacle instead. The museum becomes a monument to misplaced priorities.
While the regime staged its pageant, another performance unfolded online. Nationalist accounts calling themselves the Sons of Kemet flooded social media with pharaonic memes and slogans like “We are the descendants of greatness.” They mocked Sudanese and Syrian refugees, accused them of stealing jobs, and attacked critics who questioned the cost of the museum. Many posted AI-generated images of themselves as ancient royals posing inside the museum. Their message was the same as the regime’s, only cruder: Egypt belongs to the pure Egyptians, and the rest are intruders.
These digital pharaohs are not spontaneous patriots. They are the byproduct of a state narrative that glorifies civilization while encouraging xenophobia. When officials speak of protecting identity and civilization, online trolls translate that into harassment and hate. Their nationalism is racial, exclusionary, and loud. It thrives in the vacuum left by repression. In a country where politics has been criminalized, identity becomes the only safe form of passion. The Sons of Kemet wage cultural wars because no one is allowed to wage political ones.
The Grand Egyptian Museum was therefore not just an opening ceremony but a political ritual. It turned history into theater and citizens into spectators. It asked Egyptians to admire, not to question. It offered pride instead of rights. The pharaohs were resurrected to remind the living of their proper place. The entire spectacle was an attempt to transform despair into reverence. The ruler presents himself as the latest link in a divine chain, not as a politician but as an inevitability.
The irony is obvious. A regime obsessed with immortality is built on insecurity. It builds museums because it cannot build legitimacy. It lights up the sky because it cannot illuminate the future. The pharaohs believed their tombs would protect them from time. The regime believes the same. But time is undefeated. The mummies will rest longer than any president’s rule.
As the fireworks faded over Giza, the museum stood gleaming in the night, its glass walls reflecting the pyramids and the desert beyond. The state called it a gift to the world. Perhaps it is. But gifts can also be distractions. Outside those walls are the workers who built them, the families evicted for them, and the refugees insulted in their name. They are the living Egyptians the regime prefers not to see. The pharaohs have already had their turn. It is the living who deserve attention now.
Let the mummies sleep. The living have waited long enough.