The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) received 13 huge artefacts from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir on Monday morning in preparation for the former’s opening, according to General Supervisor of the GEM project and the surrounding area Atef Moftah.
Al-Tayeb Abbas, Assistant Minister of Tourism and Antiquities for Archaeological Affairs at the GEM, explained that among the pieces that were transferred to the museum on Monday are statues of the gods Amun and Mut, a pink granite column of King Ramses II, in addition to a limestone statue of the goddess Isis carrying her child Horus, and a large painting of the limestone of King Amenemhat I, as well as a number of other large and inscribed paintings.
Abbas added that all the artefacts were documented before the transfer process and a detailed status report was prepared for each piece, pointing out that the necessary restoration and maintenance work will begin immediately.
Issa Zeidan, the Executive Director of the Restoration and Transfer of Antiquities at the GEM, said that the transfer process that took place on Monday is one of the most delicate and complex transfers that the museum has witnessed in recent times due to the significant size of the transferred pieces, especially the statues of the gods Amun and Mut, which are about 4.15 m, 186 cm wide, and 169 cm deep, are required a careful study of the itinerary of the transportation process and the roads passing through it before implementation in order to remove and avoid any obstacles in the way due to the height of the statue.
It should be noted that this statue was assembled on a metal structure in the late 1990s by a German archaeological mission headed by Horig Surzian.
