As a traveler, I have to say that while a lot has been taken, or we could say moved to other museums around the globe, like the Rosetta Stone and the statues of Ramesses II at the British Museum in London, the Statue of Akhenaten, sarcophagi, papyri, and jewelry at the Louvre in Paris, the Bust of Queen Nefertiti in the Berlin Museum, the Temple of Dendur (the whole stone temple), tomb paintings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and many others, it’s really uplifting to see that the Egyptian government has managed to keep so many more artifacts in their own museums.
For instance, the Temple of Dendur was completely moved from its original location to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA, to acknowledge the USA’s contribution to UNESCO in preserving ancient Egypt monuments from the floodwaters of the Aswan Dam.
Today I am one of the fortunates to have visited the Grand Egyptian museum in Cairo near the Pyramids of Giza.
The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), located near the Giza Pyramids, houses over 100,000 ancient Egyptian artifacts spanning from the Predynastic Period to Roman Egypt. Tourists gain immersive knowledge of pharaonic history through its chronological galleries, featuring the complete Tutankhamun collection of 5,398 items, colossal statues like Ramesses II, and royal mummies with medical reconstructions.
Visitors explore 12 main halls covering 5,000 years, including royal statues, temple art, deities, and funerary items like sarcophagi. Highlights include holographic tomb recreations and daily life objects with multilingual touchscreens for context.
Tickets for the Grand Egyptian Museum can be purchased online in advance via the official website visit-gem.com or at the museum’s on-site ticket counter after security.
There are a ton of objects and statues from ancient Egypt, but I’m just going to focus on the huge statues of well-known kings, along with the reliefs, tombs, and temples that tourists usually see when they visit to learn about ancient Egypt.
Concept of cartouche and nome.
In ancient Egypt, a nome was an administrative province. Upper Egypt had 22 nomes, while Lower Egypt had 20. Each nome had its own animal symbol, like the rabbit shown here. They are typically depicted sitting on a pole. Every nome has a local god, a capital city, and an economic role, such as grain, stone, or cattle, etc. In temple art, nomes are frequently represented as human figures carrying offerings, as illustrated in this temple image.It’s important to note that a nome is not a cartouche.
A cartouche is an elongated oval frame that surrounds a king’s name, tied at the bottom as shown below. It magically protects the king’s name and identifies the pharaoh. A cartouche never represents a province.
Next let us analyse a few reliefs carved on stones to understand Egyptian ancient culture and art.
Concept of ordinary man and king in the relief carvings
Fig. 5—These guys are the Eternal offering-bearers. They’re not your average dudes since they’ve got hieroglyphs on their heads and no nome. They’re lined up next to a replica figure that represents the ongoing eternal offerings. And just to clarify, they’re not kings either because there’s no beard or cartouche sign on their heads.
Fig. 6—This is just a regular person, not a deity. He’s sitting peacefully on a chair, holding a lotus flower or some kind of ritual object. Lotus symbolizes rebirth, renewal, and resurrection. The message is: “I am reborn and living in the afterlife.” He’s an ordinary individual since there’s no cartouche, no fake royal beard, and no crowns (white, red, or double). No nemes headdress either.
Let us also start understanding ancient egyptian gods and how to identify them.
Concept of Tomb
The ancient Egyptians believed that life after death required a dead body; building a tomb and placing decorated objects to be buried with them showed an individual’s social standing and maintained their existence in the afterlife. A group of rituals performed on the body before, during, and even after the funeral were recorded in tomb decorations, on shrines, and inside coffins. These were designed to enable the deceased to live again in the other world. The walls are covered with protective funerary spells, including offering formulas, prayers to gods, and names and titles of the deceased. Protect the body, soul, and name for eternity. Gods include Osiris (god of the afterlife), Anubis (mummification and protection), and Isis & Nephthys (divine mourners). It ensured the deceased could rejoin their ka, be justified like Osiris, and live forever in the afterlife. Egyptians believe that the human body has different layers—like name, Ka, Ba, etc. A stone sarcophagus protects name, identity, The outer wooden coffin protects Ka. The inner anthropoid coffin protects Ba. Mummy wrappings protect the body.
Amulets protect Akh transformation.
The worldwide star attraction in GEM is Tutankhamun’s tomb, mask and his burial materials. Lets have a look at it though due to huge crowd inside, not sure I am able to see all his shrine boxes, coffins, stone sarcofagus etc. I am enumerating only what I could see through the crowd.
Golden Burial Mask- Tutankhamun (1332–1323 BC) was a boy king of 18th dynasty of Old Kingdom.
In Tutankhamun gallery we can see Tutankhamun’s actual funerary mask, made of solid gold and inlaid semi-precious stones, originally placed over the boy king’s head and shoulders in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. It is one of the most iconic and famous ancient Egyptian objects in the world and part of the tomb assemblage discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.
Funerary beds of Tutankhamun -This object is one of Tutankhamun’s funerary beds (burial bier). Tutankhamun’s tomb contained three ritual beds, each associated with rebirth and protection in the afterlife.
There was so much crowd in this gallery, that other two beds I could not assure of seeing.
They were used during: Mummification rituals, opening of the Mouth ceremony, symbolic placement of the king before burial.
Outermost shrine box of Tutankhamun – one of the wooden but gold gilded shrines of Tutankhamun. Inside this was stone sarcofagus. The sequence was like this Shrines → stone Sarcophagus → Coffins → Mummy
Tutankhamun’s innermost coffin — the solid gold human form coffin that directly held his mummy. This 110 kg gold. We can see crossed arms holding the crook and flail indicating kingship and Osiris. The mummy, wrapped in linen, with the golden mask was inside this exactly.
The sequence of shrines, sarcofagus and coffins is a bit complex and only experts can tell the correct. But more or less it is Four gilded wooden shrines – stone sarcophagus – outer gilded wooden coffin-Middle gilded wooden coffin – gold coffin- mummy.
Besides the Tutemkhanum mask and his tombs, the other amazing artifact is the two boats that were found buried in pits close to Khufu’s pyramid. They were uncovered in 1954 and date back around 4,500 years to Egypt’s Old Kingdom.
At first glance, you can’t help but be amazed, with jaws dropping, eyes wide, and your heart almost refusing to believe they are the real deal. But after digging deeper with our guide and some online research, I learned that the first boat is indeed original, while the second one is a reconstruction made from broken pieces found in the pit. So, both boats are authentic ancient vessels, not modern replicas.
The boats were buried next to pyramids for religious, symbolic, and practical afterlife beliefs in ancient Egypt. The dead king needed a real boat to join this eternal journey to Ra.
What these type of figures signify
Fig 14 – This is found in the tomb of a high official Sneferu-inishetep of 14th dynasty.
A long line of identical male figures All walking in the same direction
Carrying offerings (food, goods, and ritual items), meaning these are servants or estate workers, they represent the permanent supply of goods. Here repetition means eternity and abundance.
Down below we see boats with oars, which symbolize Nile and show the travel of the deceased to the sun god (Ra). Signifies travel life, as the Nile is a lifeline to the afterlife.
Fig. 15—This scene is a funerary procession from an Old Kingdom tomb wall painting, showing offering bearers and attendants bringing goods for the tomb owner in the afterlife. Let me explain it carefully, as this type of scene is very important in Egyptian art.
The figures are ordinary human attendants, not gods or priests, as they have no divine crowns or animal heads. They are moving towards the tomb now. Egyptians believed images could become real in the afterlife. These reliefs belong to Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC).
Fig. 16—This is a ritual procession carrying a sacred ceremonial staff with the emblem of a ram. The people carrying are priests, as they have shaven heads. The priests want to show that God moves with us to bless people, land, and king. It symbolizes the god’s presence, the power of the priesthood, and the central role of religion in Egyptian public life.
Just to explain more, the ram manifests Amun, the falcon is a form of Horus, the cow is a form of Hathor, and the crocodile is a form of Sobek. We see a lot of the ram statues line the processional avenue in front of the First Pylon of Karnak Temple. They are ram-headed sphinxes, a lion’s body with a ram’s head. These rams represent Amun, specifically Amun-Ra of Karnak.
The ram symbolizes creation power, fertility, life-giving energy, and royal protection. The lion body represents the king and power, and the ram represents the divine power of Amun. These were built by Amenhotep III and Ramesses II.
Note that Luxor has human-headed sphinxes because Luxor Temple represents the living, human kingship of the pharaoh, not the hidden cosmic god alone. The difference between Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple is that Karnak Temple is a cult temple of Amun, while Luxor Temple boasts of kingship and renewal, so we can call it a mortuary temple. Though Pharaoh did not differentiate between cult and mortuary temples.
Fig. 17—Writing boards—Plastered writing boards were used for notes and school exercises. These examples show a model letter, parts of a story copied from a teacher and lists of names
Fig. 18—The below shrine or sanctuary was found in the Great Amun temple in Tanis in the delta of the Nile. This shows Ramesses II in the form of the god Khepri (a regional god in the Lower Egypt Nile Delta). The other gods seated with him are Atum and Atum Re. It was carved from a single block of sandstone. The sanctuary is covered in scenes of Ramesses offering to gods, including a form of Horus called Horemakhet, meaning “Horus in the Horizon.”
The ancient Egyptians believed the king was divine. People thought the gods chose him to rule Egypt. On the right outer wall, there are large hieroglyphs; these spell the royal titles and name of Ramesses. And on the left wall, Ramesses II is standing, offering gifts to the gods. The sanctuary once stood along a processional road. During festivals, it likely held a sacred statue. Priests would stop here to honor the gods.
In Lower Egypt, there were a few regional gods that kings worshipped to assert their power in the area. These gods included God Anath, a fierce warrior and protector of the pharaoh, primarily worshipped in the Nile Delta of lower Egypt; Atum, the creator god of Heliopolis, a city located in Lower Egypt, close to modern-day Cairo (in the Matariya area today); God Shu, the god of air and sunlight, who is the son of Atum; and Tatenen, who symbolizes the first land that emerged from the chaotic waters. This museum has tons of huge statues of various kings from both ancient and modern dynasties, along with obelisks, pylon gates, and sphinxes. They really help to illustrate what ancient Egypt was like. Here, I’m just highlighting a few famous kings whose tombs and temples we visited during our trip.
Fig. 19- Statue of King Akhenaten- This head is from one of several colossal statues that were originally placed in front of a temple for the sun god, Aten. They were carved early in the reign of King Akhenaten, Dynasty 18, New Kingdom. His narrow almond-shaped eyes and long face show the Amarna artistic style, which was unique to this time in Egyptian history. The Amarna period was a time when King Akhenaten declared only the sun (Ra) as the supreme god. On top of the nemes headdress are four carved ostrich feathers, which showed Akhenaten’s connection with Shu, the god of the air.
Fig. 20—Colossal The statue of Queen Hatshepsut, a New Kingdom queen, was first regent and then joint ruler with her nephew, King Thutmose III. It is one of five statues showing her mortuary cult temple at Thebes (Luxor), where her worshipping the gods with hands flat on her knees is emphasized. Earlier statues show a feminine chin and slight smile, but the broad face, narrow chin, and slanted eyes suggest this statue is in a full kingly style from late in her reign. This statue is from the Mortuary Cult Temple of Hatshepsut, Deir el-Bahri, Thebes (Luxor), which we saw on this trip.
Fig. 21—Seated Statue of King Amenhotep III, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, was one of the most powerful and wealthy rulers of Dynasty 18. He built or rebuilt many temples and palaces in the country, and many sculptures and other artifacts from this period show excellent artistic skill. Over 100 life-sized and larger statues of him date from his reign. This statue might have been produced to celebrate one of his royal jubilees. This statue is from the Mortuary Cult Temple of Amenhotep III, Kom el-Hetan, Thebes (Luxor).
Fig. 22—Seated Statue of King Thutmose III, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18. For the first twenty-two years of his reign, Thutmose III ruled with Hatshepsut, his stepmother and aunt. Here he sits on a royal throne with naked feet on top of nine bows symbolizing all the enemies of Egypt that he had trampled on. This statue is from the Karnak Temple, Thebes (Luxor).
In this tour of Egypt the second museum we covered in Cairo is ‘National museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC). The main starer achievement of landmark of this museum is the mummified bodies of almost all New kingdom pharaos. That is I think a unique place to visit for entire world. It is unbelievable to see the mummies. In forst place it seems fake as we can not or is impossible to believe that we can see dead bodies, hair and nails of the humans who died 3600-3200 years ago.
Photography is not allowed in mummy section of museum. Entry fee to museum is Egyptian pound 450 (Rs.900).
The oldest displayed mummy among the royal collection is generally considered to be that of King Seqenenre Taa II, who is the first mummy visitors see in the Royal Mummies Hall and dates from the 17th Dynasty of ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom (around mid-1500s BC. Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, Amenhotep I, Thutmose II, Amenhotep III, Queen Hatshepsut and Ramesses II are few among 20 mummies.
The New Kingdom royal mummies are amongst the finest mummies ever made. Although most of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were robbed, many of their mummies survived because priests moved them to a tomb hidden high in the nearby cliffs of Deir el-Bahari in the 10th century BC. Thieves discovered the tomb in the late 19th century AD and started selling objects from it. In 1881, the Antiquities Service found the thieves, rescued the mummies, their coffins, and funerary objects, and brought them to Cairo, where they were displayed and studied.
Amenhotep II mummy was the one which was found its its tomb in valley of kings. In same tomb the mummies along with goods of Merenptah, Thutmose IV, Seti II, Ramesses IV, V, and VI were hidden by priests to safeguard from thieves.
Overall NMEC is a must visit museum and without visiting the ancient mummies, the trip to visit is not complete.
Epilogue
It’s really exciting to see that even though a lot of artifacts have been taken from Egypt to various museums around the world, there’s still plenty left in the homeland of Ancient Egypt, known for its fame, power, and wonders. During this trip, I checked out the Grand Egyptian Museum and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, and it was super satisfying for me as an explorer and a history-loving traveler.
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