How incredible King Tutankhamen collection is being restored for new Egyptian museum
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 US$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.
Visitors walk next to a 3,200-year-old colossal pink-granite statue of King Ramses II at the entrance of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Egypt, on February 7, 2025, ahead of the museum's planned opening later in the year. Photo: AFP
The museum's opening has faced delays over the years for various reasons, ranging from political upheaval to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
08-07-2025
- South China Morning Post
How incredible King Tutankhamen collection is being restored for new Egyptian museum
As a teenager, Eid Mertah would pore over books about King Tutankhamen, 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 US$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. Visitors walk next to a 3,200-year-old colossal pink-granite statue of King Ramses II at the entrance of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Egypt, on February 7, 2025, ahead of the museum's planned opening later in the year. Photo: AFP The museum's opening has faced delays over the years for various reasons, ranging from political upheaval to the Covid-19 pandemic.
South China Morning Post
04-07-2025
- South China Morning Post
Tools unearthed in China are first evidence of East Asia's ‘Wood Age'
The earliest tools used by humans were made of stone , followed by bronze , then iron, and finally steel. But was there a 'Wood Age'? This question has been difficult to answer as wood decomposes easily, leaving behind little evidence of ancient wooden tools – especially in East Asia. However, a study published in the top journal Science on Friday suggests that wooden tools were widely used in southwest China 300,000 years ago. These wooden tools, unearthed during excavations in 2015 and 2018, were the first ever found at a Palaeolithic – or early Stone Age – site in East Asia. The Palaeolithic age spans from around 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago. Corresponding author Gao Xing, of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told state news agency China News Service that the dozens of wooden artefacts unearthed at the Gantangqing site in Yunnan province represented a 'world-class archaeological discovery'. Gantangqing is situated at the southern edge of Fuxian Lake, near Yunnan's provincial capital, Kunming. Excavations at the site uncovered many relics, earning Gantangqing a place among China's top 10 archaeological discoveries in 2015. 'This discovery fills a gap in the study of Chinese Palaeolithic wooden tools,' said Liu Jianhui of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in a paper in 2015. Liu is first author of the most recent study and led the second excavation at Gantangqing in 2018.
South China Morning Post
13-06-2025
- South China Morning Post
Study suggests pigs may have been domesticated in China as early as Neolithic period
Research by archaeologists from Chinese and US institutes suggests that pigs were already domesticated in southern China around 8,000 years ago. Advertisement The team, which included researchers from Dartmouth College and the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, analysed two early Neolithic sites in the province's Yangtze Delta region. The study – published on June 9 in the prestigious international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – 'is the first to find that pigs were eating humans' cooked foods and waste', according to a Dartmouth College press release. The findings suggested the domestication process of Sus scrofa – the wild boar – occurred alongside the development of rice cultivation and sedentary lifestyles in ancient society around 8,000 years ago in the southern region of China, the archaeologists said. The conventional view – as outlined, for instance, in a 2017 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports, part of the Nature Portfolio – is that pigs were first domesticated in the Near East – part of what is now called the Middle East. Advertisement According to the 2017 study, pigs were introduced to northern Europe from the region now called the Middle East around 4500 BC, a development that later facilitated the domestication of European wild boars.
