Sources in the Grand Egyptian Museum of Al-Jazeera Net revealed that artifacts were broken due to the unprofessional transfer of statues to the Grand Museum in Giza, including statues of kings who ruled ancient Egypt and their wives.
Private photos obtained by Al-Jazeera Net showed a crack separating the head of a statue from its body, and that crack occurred when the statue was placed on the crane in a wrong way, so the head was separated from the body, according to the same sources.
The Grand Egyptian Museum is a huge project planned for about 15 years, and its construction was hampered by financing obstacles, and its construction began years ago, to be classified as the largest museum of ancient Egyptian civilization in the world.
Egypt has launched a campaign to finance the project, whose initial cost was estimated at $ 550 million, to which Japan will contribute $ 300 million as a soft loan.
The first attempt to collect the money needed to build this gigantic edifice was represented in the new exhibition of Egyptian antiquities at the Museum of Art in Los Angeles, USA, under the slogan "Tutankhamun and the Pharaonic Golden Age."
The statue, which was broken at the neck, is undergoing restoration at its site in the New Egyptian Museum (Al-Jazeera)
The government assigned private companies a number of tasks related to the design and construction of the new museum located west of Giza, and the torrential rains last year exposed the existence of many design gaps that caused rain to leak out from the roof that is supposed to be protected against environmental factors, and the water exploded from the museum floor as the level rose in it. .
The museum official, Major General Atef Moftah, intervened to change its façade after discovering shapes designed to resemble the Star of David, the most famous Jewish symbol, and the implementation of the Grand Egyptian Museum façade cost about $ 20 million with Egyptian ores.
Major General Moftah, in a press statement, responded to questions about the secret of changing the façade by saying that the facade had not been changed, but its original design was about 17 meters away, and it was not considered a façade in the correct sense, rather it was a billboard, explaining that the main façade of the museum was behind that painting. And it had some symbols and formations that claim that the pyramid builders were not Egyptian and had controversial symbols.
Upon its opening, the museum will display more than 50,000 artifacts, including the King Tutankhamun collection, which will be fully displayed for the first time in front of visitors.
The Grand Egyptian Museum project is divided into 3 phases. The first and second phase cost $ 200 million with 100% Egyptian financing. As for the third phase, which is the main project, it cost nearly $ 850 million.
The museum will contain about 100 artifacts from different eras that Egypt went through in the pre-Arab conquest stage.
The deadline for the museum’s opening has not yet been set, but it will be within the year 2021, according to separate statements by project officials at the Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism.
The grand museum is located near the plateau of the pyramids of Giza, and is being built to be the largest museum in the world of ancient Egyptian antiquities, with a capacity of 15,000 visitors per day.
The museum is designed to include service, commercial and recreational buildings, a restoration center, and a museum garden of plants and trees known to ancient Egypt, as part of plans to stimulate tourism.