How an Italian's slight sparked the idea for the Grand Egyptian Museum - Salam
As-salamu alaykum. Farouq Hosny likes to tell the surprising story of how the Grand Egyptian Museum began more than thirty years ago.
He says the thought came after a well-known Italian publisher and designer, Franco Maria Ricci, insulted Cairo's 123-year-old Museum of Egyptian Antiquities by calling it a “storage warehouse” during a chat in Paris.
“To my surprise, the anger I felt made me tell him that we would build the world's biggest museum in Egypt,” Mr Hosny, who was Egypt's culture minister from 1987 to 2011, recalls.
“That was in 1992, and at that time we weren’t building or even thinking about such a thing. But I blurted it out because I was so upset. He then asked where it would be, and I said it would be near the pyramids.”
That offhand reply, says the 87-year-old, became the seed for the $1.2 billion Grand Egyptian Museum, which is now set to open with a grand ceremony attended by many world leaders.
But the remark wasn’t wholly out of the blue. Mr Hosny, also a respected abstract painter, had long been uneasy about how Egypt’s ancient treasures were displayed. “I always felt something was missing. The old Egyptian museum in Tahrir is a beautiful building with wonderful artefacts, but every time I left I felt down and drained. It felt like our civilisation wasn’t shown the respect it deserved,” he explains of the colonial-era museum housing over 100,000 items. “I didn’t know what to do - perhaps I needed that flare of anger from a stranger’s insult to push me into action.”
Mr Ricci took the joke seriously and flew to Cairo the next week to talk. They visited the desert on Cairo’s western edge and picked a likely site, though it turned out the air force had property there. Later, Mr Hosny went back with Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and they found a raised spot with sweeping views of the Giza Pyramids. That is where the Grand Egyptian Museum now stands.
Mr Ricci, who died in 2020, was friends with Italy’s then-prime minister Giulio Andreotti and persuaded him to give Egypt $5 million for a feasibility study. Four years later the complete eight-volume study was ready, covering effects like wind, earthquakes, rain and sun.
“To realise your dreams is like a crown to wear,” Mr Hosny says, speaking at his yet-to-open art museum that will display his work and his private collection of European contemporaries’ paintings and sculptures.
With a shock of silver hair, his signature scarf and handkerchief, the Alexandrian artist and former minister still shows a deep love of art despite the passage of time and life’s ups and downs. In his 24 years as culture minister under the late President Hosni Mubarak, he championed Egypt’s ancient heritage while never abandoning his passion for painting. “Art is not secondary to my soul,” he insists.
What moves him most about pharaonic artefacts is their artistic power. “As an artist, I always felt pharaonic pieces steer my feelings. Every time I visited the treasures in Luxor I returned to Cairo recharged. They awaken something grand inside me. Every time I stand before them I’m amazed as if I’m seeing them anew.”
Mr Hosny says his pride in the Grand Egyptian Museum doesn’t eclipse his satisfaction at helping establish many small and mid-sized museums across the country during his tenure - the Museum of Civilisations in Cairo, the Mosaics Museum in Alexandria, the Textiles Museum in the capital, and the Embalmment Museum in Luxor among them.
“It was never about big or small,” he says of his own museum in Zamalek. “This one is small but full of energy and vision.” He prefers it to be called by the name he chose: The Small Museum.
May Allah bless efforts that preserve and honour our heritage.
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