After almost a century in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the iconic golden mask of Tutankhamun and other treasures will be moved to the new Grand Egyptian Museum near the pyramids in Giza, AFP reported.

Visitors have only a few days left to see the world-famous golden funeral mask of the boy king before it joins more than 5,000 artifacts from his tomb at GEM, a $1 billion megaproject that will open on July 3.

“Only 26 items from the Tutankhamun collection, including the golden mask and two coffins, remain here in Tahrir,” said museum director Ali Abdel Halim.

“All of them will be moved soon,” he said, without confirming a specific date for the move.

The government has not yet officially announced when and how the last artifacts will be moved.

The innermost golden coffin, a gilded coffin, a golden dagger, a cosmetic box, miniature coffins, a royal diadem, and breastplates are still on display.

Tutankhamun's treasures, registered at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo's Tahrir Square in 1934, have long been its most valuable exhibits.

But the neoclassical building—with its faded display cases, lack of air conditioning, and outdated infrastructure—now contrasts with the high-tech GEM.

Once opened, the GEM is expected to be the world's largest museum dedicated to a single civilization, with over 100,000 artifacts, more than half of which will be on public display.

In a special wing, most of Tutankhamun's treasures will be displayed together for the first time in history since British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the young pharaoh's intact tomb in 1922.

His mummy will remain in its original location in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, as it is “an important part of the archaeological site,” Egyptian officials said.

However, a virtual replica created using virtual reality technology will be on display at the GEM.

The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, a long-standing historical center of Egyptology, lost in 2021 other stars of its exhibition: 22 royal mummies, including Ramses II and Queen Hatshepsut, which were moved to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Old Cairo in a widely publicized state ceremony.

However, according to the museum's director, it still has around 170,000 artifacts, including treasures from Yuya and Tuya, the ancestors of Tutankhamun, and items from ancient Tanis, such as the golden funeral mask of King Amenemope.

A total of 32,000 artifacts have already been moved from the museum's warehouses and exhibition halls in Tahrir to the GEM.

The museum director said that the space left vacant after the Tutankhamun collection will be filled with a new exhibition “commensurate with the significance of Tutankhamun's treasures.” |BGNES