The Grand Egyptian Museum opens in Cairo
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The museum displays, for the first time, the entire contents of Tutankhamun's tomb, along with some 100,000 artefacts covering seven millennia of the country's history. We hear from the renowned Egyptologist Dr Zahi Hawass, a former Egyptian minister and one of the prime movers behind the museum.
Also in the programme, the incumbent president of Tanzania has been declared the official winner of controversial national elections, after days of violence; the sixty-something British man who is running the equivalent of 200 marathons in 200 days; and an interview with the writer Kiran Desai, whose latest novel, her first in almost twenty years, is on the shortlist of the Booker Prize.
(Photo: Final preparations ahead of the opening of Grand Egyptian Museum, Giza, Egypt - 01 Nov 2025; Credit: MOHAMED HOSSAM/EPA/Shutterstock)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.8 | Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.1 | Coming to you live from London, I'm James Kamara Sami. |
| 0:15.3 | As a rule, the opening of a new museum would not make its way to the top of the international news agenda. |
| 0:21.9 | But the fact that we are beginning the programme with the grand opening of a billion-dollar museum |
| 0:26.6 | gives you an idea of the riches contained within it. |
| 0:29.6 | As does the presence of dozens of world leaders at the official opening ceremony in a few |
| 0:33.8 | hours' time for the Grand Egyptian Museum just outside Cairo. |
| 0:38.3 | It's located near the Pyramids of Giza, and it took roughly the same time to build as it thought they did. |
| 0:44.8 | The building contains artefacts from seven millennia of Egypt's history, |
| 0:48.3 | but its main highlight is the first ever display of the entire contents of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb, |
| 0:54.7 | a century after its discovery by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter. |
| 0:59.2 | From Cairo, here's our BBC Middle East correspondent Yoland Nell. |
| 1:04.8 | Not far from where tourists flock to see one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, |
| 1:10.7 | Egypt is officially opening a cultural |
| 1:12.9 | highlight of the modern age. The vast Grand Egyptian Museum is one of the biggest museums globally, |
| 1:19.5 | and it's packed with 100,000 artefacts. It's expected to bring millions more tourists, and guide |
| 1:26.7 | Ahmed Sadiq is in no doubt about what's about |
| 1:29.3 | to become the main highlight. |
| 1:31.7 | When the Tutankamun collection opens, can you imagine, the whole world will come back |
| 1:38.5 | and come back many times because this is an iconic fairer, the most famous king of all antiquity and the most intact tomb. |
| 1:48.0 | Visitors have already been able to go to most other galleries at the museum since last year. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.