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Paolo Verzone

A group of girls dressed in tartan perform a Highland dance on a grassy hill in Scotland.

The boyish face of King Tutankhamun greets visitors at the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo. This life-size model, which may have served as a mannequin to display royal robes or jewellery, is one of more than 5,000 treasures from the young pharaoh’s tomb that are being restored and prepared for display at the new Grand Egyptian Museum, planned to open in late 2022. An international team of scholars at the museum’s conservation laboratory is restoring a steady stream of artefacts from across the country.

Discovered a century ago, the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was filled with riches—including the royal mummy—unimaginable at the time. Carved into the quartzite stone sarcophagus surrounding the king’s coffins are four deities intended to protect the young pharaoh’s body.

Winged goddesses protect each corner of Tutankhamun’s stone sarcophagus—which, along with his mummy, remains in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Other Egyptian royals are known to have been buried in the valley, but their graves haven’t been located, raising a tantalizing question: Are there more tombs like Tut’s to be discovered?

A team of geneticists led by Yehia Gad (second from left) examines the mummy of an unidentified boy in the tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep II. A pioneer in the DNA analysis of ancient mummies, Gad is studying samples from King Tutankhamun and his extended family, looking for clues to their ancestral ties and genetic maladies.

Egyptologist Monica Hanna has been leading the charge against looting of ancient sites across the country, even confronting armed looters herself. She hopes the GEM will be a museum that “speaks to Egyptians, that shows them how they are descendants of this great civilization, and how they can relate to and identify with their past.”

Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, examines a tiny coffin made for a mummified shrew. “For the ancient Egyptians,” she says, “no animal was too small to be ignored, and each occupied a very particular place in the cosmos.”

When the pandemic kept most foreign archaeologists at home, Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, hired locals to carry on the work, greatly increasing the number of digs overseen by Egyptians.

Egyptologist Yasmin el Shazly spent years curating priceless antiquities, such as this bust of Tutankhamun, at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. “I used to be completely overwhelmed by these pieces,” she says. “I still feel their power.”

Today’s custodians of Egypt’s cultural heritage include Mohamed Megahed, who oversees the pyramid complex of Pharaoh Djedkare at Saqqara. The ancient burial ground has been the site of many finds in recent years.