Politician Calls for End to Quota System for Grand Egyptian Musem

Earlier this month, Egyptian Member of Parliament Freddy Elbaiady criticized the Grand Egyptian Museum’s ticketing system, which sets quotas for the total number of tickets sold to foreign tourists and Egyptian nationals separately. Elbaiady’s demand came days after the museum came under fire for overcrowding. Images surfaced on social media in early November showing thousands of frustrated visitors spilling onto the nearby Giza Plateau after being denied entry. As ARTnews’s Tessa Solomon reported Friday, Ghoneim said in a televised statement that more than 27,000 tickets had been sold for the day in question—far beyond the daily limit—and pledged to reassess the policies that caused the momentary chaos in Cairo. Related Articles Ticketing Policy Causes Chaos, Claims of Discrimination at Grand Egyptian Museum PETA Calls for Egypt to Allocate Grand Egyptian Museum Revenue to Support Animal Sanctuary GEM, which opened to the public earlier this month, currently has a daily limit of 20,000 tickets, with approximately 60 percent allocated to Egyptians and 40 percent to foreigners, GEM’s chief executive Ahmed Ghoneim told The Art Newspaper last week. In a Facebook post published November 15, Elbaiady demanded that Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Sherif Fathy provide an urgent briefing on the decision, which he said was “not normal and unacceptable.” The following day, Elbaiady submitted a formal request to remove the quota. While GEM has not officially responded to Elbaiady’s request, the museum announced plans to move toward a pre-booking system with designated entry times. That system went into place last week. Starting December 1, online booking will be the only method for purchasing tickets. Prices for Egyptian adults are 200 Egyptian pounds (around $4.20); tickets for foreigners are 1,450 Egyptian pounds (around $30.40). “I have no problem at all that a foreign tourist pays for a more expensive ticket, and with hard currency, which is normal and exists in most countries of the world,” Elbaiady wrote in a follow-up post on Facebook. “But all the world is not a single country that says to its citizen: ‘Sorry… there is no place for Egyptians, we have finished your share!’ While the foreigner books and walks in as usual! There is no country that respects its citizens by doing this.” The long-awaited opening in November of the Grand Egyptian Museum, a $1 billion project, was attended by dozens of foreign leaders and dignitaries. The museum now ranks among the largest museums in the world, with a 968,000-square-foot facility housing a collection that spans some 7,000 years; an 80,000-square-foot gallery is dedicated solely to the 5,600 burial objects from King Tutankhamun’s tomb.