CAIRO:

Prime ministers, presidents and royalty descended on Cairo this weekend to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the Pyramids to house one of the world's richest collections of antiquities.

The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, pandemic and wars in neighbouring countries.

"We've all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true," Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference, calling the museum a "gift from Egypt to the whole world from a country whose history goes back more than 7,000 years."

Spectators including President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gathered before an enormous screen outside the museum, which projecte

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