As a teenager, Eid Mertah would pore over books about King Tutankhamun, tracing hieroglyphs and dreaming of holding the boy pharaoh's golden mask in his hands.

Years later, the Egyptian conservator found himself gently brushing centuries-old dust off one of Tut's gilded ceremonial shrines -- a piece he had only seen in textbooks.

"I studied archaeology because of Tut," Mertah, 36, told AFP. "It was my dream to work on his treasures -- and that dream came true."

Mertah is one of more than 150 conservators and 100 archaeologists who have laboured quietly for over a decade to restore thousands of artefacts ahead of the long-awaited opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) -- a $1 billion project on the edge of the Giza Plateau.

Originally slated for July 3, the launch has once again been postponed -- now expected in the final months of the year -- due to regional security concerns.

The museum's opening has faced delays over the years for various reasons, ranging from political upheaval to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But when it finally opens, the GEM will be the world's largest archaeological museum devoted to a single civilisation.

It........

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