A military chariot that belonged to ancient Egypt’s boy-king, Tutankhamen, has been moved to a new museum near the Pyramids that Cairo hopes will help bring tourists back to the country.

The chariot, made from Lebanese cedar wood and animal skin, had been on display at Egypt’s Military Museum in Cairo since 1987.

But antiquities authorities have decided to put all artefacts found in the young king’s tomb in Luxor in 1922 on display together at Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum.

The chariot found in King Tut’s tomb, the boy-pharaoh who ruled Egypt more than 3,300 years ago. The chariot, made from Lebanese cedar wood and animal skin, had been on display at Egypt’s Military Museum in Cairo since 1987.

‘The military chariot that arrived today from the military museum is King Tutankhamen’s sixth chariot,’ said museum director Tarek Sayed Tawfik.

He said six chariots were found at Tutankhamen’s tomb, some for ceremonies, some for hunting and one lighter and faster than the rest for war.

This had been kept at the Military Museum.

‘For the first time, inside the Grand Egyptian Museum, these chariots will be displayed together,’ Tawfik said.

King Tut ruled Egypt as pharaoh for 10 years until his death at age 19, around 1324 B.C.

The military chariot was taken in boxes from the museum at the Cairo Citadel, to its new home just beyond the Great Pyramids of Giza, which is set to be the world’s largest archaeological museum.

The tourism sector is one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency but it has struggled since a 2011 uprising that led the then President Hosni Mubarak to step down.

But there are signs that tourists are beginning to return.

An Egyptian official said in January the number of tourists in 2017 jumped 54 percent to 8.3 million, compared to a year earlier.

The figure compares with 14.7 million in 2010 before the uprising.

The military chariot was taken in boxes from the museum at the Cairo Citadel, to its new home just beyond the Great Pyramids of Giza, which is set to be the world’s largest archaeological museum.

(1 Parts of King Tutankhamun’s chariot are seen at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Greater Cairo, Egypt, on May 5, 2018. The last military chariot of King Tutankhamun has been transferred to the GEM on Saturday, Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Khaled Anany said. A total of six historic chariots were collected from museums across Egypt, including Luxor Museum and the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square, to be displayed at the GEM, Anany said at a press conference.

The huge new GEM complex will extend over 47 hectares (116 acres) and contain some 24,000 square metres (258,300 square feet) of permanent exhibition space.

It will feature alabaster facades, and its eventual opening will relieve the pressure on the current national museum that was inaugurated in 1902 and has run out of space.

Construction of the mᴀssive new archaeological facility museum was announced in 2002.

Removing a tray of chariot parts from the Tomb of Tutankhamun, Valley of the Kings, Egypt, 1922. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter (1874-1939) was one of the most astounding discoveries in archaeology. Tutankhamun was a previously unknown pharaoh whose name had been eradicated from historical records by one of his successors because of his ᴀssociation with the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten, who was Tutankhamun’s father-in-law. Consequently his tomb, uniquely, had remained undisturbed by grave robbers. Artist Harry Burton.

The huge new GEM complex will extend over 47 hectares (116 acres) and contain some 24,000 square metres (258,300 square feet) of permanent exhibition space.

But its opening has been postponed several times, including because of the political instability that has rocked the country.

The current rose-pink museum with its neo-classical facade was a tourist highlight before the January 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, unleashing years of political turmoil which led to plummeting tourist numbers.

It also contains so many items that many have been kept in storage and never seen by the public.

THE ‘OVERFLOWING’ EGYPTIAN MUSEUM

Diana, Princess of Wales accompanied by the director of the organisation of Egyptian Antiquities, Dr. Ibrahim Bakr (left), examines the golden sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun in the Egyptian Museum.

The world-famous Egyptian Museum boasts 160,000 priceless artefacts crammed into the hallways and exhibition halls of a 19th century two-storey building in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

The museum’s artefacts ‘belong to the various Egyptian civilisation periods, starting from pre-historic eras, all the way to the Graeco-Roman period,’ Sabah Abdel Razik Saddik, the museum’s general manager, told AFP.

The museum’s best-known piece is 18th dynasty monarch King Tutankhamun’s golden funerary mask and the rest of his tomb’s artefacts, located in the museum’s top floor.

King Tut ruled Egypt as pharaoh for 10 years until his death at age 19, around 1324 B.C. Pictured, The gold burial mask of Tutankhamun at Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt.

Among the museum’s ‘masterpieces’ are statues of the royals who had the Giza pyramids built, including the only surviving statue of King Khufu.

‘The museum also has very important pieces from prehistoric eras,’ including two skeletons, one 35,000 years old and the other about 22,000 years old, as well as stone tools from 7,000 BC, Saddik said.

The facility also has around 50,000 pieces in storage that are not exhibited, said Saddik.

The museum was a tourist highlight before the January 2011 uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak, unleashing years of political turmoil which led to plummeting tourist numbers.