Egypt, whose tourism industry has taken a beating since its 2011 revolution and worries about terrorism, hopes to draw new visitors to two pyramids opened to visitors for the first time in over fifty years.
The two pyramids are in the Dahshur Unesco World Heritage Area, 25 miles south of Cairo, and may be the husband-and-wife tombs of a Pharaoh Snefru and his wife Hetepheres. Snefru's is called the 'bent pyramid' because of changes in the angle of its slope between top and bottom.
Two rooms inside are being opened to visitors in Snefru's pyramid. The smaller pyramid, just under 60 feet tall, has not been open to visitors since 1956; the larger since 1965. The Ministry of Antiquities announced that archaeologists have also uncovered masks, mummies and wooden sarcophagi in the area.
Tourism numbers have already been climbing from the post-2011 low, with nine million visitors in 2018, up from 5.4 million in 2016. The country's main international airline, EgyptAir, has recently launched non-stop service between Cairo and Washington DC with newly-acquired 787s.
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