Egypt will welcome a royal visit in March when Queen Mathilde of the Belgians and her daughter, Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant, visit the country for three days.
The Queen and Duchess of Brabant will be in Egypt from 14-16 March.
The visit will centre around the late Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians, who once visited Egypt. The royals will visit many locations the heir that the heir to the throne’s namesake once visited – including the famed King Tut’s tomb.
The Belgian Royal Palace said: “The visit is part of the historical interest of the Royal Family in ancient Egypt and is a tribute to Queen Elisabeth, whose interest and passion are at the origin of the flourishing of Egyptology in Belgium.”
The trip will see Mathilde and Elisabeth in Cairo to open an exhibition on Queen Elisabeth and Belgian Egyptology.
Through the visit, the royals aim to “highlight Belgian academic expertise in the field of Egyptology by visiting a number of archaeological sites where Belgian institutions and universities are active.”
As such, they will receive tours of various sites in and around Luxor by professors, students and Egyptologists.
According to the palace, this is a working visit that helps to commemorate anniversaries in both 2022 and 2023, including the 200th anniversary of the decipherment of the hieroglyphics by Jean-François Champollion, the centenary of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb (with Queen Elisabeth who braved the so-called curse of the tomb), the 125th anniversary of the origins of Belgian Egyptology and the 75th anniversary of the death of the Belgian Egyptologist Jean Capart.
Queen Mathilde has a history with Egypt; she volunteered in the country when she was 18 in the Cairo slums, and it is where she and the now King Philippe honeymooned after their 1999 wedding. The King and Queen took their four children to Egypt to visit the Pyramids of Giza and Luxor during the Christmas and New Year holiday break in 2018-2019.
This is the second official trip for the mother-daughter duo; their first trip was in 2019 to Kenya for UNICEF. The Queen is the honorary president of UNICEF Belgium.
