EGYPT: When the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) staged its opening ceremony on November 1, the focus of the visual narrative fell firmly on the Hanging Obelisk, Egypt’s first elevated obelisk positioned in the vast 30,000-metre piazza before the museum’s pyramid-shaped entrance, and Lighting Designer Roland Greil, working with technical vendor and producer Hilights, selected Claypaky Skylos fixtures to shape that moment.

The artefact, the first to greet visitors arriving at what is believed to be the world’s largest archaeological museum, housing some 100,000 artefacts including the entire contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb, was framed as the centrepiece of a ceremony attended by the Egyptian president, foreign dignitaries, royals and celebrities, with live music and dance, façade projections, content on a trapezoidal LED videoscreen, drone imagery of pharaohs in the night sky and fireworks set against the Giza pyramids in the desert backdrop.

The event was realised through a state-of-the-art lighting system comprising more than 5,000 fixtures in a 360º Collective project by Live Legends and Roland Greil Design – Direction for Hilights Group, with Greil, a Founding Partner of 360º Collective, leading a team tasked with delivering a visual experience that matched the scale and cultural significance of the occasion. For the segment in which the Hanging Obelisk took centre stage, Greil positioned 24 units of the Claypaky Skylos around the structure, using the fixture not as a traditional searchlight but as a high-precision visual tool designed to frame and elevate the artefact within the broader environment.

Built around a custom 300W white light laser source engineered to deliver an extremely parallel and uniform beam with high output and low power consumption, the Skylos is housed in a robust construction with IP66-rated protection suited to challenging outdoor conditions, including the desert setting of the GEM site. And Greil, who had previously deployed the fixture on Cro’s Cronicles Tour 2024, noted its performance at the museum, stating “GEM was the second show where I was able to use this amazing light. The combination of their big lens with firepower and good beam definition make the Skylos stand out.”

Reflecting on the design intent for the scene, he added, “The opening ceremony had a special Hanging Obelisk scene, and we needed to give it the highlight it deserved. We wanted to light the obelisk beautifully and frame it in a way to put the focus on it.” In execution, Skylos produced powerful sky-tracking effects with tightly defined beams that added depth and scale to the outdoor environment, with Greil concluding that “thanks to their great bright and wide beam, Skylos was exactly the right choice to frame the amazing Hanging Obelisk and give us a big sky look that added to the great scope of the show itself.”

Alongside the Skylos deployment, 62 units of the Claypaky HY B-Eye K15 and K25 fixtures were used to illuminate the entrance areas, completing a lighting scheme that underscored the museum’s architectural presence while placing the historic artefact at the visual heart of the ceremony.