The gaming giant on Tuesday announced its latest push to spread its name around the world, this time through a partnership to build an MGM Grand nongaming luxury hotel near Cairo, Egypt.

MGM Grand New Giza will be a 550-room hotel that will be part of a 1,500-acre master-planned community.

The community will include homes, three hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, golf courses and other sports facilities.

Crystal Lagoons has announced the construction of twelve giant crystal clear lagoons at the Sharm El Sheik beach, in the Egyptian desert, the biggest of them measuring 8.8 hectares in size.

The world’s largest pool is currently in San Alfonso del Mar, Chile, and has an area of 8 hectares.

But this one-kilometer-in-length behemoth, also built by Crystal Lagoons, will soon be surpassed by its Egyptian relative, which is expected to be finished around July 2009.

Cleopatra’s palace sank long ago into the Mediterranean, but visitors to Alexandria, Egypt, may eventually view the complex’s remnants via the world’s first underwater museum.

A site for the museum has been proposed near the New Library of Alexandria, where the famed queen of Egypt is believed to have sheltered herself with her lover Marc Antony before taking her own life.

In early September the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, announced it is funding a team to determine if such a museum would damage the submerged artifacts.