Egypt Day 5: Old and Busted vs. The New Sickness
(Hooray! The Ritz has broadband. We'll be able to put up all the intervening days' entries in one go.)
We woke up at a quite reasonable hour to a second helping of our fine Müesli and bread basket room service before hiring a car to take us into Cairo. On today's schedule: the Egyptian Museum. After reading all of the decriptions, we knew we could make a full day of it.
The museum itself dates back to 1902, though the initial collection of antiquities was built by Auguste Mariette in 1858. His contributions to the museum and to Egyptology in general were so great that upon his death he was entombed in a mausoleum in the park in front of the museum. The museum itself covers two large, cluttered floors (plus all the random large pieces scattered about outside the museum) and houses such an enormous collection of items that two years ago the curators were able to put together an exhibition of over 250 items that had recently been re-discovered in the basement! The sheer amount of antiquities is daunting, but we meant to give it our best shot.
We began in the main hall, looking at the best and largest artifacts (owing to the fact that they fit nowhere else). Most of the first floor is arranged in something approaching chronological order, starting with the pre-Old Kingdom stuff and working around to Graeco-Roman times. The atrium, however, is made up of those pieces deemed too impressive or too large to fit in their respective rooms. Items here include the Narmer Palette (the first depiction of a Pharaoh wearing the crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt), and the colussus of Amenhotep III. The son of Amenhotep III, the aptly named Amenhotep IV, changed his name to Akhenaten and declared there was but one God, whose name was Aten. He closed all the temples to other gods and forced the people to build temples to his new god and worship it with him. When he died under mysterious circumstances, his son, Tutankhaten, restored the worship of the old gods and changed his name to Tutankhamun to distance himself from his father's crazy schemes. Yes, that Tutaknhamun.
We then wandered through so many fabulous papyrii, sculptures, busts, coffins, sarcophagi, jewelry displays and sacred engravings that I would be lying, dear reader, were I to claim that I could recall a tenth of the wonders catalogued in that wonderful place. Several factors contributed to the general blur the latter part of that day became - for one, there is no air conditioning in the main museum. Only a few small separate rooms showing particularly important pieces have A/C. Second, a room filled entirely with relics from the Amarna period is a wonderful thing, but it helps if the items are labeled. Not one item in a thousand was identified individually (no hyperbole intended). Finally, I came down with the first stages of the Pharaoh's Curse, which is to say my insides began to indicate to me their desire to visit the outside world at some point in the near future. As such, much of what I saw was masked by heat, ignorance and stomach pain.
But all was not lost. I thoroughly enjoyed the portions of the museum dedicated to the contents of Tutankhamun's tomb, the finds at Tanis and the Jewelry Room. The Graeco-Roman period mummies with their painted faces depicting their owners as they were in life were fascinating glimpses into the lives of their occupants. Mel found the reconstruction of the gold leaf from a sarcophagus onto a Lucite mold particularly fascinating, while my favorite surprise was a papyrus tucked into a corner depicting cats worshipping a mouse on a throne, while one cat suckles a baby mouse!
Feeling thoroughly wretched late in the day, we hike over to the Grand Hyatt, which has a fantastic 40th floor bar with views across the Nile. We camped out for a bit to let my stomach settle down (it didn't) and had a drink and a bite to eat before catching a hotel taxi back to our hotel. Once back in the room (around 6:30 PM), I planted myself in bed and curled up in a ball to await my stomach's excursion into the outer world. Luckily, this was not to be, and I fell asleep by around 7 PM. Mel passed out as well, strangely enough. Perhaps we weren't as over our jet lag as we had previously thought.
Tune in to Mel's blog for the next installment: Goodbye, Cairo; Hello, Severe Injury and Illness.
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