First of all, this is going to be a fairly short blog. Photos are outlawed in the museum, indeed they did a fairly thorough metal detector and pat down of everyone who walks in the door. If you have a camera, it has to be checked, similar to to a coat check. If you are found with a camera, they either keep it or have you delete your entire card. Needless to say, there were no cameras inside the museum.
The museum was built in the late 1800's and is similar to the British Museum in London. It is huge! (and full of people). Fortunately, Ibraham was our guide so he took us to certain areas of the museum with a thorough explanation of each. Without that your eyes would glaze over at the volume of artifacts, (120,000) at last count.
The are currently building a new museum out by the Giza Pyramids that is much larger and much more user friendly. Many of the exhibits have no explanation in Arabic or English. Indeed, they have another 150,000 artifacts in the basement, not on display.
The hallmark of the museum is King Tutankhamun tomb contents. As I believe I mentioned earlier, it was discovered intact, with very little disturbance in 3,500 years. It actually took four years just to catalogue and empty the tomb in the 1920's. The death mask is the most famous, and it is a spectacular in real life as in photos. Also, the inner most sarcophagus is of solid gold, 253 pounds! The tomb contained over 1,400 artifacts.
The rest of the museum contained countless statues, jewelry, and mummies. A couple of interesting foot notes. When the Romans showed up on the seen about 200BC, they also mummified many who died. But there twist on the process was to have the likeness of the individual painted on wood and bound to the face portion of the mummy. So, they have discovered many mummies with faces on them! These were primarily Roman citizens that had moved there, and their likenesses were as modern as you would see in the mirror.
Also, they discovered in a nobleman's tomb, many dioramas of normal Egyptian life some 4000 years ago. They included a horse auction, spinning wool for fabric, scenes of sailing ships, home life, cooking, etc. Each diorama was about 3 by 2 feet, the figures were about 6-8 inches tall. All in perfect condition.
Much more to tell, but we did buy a couple of books for you to look at!
