The Egyptian Museum

The Egyptian Museum is classic in every sense. It's housed in a large palace-like building in the heart of Cairo. To get into the museum, we went through no less than three metal detectors plus a couple of body patdowns (they were just as thorough as the airport TSA folks). Hey, as far as we're concerned, the more security, the better. The only unfortunate thing about visiting this museum is that we had  to check our camera at the door. No photos at all! Those you'll see posted today were all we could take outside in the museum gardens.

Front view of the Egyptian Museum

The 50L$ (about $8 US) admission fee is well worth the price. However, don't expect a modern state-of-the-art museum with all the catchy gadgets, signage, and interactive displays. The Egyptian Museum is room after room of the treasures of ancient Egypt in often poorly lighted conditions with minimal explanations on cards prepared on a typewriter some 50 years ago. Nonetheless, what a collection! At the moment a new Egyptian Museum is being built out at Giza near the pyramids. Undoubtedly, it will have all the bells and whistles we have come to expect in modern museums (not always a positive). The museum is now very convenient. When it moves in 2015, that's another 40 minute taxi ride from downtown. Doing both the pyramids and the museum in the same day would really be an undertaking. We'll just have to wait and see how the public warms to such a fabulous museum so far out of town.

A typical depiction of an ancient pharoh.

As the museum was too vast to begin to see in one visit, we focused on the "best stuff". For us, that was the Tutankhamun wing. Click here to see the virtual collection presented by the museum. Several years ago, we saw the King Tut collection in Philadelphia that was touring the country. Great artifacts, but the show didn't present any of the really grand pieces that one has come to associate with his tomb. Why? Well, the Egyptian Museum didn't let such priceless pieces leave the museum. In some cases, the gold plated wooden articles would have been to fragile without fear of damage to them. A few our favorites were: the funerary bed, the gold thrown, the golden death mask, the conoptic chest and jars, the inner most coffin, the recumbant figure of Anubis, and funerary jewlery and ornaments. This list could go on and on. It was a phenomenal collection. How lucky we were that ancient grave robbers did find Tut.

One of the museum caretakers.

Later today we leave for Luxor by night train. There, we'll be able to spend several days in the Valley of the Kings (including Tutankhamun tomb). We'll post more photos of the ancient art masterpieces in the days to come.

A 3,000 year old example of ancient Egyptian art.

Tomorrow: Coptic Cairo