Miss Slayton in Egypt

Today we visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Museum is two floors and houses an impressive collection of Egyptian antiquities.

Once we entered the museum you could buy tickets that allowed you to photograph while inside. The whole experience was amazing, yet slightly overwhelming. There were literally artifacts everywhere! Even little side rooms simply being used as storage areas for statues that were 4,000 years old. At times it felt like a warehouse for antiquities, there were just so many in a single room.

The Museum is sectioned off into the three kingdoms: Old, Middle and New. This is how you flow through the first floor of the Museum. The second floor housed sarcophagi, papyrus rooms and Tutankhamen’s treasures.

A lot of the artifacts didn’t have labels on them, which made identification of pieces tricky. It was very interesting seeing how many people touched the art/artifacts while walking through the Museum. There were signs everywhere that said don’t touch the art, yet people kept touching.

Two rooms completely blew our minds:

They had a room devoted to Akhenaten, which is one of my favorite pharaoh from the 18th dynasty. Akhenaten is famous for moving the capital to Amarna, and dismantling the pantheon of gods and focusing on one, the Aten. The Aten is depicted as a sun disk giving out ankhs of life. The room had a beautiful relief of Akhenaten and his family (his wife was the equally famous Nefertiti) which still had some color. As well as four large granite statues of the pharaoh. The way he depicted himself and family has been questioned by historians and Egyptologist for quite some time. They’re always shown to have elongated heads, protruding stomachs, heavy hips, skinny arms, and exaggerated facial features. He’s the only ruler who has art styled this way. After his death they moved the capital back to Thebes and retuned to their polytheistic ways. They even dismantled and hide his monuments, as well as destroyed his statues.

He just so happens to be the father of a very well know pharaoh… Tutankhamen!

This leads us to our second favorite area. They have the funerary treasures from Tutankhamen’s burial site. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photographs in this exhibit. We got to see his funerary mask and sarcophagus. As well as all his funerary jewelry. So much gold was involved in his burial jewelry. Everything still had the original colors and beautiful jewels. It was simply stunning to see in person. Housed inside the burial site were items for his afterlife such as beds and a cart for transporting him around. One of the reasons Tutankhamen has become so famous is because his tomb was completely intact upon discovery revealing to historians the elaborate detail that went into burial practices.

Tomorrow we head to the Saqqara necropolis! To see the oldest stone pyramid in Egypt.