One of the most important museums in the world and it is 100 years old, too small (a great deal of stuff cannot be displayed and some is sinking into the sand of the basement), badly managed and very crowded. But it is not to be missed. Of course the busiest room is for all of the treasure that Howard Carter found (he kept some for himself). The desk mask is solid gold and 11.5kg and the innermost sarcophagus is also solid gold and 150kg. Tutankhamen’s mummified body was put into that with his gold death mask on him. That was after his brain was sucked out through his nostrils and his other organs removed and stuffed into various jars to be buried with him. (We are shown the jars and the powdered remains in each). That sarcophagus was stuffed inside another larger one and so on until you get to the final outside one that was about the size of our bedroom. Each one gilded in gold. They are building a new museum in Giza, near the Giza plateau with all the Pyramids, and, one assumes, it will be one of the biggest and finest in the world. We will definitely come back for that when it’s done but so far they have just pushed sand around at the new site and after two years they are two years behind schedule. I cannot imagine Howard Carter’s feelings as he opened the last door of Tutankhamen’s tomb and realized that it had not been previously robbed. It took years to get it all out and he couldn’t even open the innermost casket until it was removed from the one around it and the largest wouldn’t fit back out the tunnel so it was a Chinese puzzle, I want to read about it.
The museum also has a room displaying the animals that they also mummified-crocodiles, birds, scarab beetles and a large bull that had to be given a massive enema of Juniper and Cedar Oil first. Ouch.
We fly to Luxor and board the M/S Hamees for a seven night Nile cruise upriver past the Valley of the Kings to Aswan and then a trip to Abu Simbel.
No comments:
Post a Comment