I, of course, bought the largest museum book I could find full of the most pictures. It was a good thing I bought it as I was leaving because it weights 10 pounds (yes, I did put it on the scale).
We all gathered in front of the museum building (built about 1890) while we waited for Ehab to get our tickets. There are lovely fountains full of lotus flowers all across the front of the building (I thought I had taken photos, but I can't find them anywhere.).
Then the big moment came, Ehab ushered us into the museum. I was on instant sensory overload and stayed that way the entire time. How to describe what it was like for me to be standing in front of things I had only dreamed of seeing in person. Everywhere I looked there was another statue or piece of Egyptian history that I had only read about and seen in books or on TV. I kept turning this way and that, trying to see everything at once. Ehab was telling us about what we were looking at and I wanted to listen and I wanted to run over to see what was across the aisle too. It was exhilarating and exhausting and frustrating.
The frustrating part was the museum itself. There is not near enough room in the building to house all the items the government has excavated. Most of what is on display was placed there in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Not much has changed since then. A great many of the items displayed have nothing to identify what they are and those that have labels are type-written and the paper is so old they are yellow and cracked with age. All the labels I saw were in English which was great for me but must have been frustrating for non-English speakers. I was told that there are warehouses full of more artifacts and that the basement of the museum is stuffed full of boxes and crates that have no labels and are so old no one knows what they contain anymore. A new museum is being built out by the pyramids and should be open about 2010. I was told the museum employees joke about excavating their own basement and discovering new treasures.
We wandered through over four thousand years of Egyptian history in four hours. I stared awe struck at scuptures perfectly carved in the very hardest of stones by master artists. I read an article by an American artist that had been carving in marble and stone for over 20 years. He talked about how difficult it was to carve hard stone like granite with modern tools of steel and other very hard metals. He marveled that the stone carvers of ancient Egypt could carve so perfectly with only copper and stone tools. He mentioned that these artists would carve even the parts of the statues that would not normally be seen just as detailed and perfectly as the the more publicly-seen parts. I was able to examine up-close-and-personal many of these statues and they were all perfect. Most showed the highest level of artistic talent and skill. Some were absolutely breathtaking.
We, of course, spent some time looking at the King Tut exhibit. We saw the gold face mask, gold coffin cover and gold jewelery. It was all impressive. The gold face mask was smaller than it looks in pictures and the colors were brighter. The jewelery was interesting in that there was a lot of it and some looked surprizingly modern. Another thing to make note of is that while the ancient Egyptians valued gold highly, they valued silver even more. Silver was very rare in Egpyt. They had gold mines in the Egyptian desert, silver had to be imported.
One fun thing Ehab pointed out was a display of King Tut's personal items; one of which was his underwear. It was made of linen and ragged with time. It is those kind of things that bring a sense of the humanity of history for me. Though Tut was worshipped as a god, he still wanted to have clean underware in the after life.
After over-dosing on antiquities I staggered out of the museum (remember I was now carrying my 10 pound picture book) we had a late lunch and were off to see the Khan El Khalili Bazaar (generally referred to as 'the Khan'). I dropped off my book at the bus before we headed into the Khan.
The Khan has been around as long as Cairo. It is still crowded with narrow alley-ways and all the stores smashed next to each other. It is still a community of vendors/storekeepers whose families have done business for generations in the same place. One thing that has changed over the centuries is that most of the customers are tourists now, not locals.
The single most important thing to remember when shopping in the Khan (or anywhere in Egypt for that matter) is that you HAVE to BARGAIN with the seller. Any seller wants to bargain, you are not expected to pay the asking price. If you pay the asking price I am told you have deprived the seller of the enjoyment of bargaining.
When we were in Egypt, the Egyptian pound was worth about 17 cents American money. Sometimes I felt a little guilty about paying so little for things I purchased, but our tour leader kept reminding us that the seller would not sell anything for a price he would lose money over.
The Khan is noisy, crowded, full of exotic smells and lots of voices in lots of different languages. It was rather intimidating at first. All the sellers are very agressive and will sometimes gang up on poor naive American tourists. Lucky for me we had our resident security guard (Mahmoud is with the secret service and carries a very large automatic pistol) to keep them at bay. Mahmoud is also about 6' 2" tall and took his job of guarding us very seriously.
Below is a photo of myself, Mahmoud, Rodger, Sarah Louise and Charles. Rodger and Sarah Louise are from Melbourne, Austrialia and Charles is from Florida, USA.
A few hours before we arrived in the Khan, some water pipes had broken and some of the alley ways were flooded. The store owners were prepared (this had happened before it seems) and laid down wood boards so shoppers could cross the water without getting wet feet. The water didn't seem to slow the shoppers down.
We shopped till we dropped and then headed to the cafe to wait for the bus to come and pick us up. While we waited several street vendors stopped by to sell us various 'stuff'. One was this woman selling beaded head coverings. Several of us bought one from her. The baby slept the entire time.
We headed back to the hotel. This is a shot of the registration desk at our hotel. This statue is a full size replica of the guards found in King Tut's tomb (no real gold on this one though).
Tomorrow we visit the sun temples at Abu Gurab and the pyramids at Abu Sir. We are to have ancient Egyptian style lunch at the guest house of an Egyptian family that our tour guide, Ruth, knows.
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