The Egyptian Museum

On Tuesday 8 July I made my way back into central Cairo, this time to the Egyptian Museum, which is actually just around the corner from the American University in Cairo (at least from their present campus, they're moving to a new campus even as we speak). It really was an extraordinary experience, as you might imagine. There were some peculiarities, but I think they just added to the experience. For one thing, it was not air-conditioned and it is just oppressively hot in Cairo right now. There were times when I wanted to stop and read something or take a closer look at an exhibit, but almost immediately I'd start walking again just to generate a self-induced breeze. Most of the exhibits were not labelled - or the writing looked like it was typed a hundred year ago - or was just in Arabic - so it helps if you know something about Egyptian history or if you hire a guide. Certainly the grounds was swimming with them. However, like I said, I think this added to the experience in an odd way - it certainly wasn't one of those touristy places which hardly qualify as museums anymore. Luckily, I'm a historian and have teaching world civilization for a long time so I knew enough to keep from being completely lost. There were more amazing things than I can recount, obviously. The mummies are very cool (especially Sety I, who looks like he could open up his eyes and say hello - it reminds me of visiting Memphis one time to see an exhibit of Pre-Columbian material and there was a room with three Inca mummies and my friend David Kelley came up and whispered that that was the room where all nightmares were born - this was sort of like that). You have to pay extra to see the mummies - it's another 100 Egyptian pounds (about $20) - as compared to the 50 EL (about $10) to get in the door - but it's well worth the extra expense. As is always the case when I go to museums, however, it's always the odd, little things which really got to me. For example, they had a special room just for animal mummies, including some huge crocodiles. They had this really amazing (and huge) statue that has created a lot of controversy - scholars can't decide whether it is a very feminine representation of the Akhenaten (the Egyptian pharaoh who was arguably the first person in history to promote a monotheistic religion, the worship of the sun god Aten) that expressed the male/female duality of Aten or whether it was a representation of his wife as a key goddess. There were also the shawabtis, which were little statues that were placed in tombs beginning in the Middle Kingdom. Initially there was only one, but eventually the number grew to 401 - they look like little blue soap-on-a-rope (without the rope) pharaohs. They were designed to do things for the deceased in the next world based on the 6th spell of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. There were 401 because you had one for each of the days of the solar calendar and then another 36, one, complete with whips to keep the others in line, for each of the ten day cycles of the year. I'm not much for souvenirs, but I may have to track one of these down.