the mummies creeped me out a little

After living in Cairo for seven months (I know!), I finally made it to the Egyptian Museum. The thing about the museum is that, like many other things in Egypt, it has so much potential for greatness but is plagued by inefficiency. The museum is housed in beautiful mansion-esque building, and obviously they are overflowing with relics: royal mummies, the King Tut collection, dozens of statues and jewelry and all that other ancient Egypt goodness. But you also get the feeling that these priceless artifacts are not particularly well-cared for; the only room with temperature control is the mummy room (which you have to pay an additional fee to enter), and despite dozens of "no touching OR ELSE" signs, A1 and I spotted many people touching whatever they liked with no interference. In one place, we saw a 4000 year-old statue...with a telephone and notepad on top, being used as a desk. Yeah.

There is this wealth of artifacts arranged in the museum in somewhat chronological order, but things are just kind of loaded into display cases. Not everything is marked or labelled or explained, and in some places there are extra statues or whatnot kind of wedged in behind other things. It makes it a cool experience to explore the museum because you never quite know what you'll find, but on the other hand it can also be frustrating because you know you're probably missing a lot as well.

But anyway, the museum had tons of awesome stuff. There were shoes and jewelry that, even though they are around 5,000 years old, are still...wearable looking. The King Tut collection was also pretty cool, with all the loot they found from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings (which in Luxor, and which I visited with my family in December). The mummies...well. They are lying in glass display cases, and they are very...human looking. It's a little creepy. I did not think the movie "The Mummy" was scary, bu the actual mummies were a little disturbing. They still have hair and teeth and fingernails. Their skin is still on, so you can even tell what they might have looked like when they were alive, except that now they are shrunken and shriveled and have been dead for like 4000 years. So while I enjoy learning about ancient Egypt, I think that's enough mummies for me.

On a more random note: I know I have written before about how I enjoy Cairo Scholars. Well this afternoon I saw the best post ever, which involved someone asking to borrow a hamster. Not keep or adopt it, just borrow a hamster for a week and then return it. The individual noted that they would prefer a white one. Yeah, I don't know either, but it's funny.