Yes...Wonderful Things

This was the response Howard Carter purportedly said when, as he was peering into the tomb of King Tutankhamun for the first time, he was asked "Do you see anything?" A few days ago, we went to the Egyptian museum in Cairo and saw most of King Tut's tomb items too, among many other wonderful things. We only spent 4 hours there which was ok since we were with a tour group which included very small children and a disinterested tour guide. David and I knew we'd be back lots of times and this just gave us a feel for the place. We couldn't take any pictures and my guess is we only saw about a fifth of the place but I wanted to give some impressions:

1. First, it's amazing to me how quickly we can normalize something which at first astounds us. I remember experiencing this in so many places....driving through my first quaint German town, going to my first Korean market, seeing the Grand Canyon or the Northern lights, hearing the first call to prayer across Cairo. At first, I hardly could believe my eyes...it was so different than anything I'd ever seen (or heard) before.... and then, after a little bit, I realize I'm talking to others and thinking about eating ice cream. I guess it's impossible for our minds to retain that initial feeling of wonder. When we walked into the Egyptian museum and immediately saw the gigantic statues and sarcophagi, my heart was in my mouth. The guide was describing the first sarcophagus....a 4000 year old gem found in one of the Great Pyramids at Giza covered with hieroglypics....and then wanted to move on and we were like WAIT!! I wanted to look at every hieroglyphic and couldn't believe we could actually TOUCH it. Our tour guide was just skipping from one thing to another, and we thought he was going pretty darn fast, until we looked down and saw a hallway full of sarcophagi. One whole museum wing is devoted to gold, silver, and colorful wooden coffins, hundreds of 4000 year old statues, half a floor holds the tomb items of King Tutankhamun's tomb....this place is absolutely enormous, over 160,000 items on display, and one just can't take it all in!! It was reassuring to know that we'll have the opportunity to come back many times to reexperience that feeling of wonder.

2. Then there was the mummy room. This room holds about 10 mummies of pharoahs (1 queen). They used tar to preserve the skin so most of them were dark brown. I looked a long time at Ramses II, one of the great pharoahs. It was amazing that we could look at the actual man; he had high cheekbones and a narrow nose and he still had his hair!! Menephtah was there; many think he was probably the Pharoah of the biblical Exodus. Stunning in every sense of the word.

3. We spent a lot of time looking at the items found in King Tutankhamun's tomb. The funny thing was that many items seemed familiar. David and I think it's because we've seen so many pictures of the items......the gold mask, the gold coffin, the clay servants, the gold throne.
But in the Egyptian museum, we were looking at the ACTUAL items placed in the tomb to accompany the King in the afterlife. As I said, the items filled half of an entire floor (HUGE) of the museum and Tutankhamun was actually a pretty insignificant pharoah....just a kid. The only reason he's so famous is because his is the only tomb found intact, not looted by grave robbers. Can you imagine the tomb of Ramses II??

4. My archivist instincts perked up when looking at all the papyri. They were just displayed in glass cases in full sunlight, no AC....but I had to remind myself that while paper is preserved best in cold, humid conditions, papyrus needs it to be hot and dry, which it was. I asked the tour guide about the light. Weren't they concerned that the sunlight would fade the papyri? He shrugged his shoulders and said "Yes, it's a concern. they'd like to use UV filtered glass cases, but they have no money, what are you going to do?" Uh...I could think of a few things.... not displaying them at all? At least not displaying them under a glass roof? Who knows what plans the museum has....but hopefully there is a plan for preserving these precious items.

Anyway, we'll be back with more Egyptian Museum reports. Wonderful things indeed. :)