Cairo, continued
Wednesday was our visit to the Egyptian Museum, which I’d really been looking forward to. Unfortunately, they don’t let you take pictures inside, which was maybe a good thing, since I would’ve totally used up the available memory and probably erased some good pyramid pictures too. But the Museum is awesome. One weird part is that there’s a big central area lined with sarcophagi and monstrous granite statues, which were very cool, but I was struck by how brief or sometimes how non-existent the explanations for them were. Some would have small plaques, with a very little info about how old they were and such, but a lot didn’t. At least most of the statues had names attached. Behind this central area there were a lot of other stone artifacts that were haphazardly stacked on top of each other, with no explanations, obviously not on display. I’d read about this, but it was still amazing to see in person. Here are these priceless artifacts, contained in one of the most famous museums in the world, and they’re just sitting in a room, open to the public, without even having been sorted or labeled. In a weird way, I thought it was kind of cool to wander around the “junkyard,” and wonder what they were, who made them, and such.
I’d like to be different and say my favorite parts weren’t the Tutankhamun and the mummy exhibits, but I’d be lying. They were the coolest by far. Tut’s treasures are like nothing you’ll ever see, not just the famous gold mask and the solid gold, intricately carved coffin, but the loads of incredible colorful jewelry, silver daggers, gold sandals and covers for his fingers and toes, the smaller versions of his coffin that held his organs, the larger alabaster canopic jars that held the small coffins, and the even larger alabaster box that held the canopic jars. There were golden thrones, beds and chariots on display, as well as huge guilded tombs which held the sarcophagus and the coffins. It’s crazy, and I was really glad most of that stuff was well-labeled.
Then there’s the mummy room, which they make you pay another 40 pounds for, or twenty if you’re a student, which we managed to wrangle despite not having international student cards. Such a crock, but that’s less than 5 bucks, so I didn’t care too much about handing it over to see the royal mummy collection. They’re housed in a small room, each in his or her own climate-controlled glass case, with some of the most famous names in Egyptian history lying in there. The names I recall are Seti I, Ramses II, Tuthmosis II, Tuthmosis IV, and Akhenaten. When I was in elementary school, and we’d have library time, I used to hunt down the tiny section with the books on Egypt, and flip until I found the pictures of mummies. I’m certain my friends thought this was beyond creepy, but I thought they were fascinating, and I still thought so when I was face to face with them. I also thought it was unbelievably weird. Most had their faces, hands and feet uncovered, with the bandages still wrapped around their middles. I was looking at Seti, probably the best preserved of them all, with blackened and slightly stretched skin but practically undistorted features, and thinking this had to be a dummy because there’s no way this guy was living four or five thousand years ago. He looked for all the world like he was sleeping.
It’s absolutely crazy to think about. In the same museum, there are colossal statues of Ramses II, statues of other people that he commandeered for himself, depictions of him in Egyptian art, and tons of books about his long rule. Outside in Cairo, there are hotels and other things named after him. In Abu Simbel, if my memory is correct, there are the famous gigantic statues of him that he built in front of the entrance to a temple of the gods. And there he was right in front of me, his body still holding together after thousands of years. I kept thinking “Holy crap, this guy used to be a pharaoh. People worshipped him as a god.” When those mummification experts set out to keep the bodies of their rulers intact, and assist their transition to the afterlife, I wonder if they had the faintest idea how successful they’d be.
There are pictures at this website of the museum. I probably could have found a better site, but didn’t really have time. :-) http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/museum.htm
I was really dragging my feet from then on, because Marianna and Rami had pretty much seen all they wanted to see, while I could hang around this stuff all day. Leora was kind of with me on that, but I could tell she was getting tired too. I don’t really blame them for not wanting to look at inanimate objects with me for the rest of the day, but I was still sad to go.
We ended up just playing some pool later after dinner, and walked across one of the bridges back to the car. Giza bridge, I think, and the Nile still looked amazing at night.
Checkout from the hostel was eleven in the morning, so we grabbed breakfast there. I was in the breakfast room for a while before Marianna and Leora, and I met an Irish guy who’d been staying there a while, while he worked as an English teacher, despite being maybe twenty-four. He’d been around China and other places teaching English as well, just working until he decided to move on, which I thought was pretty cool. He said he’d expected to find Cairo dingy and uncomfortable, but actually it was pretty nice-looking, and so he hadn’t moved on yet. Leora, who plans on traveling for a few months after classes end was interested in his China adventures, since she looked into teaching there herself, so she asked him a lot of questions once she showed up for breakfast. He also told us about the weirder people staying in the hostel whom we hadn’t met since we’d mostly been running around a lot. The best in my opinion were two guys who were dressed like hippies (one of them had walked by beforehand) and were supposedly artists who got commissioned by governments to do sand sculptures. Dominic, the Irish guy, said he’d seen pictures, and that their work was pretty awesome. I was kind of sad we didn’t get to stay longer to see more of these characters.
Since our bus to Taba wasn’t until ten at night, we got a taxi to Rami’s apartment and hung around playing cards for a while. Leora and I decided to hit Khan el-Khalili, since we had plenty of time and about 100 Egyptian pounds each that we weren’t going to be using in Israel. Khan el-Khalili is the famous open-air street market in Cairo, a lot like Damascus Gate in the Old City only way bigger. We only probed the surface of it in maybe an hour and a half, and we barely left the main road for fear of getting lost. This was where I really got the opportunity to use my itty-bitty knowledge of Arabic. When you’re accosted by hustlers for each and every store while going down the road, “la, shukran” will sometimes get them off your backs way faster than telling them “no thanks” in English. Sometimes. It’s funny that I know more swear words than polite words now, thanks to Rami, although I didn’t use them there, of course. :)
When we got a taxi out of there, the driver took a road that goes up and runs near the tops of some of the building that make up the market, and you could see just masses of people still on the streets at twilight. This was the first day of Ramadan, the holy Muslim month, and in Cairo this seems to be an occasion for being out late at night and everyone giving away food to passerby. In Rami’s neighborhood, there were lights strung up on trees like it was Christmas.
Ramadan was also responsible for the insanely, hair-pullingly slow traffic when we took a taxi to the bus station. For a while there I was certain we were going to miss the bus, and be stuck in Cairo with no room. But we got there okay, and the bus got on the way on time. This ride was almost as boring as the one to Cairo, and even more uncomfortable, but I managed to get some sleep, which saved it. We got into Taba around 4:30 in the morning, crossed back to Israel with no problem, and caught a bus back to Jerusalem at 7. I was back in my dorm by 12 on Friday, but functioned solely on adrenaline until 4 pm, doing stuff like laundry, grocery shopping and boring my roommates with commentary on the trip, before I crashed in bed and slept for about sixteen hours. And then it was back to school.
I’d like to be different and say my favorite parts weren’t the Tutankhamun and the mummy exhibits, but I’d be lying. They were the coolest by far. Tut’s treasures are like nothing you’ll ever see, not just the famous gold mask and the solid gold, intricately carved coffin, but the loads of incredible colorful jewelry, silver daggers, gold sandals and covers for his fingers and toes, the smaller versions of his coffin that held his organs, the larger alabaster canopic jars that held the small coffins, and the even larger alabaster box that held the canopic jars. There were golden thrones, beds and chariots on display, as well as huge guilded tombs which held the sarcophagus and the coffins. It’s crazy, and I was really glad most of that stuff was well-labeled.
Then there’s the mummy room, which they make you pay another 40 pounds for, or twenty if you’re a student, which we managed to wrangle despite not having international student cards. Such a crock, but that’s less than 5 bucks, so I didn’t care too much about handing it over to see the royal mummy collection. They’re housed in a small room, each in his or her own climate-controlled glass case, with some of the most famous names in Egyptian history lying in there. The names I recall are Seti I, Ramses II, Tuthmosis II, Tuthmosis IV, and Akhenaten. When I was in elementary school, and we’d have library time, I used to hunt down the tiny section with the books on Egypt, and flip until I found the pictures of mummies. I’m certain my friends thought this was beyond creepy, but I thought they were fascinating, and I still thought so when I was face to face with them. I also thought it was unbelievably weird. Most had their faces, hands and feet uncovered, with the bandages still wrapped around their middles. I was looking at Seti, probably the best preserved of them all, with blackened and slightly stretched skin but practically undistorted features, and thinking this had to be a dummy because there’s no way this guy was living four or five thousand years ago. He looked for all the world like he was sleeping.
It’s absolutely crazy to think about. In the same museum, there are colossal statues of Ramses II, statues of other people that he commandeered for himself, depictions of him in Egyptian art, and tons of books about his long rule. Outside in Cairo, there are hotels and other things named after him. In Abu Simbel, if my memory is correct, there are the famous gigantic statues of him that he built in front of the entrance to a temple of the gods. And there he was right in front of me, his body still holding together after thousands of years. I kept thinking “Holy crap, this guy used to be a pharaoh. People worshipped him as a god.” When those mummification experts set out to keep the bodies of their rulers intact, and assist their transition to the afterlife, I wonder if they had the faintest idea how successful they’d be.
There are pictures at this website of the museum. I probably could have found a better site, but didn’t really have time. :-) http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/museum.htm
I was really dragging my feet from then on, because Marianna and Rami had pretty much seen all they wanted to see, while I could hang around this stuff all day. Leora was kind of with me on that, but I could tell she was getting tired too. I don’t really blame them for not wanting to look at inanimate objects with me for the rest of the day, but I was still sad to go.
We ended up just playing some pool later after dinner, and walked across one of the bridges back to the car. Giza bridge, I think, and the Nile still looked amazing at night.
Checkout from the hostel was eleven in the morning, so we grabbed breakfast there. I was in the breakfast room for a while before Marianna and Leora, and I met an Irish guy who’d been staying there a while, while he worked as an English teacher, despite being maybe twenty-four. He’d been around China and other places teaching English as well, just working until he decided to move on, which I thought was pretty cool. He said he’d expected to find Cairo dingy and uncomfortable, but actually it was pretty nice-looking, and so he hadn’t moved on yet. Leora, who plans on traveling for a few months after classes end was interested in his China adventures, since she looked into teaching there herself, so she asked him a lot of questions once she showed up for breakfast. He also told us about the weirder people staying in the hostel whom we hadn’t met since we’d mostly been running around a lot. The best in my opinion were two guys who were dressed like hippies (one of them had walked by beforehand) and were supposedly artists who got commissioned by governments to do sand sculptures. Dominic, the Irish guy, said he’d seen pictures, and that their work was pretty awesome. I was kind of sad we didn’t get to stay longer to see more of these characters.
Since our bus to Taba wasn’t until ten at night, we got a taxi to Rami’s apartment and hung around playing cards for a while. Leora and I decided to hit Khan el-Khalili, since we had plenty of time and about 100 Egyptian pounds each that we weren’t going to be using in Israel. Khan el-Khalili is the famous open-air street market in Cairo, a lot like Damascus Gate in the Old City only way bigger. We only probed the surface of it in maybe an hour and a half, and we barely left the main road for fear of getting lost. This was where I really got the opportunity to use my itty-bitty knowledge of Arabic. When you’re accosted by hustlers for each and every store while going down the road, “la, shukran” will sometimes get them off your backs way faster than telling them “no thanks” in English. Sometimes. It’s funny that I know more swear words than polite words now, thanks to Rami, although I didn’t use them there, of course. :)
When we got a taxi out of there, the driver took a road that goes up and runs near the tops of some of the building that make up the market, and you could see just masses of people still on the streets at twilight. This was the first day of Ramadan, the holy Muslim month, and in Cairo this seems to be an occasion for being out late at night and everyone giving away food to passerby. In Rami’s neighborhood, there were lights strung up on trees like it was Christmas.
Ramadan was also responsible for the insanely, hair-pullingly slow traffic when we took a taxi to the bus station. For a while there I was certain we were going to miss the bus, and be stuck in Cairo with no room. But we got there okay, and the bus got on the way on time. This ride was almost as boring as the one to Cairo, and even more uncomfortable, but I managed to get some sleep, which saved it. We got into Taba around 4:30 in the morning, crossed back to Israel with no problem, and caught a bus back to Jerusalem at 7. I was back in my dorm by 12 on Friday, but functioned solely on adrenaline until 4 pm, doing stuff like laundry, grocery shopping and boring my roommates with commentary on the trip, before I crashed in bed and slept for about sixteen hours. And then it was back to school.
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