Egyptian Museum - Ground floor

Yesterday, I decided to face the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Egyptian museum for a second time in order to see the ground floor (and to make some purchases in the splendid bookshop there).

Like I said in my earlier communiqué on the Museum, the ground floor is based on Old Kingdom’s artefacts. There being must less trinket based and more large-statue based. As soon as you enter the hall the first thing you see is a plaster reconstruction of the Rosetta Stone. It invariably has hoards of people all around it with tour guides excitedly explaining how scholars used the stone to decipher hieroglyphics. You can almost hear them spitting at the fact they have to admit the original is in the British museum. It never ceases to amaze me though that people will take pictures of anything, and true enough, there were people standing by this plaster reconstruction (which must be all o 20 years old) to pose for a snap.

Still, I wandered around the floor and there are some mighty impressive statues all around the place, including a massive 50ft high 25ft wide statue that, for the life of me, i can't begin to work out how they got the thing into the museum. I am assuming that it must be broken in twain somewhere, but i could not see the join line. Either that or they built the museum around it!!

I have to admit though that by the end of the museum i was full to overflowing with looking at Egypticana. After that i went and arranged a tour for tomorrow to see some of the lesser know pyramids at Saqarra, and see the temple of Ramses II at Memphis. No, not the place in Tennessee, Memphis was the original capital of Egypt many thousands of years ago.

Short post today and no pictures either. I purposely didn't bring my camera this time and typically, there were loads of people all snapping away without a care in the world (maybe i just happened to get a particularly prickly guard the other day!!) with the guards doing next to nothing to stop this from happening

Still, i am hoping that i will be able to make amends on the picture front with the visits tomorrow.......