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.......

Show me the mummies! Show ME the mummies!

This morning I have spent most of my time wandering around the Egyptian museum, which is literally only a stone’s throw away from the hotel.

The building is absolutely massive, and is a bureaucratic nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. First of all you have to queue in a slowly moving line to have your bag checked for any unauthorised materials (i.e. bombs and the like), then you have to queue in another line in order to get your ticket. After getting your ticket, you then have to queue in a line in order to get into the museum, then having gone through the turnstiles, you queue in another line while your bag is X-rayed again, in order to make doubly sure you are not bringing anything in. Finally, after that, you are allowed in, although there is a queue for you to check in bags and cameras too, should you wish (I declined).

Some of the exhibits outside the museum, no cameras
are allowed inside, so I can't show you Tut's headdress

The museum collections are on two floors, the old kingdoms on the ground floor and the new kingdoms on the upper floor. The new kingdom stuff has all the sarcophagi and Egyptian mummies in it, along with the Tutankhamun collection. I knew from the outset that this was too big a job to do in the one day, and so I had already determined to split it into a two day exercise; day one would tackle the upper floor taking in the mummies and Tutankhamun's hoard and on day two I would look at the old kingdom stuff, which is less "pottery" and "trinkety" based and more "large statue" based.

The whole museum is a cornucopia of exhibits arranged higgledy-piggledy wherever there appears to be space for them. They claim that there are over 600,000 exhibits on display, and apparently there are many more in storage that they do not have the space to display (they are building a multi-million pound purpose built museum for all this near the Pyramids, but it is not opening until 2011). Anyway, I expected the museum to be totally heaving, but it was not so, and I could walk around looking at all of the sarcophagi in relative peace and quiet. Further investigation made me conclude that the people visiting the museum can be generalised into 2 groups; those who are with a tour guide and those who are on their own but choose to head straight to the Tutankhamun death mask.

The tour groups all seemed to converge on the same places of the museum at the same time, creating bedlam as the guides all try and outshout each other. I chose not to go with a tour guide, I like to take my time on museum viewing and so I was always viewing different parts of the museum to the tours, which meant I didn’t have to fight to squeeze in and see an exhibit at all.

Like I said, the new kingdom stuff (by which I mean the period from about 1300BC to 400AD) is very trinkety based, and so instead of showing one lapis lazuli figure of Amun, the museum displays several hundred which, while interesting, is a bit of overkill in my opinion. However, that said, with there being so many exhibits, the visitors are given a thorough glimpse into Egyptian life at the time; clothing, weaponry, jewellery, tools, furniture, you name it, it is here.

One of my favourite rooms was the mummified animals, which had mummified crocodiles, similar to the ones I saw in Kom Ombo, only considerably bigger. The Egyptians practiced mummification techniques out on animals in order to perfect the art, when it came to mummifying pharaohs.

At the end of each hall, is a special room which houses the mummified remains of the pharaohs. There was a separate charge to come and see this, and so once again there was a queue! The mummies though are well worth going to see (a trip to the museum without visiting them would be sacrilege). As with inside of the tombs, there was no photography allowed in this museum – and they are very strict about it – I went to get my phone out to check the time and I was pulled over to the side by a plain clothes guard and told in no uncertain terms - “no photos - no camera, no mobile phone”. I appreciate that flash photography could ruin the colouring on some of the exhibits, but I am not sure of the reasoning for stopping non-flash photography, apart from it being an attempt to make you buy the guide books etc.

Anyway, I wandered around the floor in a logical order (which took about 3 hours in total) until I got to the Tutankhamun Room. It was, as I suspected, very busy but not manically so, and in the middle was the signature headdress of the boy-king himself. I have to say that it was a VERY impressive piece of artisanship! Also in the room are two more gold coffins which he was buried in.

Outside this room are all of the other items found during the excavation of his tomb, and there is a massive amount of items there. In terms of historical significance, Tutankhamun is actually quite a minor figure in Egyptian history, it is purely the fact that his tomb was practically untouched by grave robbers (because no one knew it was there!) that made him so special. Looking at the finds in his tomb, it does make you wonder how impressive the finds in the other tombs would have been had they been untouched.

So, that is the upper floor of the museum covered; tomorrow I will go back and tackle the lower floor (and possibly pop back and see the death mask again, as it is such an iconic piece). Tonight I have booked myself on a Sound and Light show for the Pyramids, so I will give an update on how that went (it is another scene from the Spy who Loved Me) later on.

Karnak temple, Luxor temple, Luxor museum and leaving the cruise

Ok, due to tiredness last night I have been a bit remiss on updates, so I will kill two birds with one stone and cover two days.

On Sunday we had the last official day of touring. This was based in Luxor and involved visits to Karnak temple and Luxor temple. I was suppose to have gone on this tour at the very beginning of the trip, but due to some delays I missed it. However, the fact that this cruise is on a permanent loop between touring Luxor and Aswan, I managed to get on the tour at the end of the trip, which was nice.

Karnak Temple
This was, for me, one of the reasons I wanted to go on this cruise, to gaze at the majesty of Karnak temple compound, this was the most important temple in Theban Egypt, and it is easy to see why. The sheer scale of the place makes it magnificent, and it has more columns than an excel spreadsheet!! However, this is the cultural response for why I wanted to see the temple. If i am honest, the real reason I wanted to see it was because this is where a rather suave Roger Moore dodges the hired killer Jaws in the Bond film "The Spy who Loved Me".

Karnak Temple from the front ....

and from the rear....

I was not disappointed by the sheer scale of the temple, but I have to confess to being a bit miffed that we covered the whole temple complex in about an hour. To put this in perspective, the temple is so large, I could have probably spent most of the day there snapping photographs, and yet, we seemed to be route-marched through it by a tour guide more interested in breaking the world record for temple hopping, than for letting the visitors enjoy the buildings.

Avenue of Ram-headed Sphinxes at the entrance to Karnak

Speaking of the tour guide, he was not quite as good as the previous guides we have had on the trip. The English language is a rich and colourful language full of subtle inflections to convey different meanings. This guide sucked all the beauty and colour out of the language with a monotonous drawl which really did nothing to engage the tour party to what he was saying (OK, I admit this might be a bit harsh, as his English is way better than my Arabic). All I can remember of his tour guide patois was his repeated call of "follow me" as he tried to hurry us along the tour.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of Karnak Temple, I have resolved to go back there and try and see it at a more leisurely pace, so hopefully I will get some more snaps at a later date. One of the things that was impressive about Karnak was the Hypostyle hall which, as i alluded to above, is just a hall of columns, hundreds of them.

The columns of the Great hypostile hall...impressive

What is nice about Karnak is that some of the original colouring is still on some of the reliefs, so you can picture how this temple must have looked in its heyday.

One plus of our tour guide was he did know some of the key locations to take us to get our Karnak "money shot" pictures from, and he even took a few photos of me standing against some columns with some obelisks in the background. For info, according to our guide, the obelisk (aka Cleopatra's Needle) near Embankment tube station in London was taken from this temple (in those good old empire days....).

Luxor Temple
We were hastily ushered out of Karnak temple and to Luxor temple a couple of miles down the road. Karnak and Luxor temples were once linked together by an avenue of Sphinxes, which must have been an impressive site to behold, but alas modernity meant that the town of Luxor was built right in the middle of the two, and so much of this avenue is under roads and houses now. However, there is a bit of the avenue left at Luxor Temple, and we were given about 50 nanoseconds to admire it and take photos of it before our tour guide was ushering us down towards the temple proper.

The avenue of Sphinxes that linked Karnak and Luxor temples

In terms of scale, Luxor is not as impressive as Karnak temple, but it has some charm of its own, in that a Coptic church was built on top of part of it and then, when this was submerged under soil at some date I can’t remember, the Fatimid’s (early Islamists) arrived and unwittingly built a Mosque on top of the Church on top of the temple.

The front pylons of Luxor temple (I know, it looks the same as every other temples pylons!!)

The temple also shows signs of Coptic vandalism, with the early Christians painting over the Egyptian murals with murals of their own depicting Evangelists and disciples etc. If there is one thing I have take from this tour it is that Coptic Christians were right gits, ruining all the faces of the gods on the temples as they saw them as idols.

Side view of Luxor temple....more columns!

Luxor Temple is also had the hand of Alexander the Great on it, with some friezes showing Alexander making offerings to the Egyptian Gods. I didn’t get much time to look at this, as once again, we were rushed through the temple, but I am pretty sure that Alexander was declared the descendent of Amun by the Oracle at Siwa (I would like to go to Siwa Oasis, but it is a hell of a distance from Cairo, for very little cultural benefit as far as I can see), so I imagine it would be an offering to Amun.

After that our tour guide took us back towards the boat, having covered two major temples in just over 2 hours, including the travel time!! Is that a record Norris McWhirter?! Before he left us though, he did give us a little talk about the appropriateness of tipping out ship’s staff, which I thought was a little odd, as he is not directly affiliated with the ship. Still, it probably does help to get an idea of the sort of amount he as an Egyptian feels is fair, as to be honest, there are times I feel mean just giving one or two Egyptian pounds for things.

That was all yesterday (or the day before yesterday, if you are reading this tomorrow – or, more realistically, today). Has that confused you?! Good :P

Today (that is to say Monday) was our final day on the cruise and we bagged up and got ready to go. In truth it was a bit sad, as the tour party I was with were a nice group and really friendly, so that will be missed, hopefully I will be lucky and meet people who are as nice on my onward travels.

Prior to leaving (after lunch) though, I popped along to the Luxor Museum, to compare the objet d’art in there with our British Museum. The museum is quite small, but it does have a couple of Mummies for people to have a look at. Considering they are over 4,000 years old, they scrub up pretty well, and I was impressed with them. The other objects are pretty much of a muchness, a few heads of Gods here, a handful of Greco-Roman coins there etc. But the piste de resistance (as far as I was concerned) was the chariot which was buried in Tutankhamun’s tomb with him. That was a really nice bit of kit! And judging by the size of the tomb in the Valley of the Kings would have had to be seriously crammed in there. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed in the museum, so i can't show you the Chariot.

So, after that and a spot of lunch, I finally checked out of the boat and travelled a couple of miles down the road to the Steigenberger. I was not disappointed with what I saw, it is a lovely room with marble throughout, and a lovely Nile view to gaze out on from my balcony in the evening.....that is where I am writing this from. I have not done much for the rest of the afternoon, as I am feeling a bit woozy, and dizzy, possibly due to all the sun, I might have a bit of heat exposure from earlier (I need to be mindful of this!).

My room at the Steigenberger - high living indeed.....

Well, that is all for now, I will write some more tomorrow, when hopefully I am aiming to go to the Valley of the Nobles, Habu temple and the Ramesseum.