Sunday, February 7, 2010

Step #3: the museum of Egyptian art

I don’t know what to think of the museum. Reason is that museum is getting moved to a new building close to the pyramids and apparently half the country is busy with the inventory (or so claimed my colleagues). Therefore it feels more like visiting a warehouse where tons of sarcophagi, millions of amulets and zillions of other objects are piled up in cabinets too small for them, with poor light. I’m sure the cabinets are the original ones, you could see the glass being hand-made thus irregular and the typed (yes with a typing machine) cards explaining what you see (“gold bracelet”… this much I could have guessed by myself). To be fair, the move being right around the corner, it’s unfair to judge the museum but really it felt like visiting the warehouse of a museum, you know that are where they store all their acquisition until they find space to show them.
I did see most of the key highlights and of course the mummies. Strangely the scientific in me was admiring the work done with the mummification while the human (I guess) in me was wondering if it’s right to expose those dead kings and therefore break their eternal peace.

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