Tuesday – February 5, 2019
Today is my Uncle’s 95th Birthday! Happy Birthday Ben!!!
We had a nice buffet breakfast at the JW Marriott Hotel and a “Welcome Orientation” given by our group leaders. Afterwards, we drove in always-heavy traffic to downtown Cairo to visit the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Tahir Square. Driving anywhere is Cairo takes a very long time because of the horrendous volume of traffic.
Cairo Train Station
Our group of 19 intrepid travelers was led by Maged Salib, a knowledgeable historian and Egyptologist. Seventeen members had traveled with Maged last year to Qatar, Oman, and the UAE.
Maged led us around the museum. He highlighted the exhibits which focused on the most important events, people, and gods of ancient Egyptian history.
The Tutankhamen Galleries were on the second floor. Unfortunately, photography was not permitted in the anti-room where King Tut’s famous golden death mask was on display. However, many artifacts from his tomb were exhibited outside the room.
It was a thrill to see these incredibly beautiful artifacts. Words cannot describe them. I vividly remember the King Tut exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1978. At the time, everyone wanted tickets to see the exhibit and newspapers had said, “Lines of eager museum-goers stretched down 5th Avenue for twenty-three blocks.”
Here is another view of the center Atrium looking toward the main entrance to the museum.
The Egyptian Museum opened in 1902 and, according to my guide book, many of the exhibits and display cases are the same ones from that time. Poor lighting and inadequate temperature and humidity controls have been detrimental to the artifacts. A new museum, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), located near the Pyramids of Giza began construction in 2002 but no-one knows when it will open. It was scheduled to open this February but has been postponed until 2020.
The photo above shows one of many “guard towers” posted along most roadways near buildings and compounds. They were manned by young men with large machine guns. Throughout our entire tour in Egypt, a “tourist police” officer sat in the front of our bus with us and the bus was accompanied by a police car with several more armed officers. I wasn’t sure if all this security made me feel more safe or in danger.