We left the hotel early – at 7:00 a.m. – to take the bus to the train station. The express train from Alexandria to Cairo felt very much like a third world train. The seats had clean antimacassars on them, but not much else on the train was very clean – especially not the bathrooms. We rode through the green, well-fertilized delta and arrived in Cairo in about two hours. Heba, our guide, told us to stay on the train after everyone disembarked until our luggage was unloaded. A railroad official came about and said “Train finito,” in an interesting two-word mix of English and Italian. He and Heba got into an argument about whether we could stay on the train until the luggage was unloaded. By the time the argument ended with the railroad official conceding defeat, the luggage was unloaded and we got off the train. 
We rode to the Egyptian Antiquities Museum. Cameras are not allowed inside the museum, so all of my photographs are taken from outside. The museum building is 111 years old, and it not air conditioned, except for two small rooms that contain mummies and the room that contains King Tut’s treasures. Despite the heat and humidity, the museum did not disappoint us. Among other things, we saw the mummies of Rameses II and other notable Pharaohs.
The museum has many amazing artifacts, including the oldest papyrus document, on which many colors are still visible. The highlight is the Tutankhamen exhibit, including the mask of Tutankhamen. King Tut’s mummy was inside a wooden coffin, which was inside a stone sarcophagus, which was inside four gilded wooden boxes, each larger than the other. The amount of gold jewelry that was interred with him is astonishing, and each piece astonishingly beautiful. I could see why the known tombs of Egyptian pharaohs were robbed by succeeding generations of pharaohs to recycle the immense wealth that was buried with each of them.
Abby and I ended our trip to the museum with the Narner Palette, the oldest artifact of Egyptian history, from about 2950 B.C. It commemorates the victory of king Narner over his enemies to unify upper and lower Egypt for the first time.
Outside the hotel were the burned-out remains of the office building that housed former President Mubarak’s National Democratic Party. The party headquarters, just a block from Tahrir Square, was burned during last year’s revolution. There is no sign of any repair or reconstruction to that building.
We drove through Tahrir Square – a traffic circle with a small park in the middle – on our way to the Sofitel El Gezirah Hotel. Our room overlooks the Nile River, where sailboats with lateen sails share the water with garishly lit party boats that blare Egyptian dance music into the night. Dinner that evening was mixed grill in a hotel restaurant. Our party of nine Americans has become rather tired of the mixed grill of beef sausage, lamb and chicken, and has started making wise cracks about it, so much so that Heba, our guide, would go out of her way to provide an alternative at future meals.
No comments:
Post a Comment