Egypt February 2-17, 2025

Thursday, February 6, 2025 - Egyptian Museum Cairo (King Tut's Treasures), Khan el Khalil Bazaar, National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (Royal Mummies)

We were really feeling at home at the Four Seasons. At breakfast each morning, the hostess greeted us by name. We really enjoyed the breakfast buffet fare, and today we decided to augment it with some made-to-order offerings: I had French toast, and Craig had a mushroom, onion, and cheese omelet. We also had a small slab of fresh honeycomb. The honey was so fresh and delicious!

At our appointed meeting time, Shady and Galel met us in the lobby. Shady was there every morning to ensure that everything was going smoothly and in case we needed anything. Everything was running like clockwork; DAI's Cairo team was exceptional.

We started today's tour at the Egyptian Museum Cairo, which dates back to 1902. We recognized the building's pink facade from driving by it on our arrival in Cairo several nights ago. We went through the metal detectors at the entrance, and were immediately immersed in a display of many exhibits. My first instinct was to start admiring everything which surrounded me, but Galel was moving quickly and beckoning us to follow. We felt like we were being whisked past a bunch of cool things, but there was a method to Galel's madness.

He ushered us to the back corner of the musuem and up a set of stairs to the King Tut exhibit. We were so relieved that it still on display here. The exhibit would be moving to the Grand Egyptian Museum in time for its opening in July, so we had feared that it might be in transit during our visit and not viewable. But, luckily for us, they had not yet begun the process of relocating the exhibit.

There was a small, dark gallery of rooms which housed Tut's treasures. Only a handful of other people were currently viewing the exhibit, so we had time to linger over the pieces, spending as much time as we wanted admiring them. We could walk from one piece to another and then back again; there was plenty of room to move around.

No photos were allowed in these galleries, but the treasures were unbelievable! King Tut was buried in three nested anthropoid coffins inside a quartzite sarcophagus. The sarcophagus still remains in Tut's tomb in the valley of the Kings (we would see it in a few days' time), and the two innermost coffins were displayed here. The second coffin was wood with gold leaf, inlaid with stone. The innermost coffin was solid gold, weighing in at a whopping 110 kg! It was breathtaking. There was something to admire from every angle; even the area beneath the feet is elaborately engraved with an image of the goddess Isis and hieroglyphic writings.

The funeral mask of King Tut is so iconic, that to see it in person was a wonder. It is made of gold and weighs in at 11 kg. It is more of a helmet than a mask, in that it covers the entire head and rests on the shoulders. One woman had a single tear running down her cheek as she gazed upon its beauty. It was poetic.

Glass cases contained elaborate jewelry, cosmetic items, and amulets which were buried with King Tut. At least 106 objects were found directly on King Tut's body, carefully placed within the wrapped bandages. These included golden collars, golden / faience "pectorals", finger rings, bracelets, and amulets. We saw Tut's golden embalming plate (a delicate piece of gold leaf placed over the embalming incision to make the body whole again), as well as gold fingertips and toetips (these were put on the mummy's fingers and toes to keep the nails intact). Some of the jewelry and amulets featured scarab / dung beetle motifs. The scarab was seen as a sign of good luck. Because it deposits its eggs into a ball of dung and then rolls the dung ball around, it is interpreted as a sun deity rolling the sun along. Baby scarabs emerged from the dung pile, and this also meant that the scarab was seen as a creator god.

People were, of course, taking photos in the Tut galleries despite the prohibition on photography. Craig made sure to tell all of them that no photos were allowed. One woman said, "But everyone does it." Craig replied that it doesn't make it right. I would have loved to have taken photos of the beautiful artifacts, but instead I bought a book about the exhibit in the museum gift shop. We are including a photo here from Wikimedia Commons:

King Tut Mask, courtesy of
Tarekheikal, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Though it is in a different exhibit hall now, this virtual tour gives a good look at the Tut exhibit.

After we had absorbed as much as we could in the special Tut galleries, we headed out to the main exhibit hall, where more of Tut's treasures were on display. Photography was allowed out here. Artifacts we could photograph included Tut's golden thrones, canopic jars which contained his internal organs, and other items buried with him. There was a wooden mannequin of Tut for tailors to use to make his clothing, since they were not allowed an audience with the king. There were also "marquetry veneer sandals", made of wood, leather, bark, and gold. The soles are decorated with images of enemies of Egypt, so that by wearing the sandals the king would be literally trampling his enemies underfoot. There was a fan made of feathers, and large shabti figurines. There was a "carrying shrine" (a golden box with Anubis lying on top which rested on poles for it to be carried on people's shoulders). It reminded us of the "floats" carried by worshippers during Latin American Christian holidays.

King Tut only ruled for a handful of years, and wasn't a very important pharaoh. So why is he one of the most well-known pharaohs today? Because he is the only one whose tomb was found mostly intact. When mummies were buried in pyramids, their tombs were looted by ancient grave robbers. The robbers realized how much gold (jewelry and amulets) was hidden in the mummies' wrappings, but they couldn't be bothered to carefully unwrap the mummies and extract all of the treasures. So instead, they burnt the mummies, a process which left the gold behind.

In order to prevent this in the future, pharaohs gave up building pyramids and instead moved to underground tombs located in the Valley of the Kings, which were less likely to be plundered by thieves.

However, in the 9th century BC, the Egyptian government fell on hard financial times and liquidated the treasure from the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. However, they would not defile the mummies, and wanted to keep them and the treasure wrapped within their bandages safe. They removed 40 royal mummies from their respective tombs and stacked them in a cache near the Valley of the Kings at Deir el-Bahari (more on them later).

King Tut's tomb was not liquidated and remained largely intact. Tomb robbers did gain entry during antiquity, but they did not get beyond the outermost gilded shrine (there were four nested shrines and in the innermost one was the sarcophagus, and in that were three coffins). So the mummy was safe! The tomb was lost to time until 1922 when it was rediscovered.

Most of the treasures found in the tomb and its store rooms now belong to Egyptian museums, except for some jewelry which Carter (the discoverer of Tut's tomb) allegedly stole for himself and his friends, and later denied.

By now, there was a line to get into the Tut galleries. People were queued up, and once they got inside, they had to follow one another in a prescribed order. They couldn't do what we had done, which is to flit from one exhibit to the next, backtracking to get a second look at some of the most impressive pieces. We were extra happy that Galel had ensured that we beat the crowds and could have a much more enjoyable experience.

After the Valley of the Kings liquidation of assets, royal burials moved to Tanis. Once there, they used more silver and less gold so the coffins would be less tempting. There was an exhibit room of treasures from Tanis, and no photos were allowed there either. We saw an anthropoid silver coffin here which was quite impressive.

After viewing these treasures, we saw more of the Cairo Museum. The museum is 120 years old, and has a very different feel from the brand new Grand Egyptian Museum. The stone treads of the stairs are worn down from the feet of millions of visitors in the last century. There are so many exhibits! Galel worked at the museum before he began his guiding career, so he knew exactly where to take us to hit the highlights. In several hours we felt like we only scratched the surface. We were grateful to have Galel to guide us and teach us about the ancient treasures we were seeing!

There was a tiny (3 inch tall) ivory statue of Khufu (builder of the Great Pyramid); the only known image of him. It dates back to his reign: circa 2500 BC!

There are a series of spells that were believed to help the dead reach the afterlife. At first, during the Old Kingdom (starting with the reign of Unas from 2353–2323 BC), these texts were carved into the pyramid itself, and were known as Pyramid Texts. During the First Intermediate Period, these pyramids were robbed, and people were able to see the existence of these texts. They thought that if they worked for resurrection of pharaohs, they should work for their resurrection as well. So they started to write the spells on their wooden coffins, and they became known as the Coffin Texts. Coffin Texts date back to 2100 BC. When they couldn't fit all of the necessary spells onto a coffin, they changed to writing them on papyrus. This is known as the Book of the Dead, and was produced in the New Kingdom (~1550 - 50 BC).

We saw a papyrus painting of the Book of the Dead, depicting Anubis weighing the heart of a pharaoh against a feather to determine wheter the deceased is worthy to enter the afterlife.

This papyrus was part of a funerary papyrus of Djoser, a priest of the goddesses Bastet, the lady of Memphis. It showing [sic] the Spell 125 from the Book of the Dead, better known as the Judgment of Osiris or The Weighing of the Heart. The goddess Maat, embodiments of the proper order of the Egyptian cosmos, lead the deceased into the hall of Judgment before the balance and his heart is weighed opposite the feather of the goddess Maat, embodiment of cosmic order and ethical behavior. To the left, Osiris, God of the underworld, sits on a throne inside a small kiosk and presides over the scene. He wears the white crown of Upper Egypt, and a curved beard that identifies him as divine. Before him, the offering table and the ibis-headed god Thoth, holding scribal equipment in one hand to record the result of the trial.

At the culmination of this ceremony, the heart, seen as the center of intelligence and emotion, was weighed against a squatting figure of the goddess Maat by the jackal-headed god of embalming, Anubis. If the scales balanced, Osiris accepted the deceased into his company and granted him eternal life. If not, the heart would be eaten by the monster Ammut (the Devourer), shown as a hippopotamus with a crocodile head, and the person would die forever.

- Egyptian Museum Web Site

Another guide was using a laser pointer to point out significant parts of the papyrus to his group. This enraged Galel, because the papyrus is over 2000 years old, and laser light literally burns it. Galel confronted the guide and went to get security.

We saw a sphinx of Hatshepsut with her face depicted as a male pharoah with a false beard. We saw statues of Akhenaten and a bust of his wife Nefertiti. The most well-known bust of Nefertiti resides in a museum in Berlin. We saw it there back in 2004, and Egyptian officials have been trying (so far unsuccessfully) to have it repatriated to Egypt.

We saw the mummies of husband and wife Yuya and Thuya. They were grandparents of Akhenaten, and great-grandparents of King Tut.

We saw pottery with ancient writing on it. Papyrus was expensive and time-consuming to produce, so pottery was used as scratch pads for day to day writing, with papyrus reserved for important uses.

We saw examples of "magical doors" (aka false doors) which were narrow doorways in tombs through which the spirits of the dead could supposedly pass to reach the afterlife.

We were so happy that we were just a group of two with a guide. We saw some large groups of up to 40 people with a guide. Everyone was trying to congregate around an exhibit while listening to their guide through headphones. It must be impossible to get a good look at anything when you are with a group that big. By the time you get your chance to see the object, the group has already moved on. We were much more adept as a small group.

I always feel overwhelmed in museums. There is so much to see and no way to take it all in. I find myself rushing around, photographing as much as I can, so that I can revisit it later when I have more time to fully digest it. I photograph the informational placards that I don't have time to read on the spot.

After over 3 hours in the museum, we had barely scratched the surface, but it was time to move on. (We realized later on that we didn't get a chance to see the Narmer Palette, considered to be the first historical document in the world. It contains the earliest known hieroglyphs, and an account of the unification of Egypt under Narmer, around 3150 BC. Well, it's something to see if we ever return!) We made a brief stop in to the museum gift shop, where we bought some books and souvenirs. They had some really nice things for sale, and they were all fixed-price. I prefer this type of shopping to haggling in markets.

We then went to Khan el Khalil Bazaar for lunch. This bazaar dates back to the late 1300's, and today caters mostly to tourists. We ate at the Naguib Mahfouz Cafe (named after one of its patrons, a Nobel prize winning novelist from Egypt). The atmosphere was like stepping back in time, and was decorated with geometric Islamic motifs. We had a delicious lunch of lamb shank, rice with fried bread underneath, okra, falafel, and "green soup", with Cokes to drink. It was lovely!

After lunch we walked around the bazaar. Shopkeepers would greet us with "How can I take your money?" That was a fresh approach that made us laugh, to which they responded "At least I'm being honest!" Touché!

We also saw a beautiful mosque and madrasa complex that was built in the 13th century from stone blocks stolen from the pyramids. The architecture was stunning. We walked through the market, and despite everyone trying to sell us T-shirts and knick-knacks, all we were really in the market for was a fridge magnet. I found one that I liked, and of course the seller wanted to sell me multiple of them, but I held firm.

As we were waiting for Abraham to get through traffic to pick us up, we saw two huge buses trying to negotiate the narrow winding lanes of the bazaar. We were so glad (for many reasons) that we were not on a large bus tour!

Our final stop today was the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC). This museum, which fully opened in 2021, traces Egyptian history starting in prehistoric times. The museum is located within a mall. We parked in the parking garage and then walked through the mall. We passed various shops and restaurants, as well as an educational area where kids could learn about ancient Egypt, building pyramids out of oversized blocks, etc.

We entered the museum, and the first thing that we saw took our breath away. It was the Nazlet Khater Skeleton, which is a human skeleton which is 35,000 years old!! It was displayed next to a collection of hand axes, the only known tool for 70,000 years in the Early Paleolithic Age.

In an exhibit about agriculture and food, there were loaves of bread dating back to 1200 BC! It was mind-blowing! The ancient Egyptians had more than 40 different types of bread. They would grind grains on a grinding stone, and between grit from the grinding stone and sand from the general environment, their teeth were often ground down by eating bread.

We learned that large scale agriculture began in Egypt around 6000 B.C. during the Neolithic Age. Life in ancient Egypt was centered around the fluctuations of the Nile. Every year, torrential rains during monsoons in Ethiopia would wash rich topsoil into the Nile. There were three seasons: inundation (which occurred in July as the Nile overflowed its banks and deposited fertile soil on the riverbanks), emergence (which occurred after inundation and when an abundance of crops were grown), and the dry season. Each season consisted of four months, and each months consisted of three 10-day weeks. This amounted to 360 days, so there was drift with the solar year. They eventually added five additional days to the calendar to account for this.

In the Pre-Dynastic period, Egyptians dug canals to tame the inundation and direct the waters to fields further from the riverbanks. They built dams and invented many tools and farming implements such as hoes, rakes, ploughs, and sickles.

The Nile also inspired other breakthroughs of civilization. A surplus of crops could be grown, so not everyone needed to be a farmer. This allowed specialization: Egypt could support a standing army as well as a class of citizens who were dedicated to the religious priesthood.

This surplus of food was also responsible for another invention: taxes. Those who grew food were responsible for paying taxes based on their yield, and a system of writing was then necessary to keep track of who owed what and who had paid. So the Nile and its annual cycles can also be credited with inspiring the invention of writing.

We saw a wooden chariot which was elaborately carved. There was gorgeous gold jewelry, including diadems, earrings, bracelets, and some necklaces of very chunky golden charms. We saw a, elaborate gold and fiance pectoral depicting gods, cartouches, and pharoahs smiting their enemies, which reminded us of similar ones that we had seen this morning from King Tut's treasures. There were golden coins from the Greco-Roman period. There were tiny little statues of gods and goddesses made out of gold.

But by far, the highlight of the NMEC is the exhibit of royal mummies that were taken from their original tombs in the Valley of the Kings in 900 BC when the government liquidated the treasure. They were stored in a cache in Deir el-Bahri and rediscovered by a shepherd in modern times. He tried to sell the mummies' jewelry on the black market but an art dealer realized their provenance and reported him to Egyptian authorities, who recovered the mummies.

There are 20 mummies on display here, and they are fascinating! So well-preserved. 17 kings and 3 queens, including Ramesses II, Hatshepsut, and others. We could see their teeth, hair (some still in braids), etc. No photos were allowed of the mummies, but I bought a book about them that contains photos. We were able to note some distinguishing characteristics of some of the mummies...Ramesses II had a second toe that was longer than his big toe, and Siptah had a withered foot from polio. The layout of the exhibit was labyrinthine and dark to give you the feeling that you were wandering through ancient tombs.

Ancient Egyptians used to bury their dead in a fetal position. But they had difficulty preserving the bodies. They realized that they needed to extract the internal organs and dehydrate the body from the inside out in order to fully preserve the body. This meant removing internal organs. The "important" organs (lungs, liver, stomach, intestines) were enbalmed separately and stored in canopic chests and/or canopic jars for protection, as the deceased would need them in the afterlife. The heart was kept in place, since it needed to be weighed in order to determine whether the deceased was righteous enough to enter the afterlife. The heart was seen as responsible for thought and emotion. The brain was removed through the nose and discarded, as it was not known to have any function. In order to make it easier to extract the internal organs, bodies were no longer put into the fetal position; instead they were laid out straight.

Natron (a compound of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate) was used in ritual purification and preservation of the body. After the internal organs were removed, the body was packed in natron for 40 days. When this process was complete, the body would only weigh one quarter of its original weight. The body was stuffed with various materials to help keep its shape, and anointed with oils, beeswax, natron, spices, milk, and wine. Bandaging the body took 15 days. Up to 450 square yards of fabric could be used to wrap a single body. Various pieces of golden jewelry and ornamentation were wrapped within the bandages. Then the body was placed into a shroud and a mask was placed over the head and shoulders.

The entire mummification process took 70 days, which symbolically represents the amount of time that the dog star Sirius could not be seen. This period coincided with flooding of the Nile and marked the ancient Egyptian New Year.

(As a side note, Egyptologist Dr. Bob Brier, who is colloquially known as "Mr. Mummy", mummified a human cadaver in 1994 using the same techniques and tools that had been used thousands of years ago. We watched a documentary about his process and it was fascinating.)

We capped off our museum visit with an exhibit about textiles. The Egyptians were the first to create textiles as we know them, with 500 thread count per inch.

We spent about an hour and a half at the museum, and could have spent longer. While it is nowhere near as big as the two museums that we visited prior, the mummies exhibit alone takes a while to fully absorb.

We were in some massive traffic getting back to the hotel. We saw four kids driving a donkey cart on the main road. A guy on rollerblades held on to a motorbike and rolled along behind it as it weaved through traffic. We dropped Galel off at the metro again, and proceeded back to the hotel.

Once again, we had had a big lunch and weren't hungry for dinner. So we ate some snacks leftover from the van and the airplanes, and took showers. I wrote up the day's events on Facebook and Instagram, and then we went to bed.

Egyptian Museum Cairo

Khan el-Khalili

National Museum of Egyptian Civilization