A quick, but bumpy flight back to Cairo and on to the Four Seasons Hotel Cairo at Nile Plaza. Swanky! We checked in amongst an international crowd dressed in their country’s attire… a few Saudis in full length white robes and red and white checkered head dresses with prayer beads, a few Americans from Chicago, a few French couples, etc. We had a lovely dinner at Nairu on the Four Seasons Nile River Boat, an Asian restaurant on a boat on the Nile. The kids were hungry and ate chicken dumplings, spring rolls, beef bao buns, udon noodles with chicken and vegetables, Mongolian beef with rice and a red lava cake with passionfruit sorbet. They are finally starting to expand their pallets.
A medical assistant came to our hotel room that morning to collect our PCR tests for travel. We got the results back about 12 hours later and were all cleared for the next flight through Dubai to Sri Lanka. The results came back on very official looking paper with seals and signatures…a very odd experience. Trey spent a lot of time doing the visas, health forms, and $12-per-person, mandatory Sri Lankan health insurance. Several of the government websites were not working so we had to hit up our wonderful travel agent Karen again to help us from the states.
We had a morning off for school work and fun in the heated pool and hot tub. The boys played their version of American Gladiators and knee sliding for distance while Laura and Marin swam some laps and read books.
Then we were off to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities for the afternoon with Samah, our previous tour guide (all of the items in this museum will soon be moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza which has been planned for over 20 years and is supposed to open this summer). This museum is impressive! It was constructed in 1901 and contains over 120,000 ancient Egyptian antiquities.
All of King Tutankhamun’s treasure is on the second floor (no photos allowed unfortunately). We were overwhelmed by the amount of artifacts and intricate beauty of the jewelry and other pieces. This was a highlight of our trip to Egypt. They found over 7,000 items in his small tomb that consisted of an antechamber, a burial chamber, a treasury and an annex.
700 objects were found in the antechamber which included three funeral beds, four chariots, walking sticks, the king’s underwear, and a copper alloy trumpet (the oldest known functioning brass instrument in the world). The burial chamber was the only decorated chamber in the tomb, The entire chamber was occupied by four gilded wooden shrines which surrounded the king’s sarcophagus and almost entirely filled the room, The sarcophagus was constructed in quartzite with a lid of rose granite tinted to match. It appears to have been constructed for another owner, but then recarved for Tutankhamun when he died suddenly at a young age. In each corner is a protective goddess (Isis, Nephthys, Serket and Neith) that guards the body. Inside the sarcophagus, the king’s body was placed within three mummiform coffins, the outer two made of gilded wood while the innermost was composed of 243 lbs of pure gold. Tutankhamun’s mummy was adorned with a funerary mask, mummy bands (they hold the body together) and other funerary items. The funerary mask is made of gold, inlaid with lapis lazuli, carnelian, quartz, obsidian, turquoise, glass and faience (glazed ceramic material), and weighs 24 lbs. The treasury contained over 5,000 objects, most of them funerary and ritual in nature. The two largest objects found in this room were the king’s elaborate canopic chest (to hold his organs) and a large statue of Anubis, the god of the afterlife. The annex was originally used to store oils, ointments, scents, foods and wine. It had over 200o items, mostly jars containing wine residue.
The museum has many other interesting items. We saw a stone table that they prepared the mummies on and a smaller alabaster table on which the organs were cleaned and preserved in canopic jars. These jars were placed inside a canopic chest and buried in tombs together with the sarcophagus of the dead. You can see those of King Tut’s above. Usually the liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines were each placed into one of four jars so that the person could take them along to the afterlife. These organs were removed from the body and carefully treated with natron (a natural preservative used by embalmers). Since the heart was thought to embody the soul, it was left inside the body. The brain was thought only to be the origin of mucus, so it was reduced to liquid, removed with metal hooks through the nose and discarded. The jars often featured the four sons of Horus and were made of alabaster, aragonite, calcareous stone, and blue or green glazed porcelain. The sons of Horus were also the gods of the cardinal compass points (north, south, east and west) and each was responsible for protecting a particular organ (see chart below) and was paired with a female goddess (Isis, etc.).
We saw well preserved papyrus scrolls depicting what the ancient Egyptians thought happened in the afterlife. After death, the soul of the departed (considered to reside in the heart) was presented with a scale that was used to weigh their heart against the ostrich feather of Ma’at. Her feather was the measure that determined whether the soul would reach the paradise of the afterlife successfully or be doomed to restlessness. She represents the ancient Egyptian concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Anubis was the god often seen administering this test. If the deceased was a good person through their life, their heart would be light like a feather. If they were a bad person who had done terrible things, their heart would be heavy. If the deceased’s heart balanced with the feather of Maat, they would be admitted into paradise. However, if their heart was heavier than the feather, it was to be devoured by the Goddess Ammit (part lion, hippopotamus, and crocodile), permanently destroying the soul of the deceased.
We saw a husband and wife pair of mummies (there are over 22 mummies in the museum) that came from the tomb of Yuya and his wife Tjuyu, a wealthy, connected couple (KV46 in the Valley of the Kings). They were discovered in 1905 and despite robberies in antiquity, the undecorated tomb preserved a great deal of its original contents including chests, beds, chairs, a chariot, numerous storage jars and, most importantly, the undamaged mummies of Yuya and Tjuyu within their coffin sets. Prior to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, this was considered to be one of the greatest discoveries in Egyptology and an unusual example of a husband and wife being buried together.
Some of the other highlights included a granite sphinx statue of our favorite pharaoh, Hatshepsut, a diorite carving of King Khafre of pyramid #2 fame called Khafre Enthroned, and the Colossal stature of Amenhotep III and Tiye.
Samah took us to the town bazaar at dusk and we walked through CROWDS of people selling everything you might ever want to buy. We made our way to our restaurant and had a delicious dinner of Egyptian moussaka, grilled chicken, rice, pita, hummus, and mango juice. I had a cinnamon and ginger hot drink which was very good and Trey had cinnamon-infused apple cider. We walked out through even bigger crowds to a slightly larger road where the van picked us up and we “drove” through the heavily crowded pedestrian area to get out to the main roads and back to the highway. It was quite an experience!
Trey here…I need to try to put into words an interesting feeling that I have had throughout my stay in Egypt. If you have been following along you have seen me wearing rainbow surgical masks everywhere that we go. I got them in the US because the are effective, pretty and I feel like I am doing some small thing to support the LGBTQIA+ community. The first few days in Egypt I noticed that many of the young men in the country would stare at my mask. Older Egyptians seemed to pay it little mind and young women, it seemed, were trying to avoid eye contact with me. Both of our guides clearly fielded questions from Egyptians about the tourist with the gay mask and when I asked them about it they either ignored the question or lied about the replies (they clearly didn’t want to offend me). When I was outright called gay by one of the young men, I directly asked Samah what was going on and I got the lowdown. It appears that the rainbow image implies that the wearer is gay. It was an odd situation to be in…I didn’t want to offend my guides and the country that was being so generous towards us (Egypt is after all a muslim country), but I wanted to wear the rainbow mask even more so like a badge of honor (believe me, we saw NO ONE else in the entire country wearing anything close to resembling a rainbow). I came to the conclusion that is must be very difficult to be out in Egypt. Frankly, with the response that my mask received, maybe it is dangerous?
On the way to the airport we passed this kid riding down the street in Cairo with a giant tray of fresh pitas. He can’t be more than 10, right? We were all amazed!
Next flights: We leave at 1230PM from Cairo to a quick 1 hour layover in Dubai and then on to Colombo, Sri Lanka!
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