After spending the entire Friday in the Egyptian Museum, I definitely have a case of pharaonic fatigue. They have jam-packed so much into the museum that it makes the head hurt trying to take it all in. One guide book says that if you spend one minute looking at each item, it will take nine months to see them all. I think that's an exaggeration: surely it would take a full year.

My day began with a lame breakfast at my hotel, then padding around the Hilton mall's closed shops awaiting the museum's opening hours. Then standing in line for the metal detector, then another line for tickets, then a third line to go into the museum building itself, and then a last line for another metal detector. Guards everywhere, with guns. They don't want tourists hurt here.

Exploring the place took many hours, of course, and there's plenty to see. Unfortunately the VAST majority of items have very little or no labelling. Lighting is poor or non-existent, and a good layer of dust covers some things, such as a gorgeous red glass vase from Roman times. In some circumstances, museum cases have shelves quite literally 10 or 12 feet up, so there's not a chance of seeing things in them, except for a glance from below.

Despite the rather poor presentation, the thousands of objects contain many individual pieces worth the viewing. Of course there's the King Tut treasures, but also zillions of beads, preserved loaves of bread thousands of years old, mummies, statues, toys and models, paintings, papyrus, cloth, garments, sculptures, pots, glass, stone tools, and on and on and on. Here are a few of the best of the 100+ photos I took of things interesting to me.


The largest single display area in the museum



A really big statue -- but I don't recall of whom.



One of King Tut's sarcophogi.



Dog mummy!



Beads -- glass -- look just like modern plastic ones. They have zillions of these.



Scattergories anyone? They had four of these large 20-sided dice with letters on them.


After the museum closed I drank 3/4 liter water and then tried to take the subway to Giza, hoping that it would save on the cab fare. It cost only half a pound to go quite a ways, however I ended up between two maps in the guide book, with pretty much no clue where I was, and had to take a taxi anyway. Got back to base camp about 10:45.