The Egyptian Museum of Cairo
There are two types of museum visitors: those that eat up every piece of information, and those that try to breeze through as quickly as possible while soaking up what their little brains can handle. I’m type 2, that guy that looks for the interesting photo-worthy nuggets while trying not to let my very finite brain get overwhelmed with TMI. (Yeah, I said that too in my pyramids post. Just trying to keep it real folks). I suppose a third type of museum goer is the type that tries to find something witty/funny (in his own estimation perhaps) to say about various pieces on display. Guilty.
Yes, there were a lot of really cool very old things I saw. Not being into Egyptology, I didn’t really know or appreciate well what I was looking at. The mummy rooms, at an extra cost, were my favorite features of the museum. Photos not allowed. But the mummy I could take a picture of was the mummified baboon, a beloved royal pet hoping to make it to the afterlife to keep the deceased company.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the groups of boys who would come up politely and ask to take a selfie or group photo with me. We had some fun together posing. Even a few veiled Muslim moms were in on the fun shooting for their kids. It was a shared piece of humanity I experienced even in the midst of language shortcomings.
If you’re in town, you gotta make this visit. Yes, it’s true that 10 tourists were murdered by extremists on a tour bus outside the museum in 1997. There is a heavy police presence in any of these tourist sites and I felt quite safe during my time in Cairo.
