Day 23: 25/9/12
Today I went to the museum in the city. There's an exhibition on at the moment of an Egyptian mummy. I think I've seen ads for this exhibition somewhere else before but I haven't been to it. So I went today anyway! There's other parts to the museum too. They are free and I can go any time so I decided to just stick with the mummy today.
I bought the ticket anyway and then you had to cue up at an area where they were going to show you a movie about the exhibition first. There was a family in front of me with kids that were arguing so I was watching them. Next thing one of the kids said 'Hi Mrs Glynn!'. One of the girls that I had last week for two days was standing in front of me. I had been looking straight at her but hadn't recognised her as she had a hat on! Typical- you can't go anywhere!!
Anyway I got into the exhibition without any further drama. It was all about a mummy called Nesperannub. He is about 3000 years old. They have the outer coffin and the mummy in its cartonage which you could see at the end of the exhibition. It was kinda cool because the paint and the pictures are really vivid, despite being so old!
It showed in the movie how they mummified the bodies. They took out their internal organs by cutting a little patch in their abdomen. They also took out the brain using a metal hook that they put up their nose. Then they covered the body in sand and left it for forty days and forty nights to draw out moisture. Then they covered the body in oils and wrapped it in linens. They covered the internal organs aswell and sometimes put them back inside the body, sometimes just in the coffin. Usually they preserved the heart from within the body, but this guy had no heart from some reason. Little amulets were also put inside and on the body to protect it in the afterlife- little figurines and ornaments. It took over 70 days to mummify a body.
The movie had most of that information and then there was an exhibition of artefacts- cases, coffins, statues.. there were lots of things. In the movie they showed the actual body but in the exhibition you can just see the cartonage. They obviously just know what's inside from scans and x-rays. It would have been cool to see the actual body!
After that I went back in through Queen Street, had a look in a few shops and then got the bus back. Didn't do a lot for the evening. The guys gave me Homeland on their hard drive to watch so caught up with that. When the lads came home xfactor was on so that took up half the night- seen as they have a break after every single act!!