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Day 29, 2 August 2012, The Egyptian Museum, Midan Tahrir, Cairo - We set off reasonably early to walk to the Museum and arrived respectably 22 minutes after opening time at 9. Would have been earlier but a very friendly fellow just had to show us his perfume shop... We know, we know, we know not to go - but just over here he said. No No we said, and yet 2 corners and a 100 metres later, guess where we found ourselves. Pesky built in western politeness. We did however not go in. Chalk one up for westerners who've just spent a month in Africa. The guidebook did warn us of the scale of the museum but it is still a shock to the system and only selectively air-conditioned. We soldiered on regardless and thanks to our early start made it upstairs to see the funerary treasures from Tutankhamen's tomb before the hordes descended. We feel doubly blessed to gaze upon the golden mask of the boy king because in November of this year the exhibition will in fact be in Sydney Australia! Imagine the disappointment for Australians visiting Cairo at that time. The scale, and craftsmen's skill that has gone into producing the golden coffin and the many treasures from the tomb is mind-boggling when you realise they are over 3000 years old. It's times like this that I wonder if anything we own today will stll be around and gazed upon 3000 years from now. The highlight for us was the mask and the golden coffin but close second came the Hall of Royal Mummies. It seems strange to be looking at the faces of human beings who lived and breathed and walked the streets of Egypt 1000s of years ago. I'm sure when they were preparing their elaborate tombs and treasures they never realised their graves would become magnets for grave robbers. Such was the desecration even in ancient times, that priests held great fear for the bodies of the kings and removed them to a secret cache at Deir al-Bahari in Luxor near the Valley of the Kings. They took the opportunity to rewrap some of the mummies and label them for posterity. So well did they hide them that it wasn't until the late 1800s that a farmer's goat fell down a hole and he found the cache. Enterprising fellow that Mr Gurna was, items started appearing on the black market and the Antiquities Service managed to track down the family and secured the mummies - shipping them along the Nile to Cairo for preservation at the Egyptian Museum. Funnily enough the Customs officials didn't have a box to tick for "mummies" on the inventory sheets - so listed them as salted fish. Ahh the trials and tribulations of bureaucracy.
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Joan Hi Guys ,would love this place ,the history is awesome