Cairo Day 3: The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM)

Friday.  The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is the largest museum in the world (by exhibit space) and is the new pride of Cairo.  It has been 20 years in the making, and is located right next to the pyramids (Day 4).  Egypt moved a lot of artifacts from other museums into one large location here.  It is par excellence.  The building is so beautiful that I made the comment that even if there were no artifacts, I would still enjoy just walking around the building for a couple hours (not unlike a golf course). 

The main highlights were:

• The lobby, with a MASSIVE statue of Ramses/Ramesses II (widely considered the most successful pharaoh in history, and certainly the guy who ordered the most statues of himself, and even changed other statues to be of him), 60' high ceilings, and a fantastic view of the pyramids
• The Tutankhamun (King Tut) exhibit including his 25 lb solid gold funerary mask, 3 solid gold nested coffins, 3 nested burial chambers (he was quite surrounded!), and many of the 5000+ items found in his tomb (6 chariots, 5 beds, 50 bread baskets, 90 combs, etc).  Fun fact: despite being one of the most successful and famous pharaohs in Egyptian history, he died at only age 18.
• The Boats of Khufu, the oldest boats in the world.  Khufu was the pharaoh buried in the Great Pyramid, and there were 5 massive boats buried around the pyramid (for transporting him in the afterlife).   One of the boats has been reassembled after 5000 years and is hung in its own building.  A second boat is still being researched for reconstruction.
• THE OTHER 90% OF THE MUSEUM.  The sprawling museum has 100,000 artifacts from the 4 ages of Egypt, and is laid out in a nice logical matrix format, once you see the pattern in the map.

We got to the museum at the opening bell, and were there about 8 hours.  That included a lot of walking around, a lot of sitting, a lot of texting to figure out where everyone was even though we were browsing as a group - I told you it was big, a coffee break, a lunch break, an ice cream break, and some shopping.

One quirk of our AirBnB is that it was only a couple blocks from the museum and pyramids, but that distance is across a 10 lane highway.  So it was actually about 15 minutes by Uber with a lot of extra driving to enter the highway, exit, U turn, enter again, exit again, and drive to our place.  So after the museum we decided to try our luck darting across the highway instead (at dusk).  It was a little dicey, but if you read the Day 1 post you know that Cairo drivers are smart people who can adapt to obstacles, and we survived.  I regret not taking pictures along the way.  We stopped by a little fruit stand to get bananas and mangos, and tried to get some sleep before our 5k!

Just as an FYI, between the 5 of us we probably took 1000 pictures this day alone, so this is a very small sample.  If you want to see them all, let me know. 

Got there early.  You won't believe this, but the building is big.

We rushed to the Tut mask like some people rush to Thunder Mountain at Disney World (is that still a thing?)

King Tut was buried like a Matrushka doll

So many items in his tomb (and these are the small things, not the furniture).  And so many duplicates!  This is the last photo from the Tut exhibit, so any other images of tomb items are from other tombs.  I was struck by how many pharaohs I have never heard of, but it's obviously not surprising when you think about it.  I don't know the line of rulers from Romania, either.

Coffee Break!

Passing back through the lobby, with the colossus of Ramses II.

A nice outdoor plaza with papyrus, water, stone, sun, statue.  Egypt.

The first Boat of Khufu, the oldest boat in the world, and I believe the oldest organic (non-stone) artifact in the world.   The boats were buried inside boat-sized chambers underground, but interestingly this one was found disassembled, which made assembly challenging.  This boat may have seen water in bringing the body to the tomb, but it likely was built just because the pharoah becomes the sun god after death, so this "solar boat" leads him across the sky. (Edit: I was wrong)

Classic engravings

These models reminded me of the terracotta army in China, but smaller.

Lots of posing at historical sites.

Anatomical models carved out of wood

Mummified crocodile with Sam in background

Winged scarab

Ushabtis (about 2" in size) were buried with the pharaoh to become his servants in the afterlife.  That probably explains why there are so many.

Another sarcophagus

If you want to eat goose, chicken, duck, or sparrow in the afterlife, you are buried with appropriately sized takeaway containers.

Speaking of food, this is our salad course at lunch/dinner (3 pm). Mmmm.  This could be a whole meal for me!

We got to watch them make feteer (flaky multi-layered savory or sweet filo dough cakes).  What you are seeing is paper-thin dough being somehow spun thinner.  We didn't order feteer here because we had a place lined up in Aswan.

Ice cream?  Of course.

Good bye GEM, it was a wonderful day.  If we hadn't survived highway frogger, this photo would have been the end of the blog, but we did, so let's keep going.

Rooftop tea at our AirBnB, overlooking the pyramids and GEM.  It seems there was no light show this evening (we waited a couple hours) and ultimately decided not to stay up to overhear the live outdoor GEM concert of "American rapper, Mark." Marky Mark?!?  NO, R&B singer Brian McKnight.

Getting these lined up is harder than it looks.  Apparently.

Candid shot of me on the roof pondering pyramids and appreciating life while sipping hot mint.  Life is good.