Oct.1, 2010

We went to the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities today. It's a museum of rich artifacts from tiny statues to huge pillars and mummy coffins and even the mummified bodies are on display! The skin and hair is still intact. Heck, all they need is a little restilyn filler, and their faces would be good as new! We saw King Tut's solid gold mask that was found in his coffin.

The museum is everything that I read about--hot, no A/C (except in the mummy room), and really big and dirty. A sand storm came last night and the workers were sweeping up piles of sand INSIDE the museum!

Security is unbelievable here. All tour groups have to have an ARMED undercover police officer with them at all times. He sits at the front of the bus, and watches us and our tour bus while we're visiting each site. They look like Secret Service guys in suits and aviator sunglasses. All the sites have armed, uniformed police officers, and each site has at least two metal detectors and x-Ray machines through which every person must pass before entering each site. Taking pIctures of police officers and government buildings are not allowed, but we've seen lots of machine guns slung over the shoulders of police officers.

Later, we went to Memphis (the original Memphis) and saw a large sphinx made out of alabaster. We also went to Sakkara and saw the colossal statue of Ramses II. It's so cool to see these artifacts that I studied in college, and had only seen them previously in textbooks.

In Sakkara we saw the very first "mastabas" (step pyramids). They look like the Myan temples in Mexico. They were built almost 3,000 years ago!

So far, so good with the food. I'm sticking with my plan to eat only cooked foods, and it's working. A couple people in our 16-person group are already sick with "Mummy's tummy."

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