Cairo Day 4: Egyptian Museum

Our only sightseeing on this day was the Egyptian Museum.  We were up fairly early and it was a quick walk to the museum.  On the way we stopped to look in some souvenir shops.  We ended up not getting anything, but decided to come back after the museum because we didn't want to carry extra stuff around.

In terms of sightseeing in Egypt, the Egyptian Museum is one of the most expensive.  But with our school IDs we got half off on admission in a lot of places.  After getting tickets, we spent some time wandering outside the museum.  They had many statues and steles outside and some nice grassy areas.

As with other museums, we had to check the camera before we could go inside so unfortunately no pictures from inside.  On the other hand, taking pictures inside would have been pretty hard anyway due to the large crowds and generally poor lighting.

We had heard that the museum was overly packed, poorly displayed, and generally not very viewing friendly; sadly this was spot on.  Almost all of the individual signage was done on typewriters and faded, and unfortunately going through the museum was like making our way through a maze.

Stray kitty hanging out by the museum

Steles outside the museum

Despite the lack of proper display, the museum artifacts were fantastic.  The mummy coffins were pretty cool, but sadly also very poorly displayed.  They were stacked four high and pretty hard to see the top two.  We opted out of the mummy room, since it was going to be an extra 100 pounds ($20) each and they had some mummies on display outside of the mummy room.

We also got to see all of the artifacts from King Tut's tomb.  He had a ton of belongings!  They had some poster sized photographs of the tomb when it was found, and it was cool to see how everything was laid out in the tomb.

After about four hours inside the museum, we were exhausted.  We spent some more time outside on the museum grounds before we left.  The outside storage of some artifacts was sad to see.

Still wrapped up, hanging out on the museum grounds

Storage problems? Store it in the backyard!

Landscaping outside the museum

Artifacts hanging out by the exhaust system!

Storing artifacts by a pit of trash seems to be just fine in Egypt.  This was pretty sad to see.

We did a bit of shopping at a great little shop selling handmade crafts before returning to the hostel.

Catch up on the rest of our trip:
Holy Mother of Chaos
Cairo Day 0
Cairo Day 1

Cairo Day 2

Cairo Day 3: Part 1

Cairo Day 3: Part 2