We try to visit the Egyptian Museum on the edge of Tahrir Square once each winter during our stay in Cairo. One of the worlds great Archeological Museums since its construction in 1904, it will likely remain a major drawing card for any visitor even after the official opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in July.
This year, I had a specific goal in mind for our visit: During our cruise on Lake Nasser, two weeks earlier, I had learned that the oldest surviving manuscript of Latin poetry was discovered at Qasr Ibrim, the now-submerged island we drifted past early on the cruise. More importantly, the manuscript could be found in the Egyptian Museum. Like the Blues Brothers, we were on a mission from God! Or at least on a mission in memory of Mother Brendan, my Sophomore year Latin teacher in 1961.
Would we be able to find this scrap of poetry on a shard of papyrus somewhere in the Egyptian Museum with over 120,000 artifacts - many of them stashed in the basement storerooms?
Our ace in the hole on this trip through the museum, as usual, was our friend and professional Egyptian guide, Rashid. As we entered the museum, Rashid headed to the office of one of his friends to check on whether my scrap of poetry was still on exhibit.
While Rashid was researching our poetry sample, we began a brief walking tour of the museum to check on a few of our favorite exhibits. We stopped first at the Narmer Palette - an item many visitors are anxious to see if they ever took a course in Art History, owing to its origins around 3000 B.C.
(Please note that clicking on any of the following photos will take you to our Flickr album with higher resolution images and additional pictures.)
Next, we stopped at the sarcophagus of Djedhor, another well known example of early Egyptian art, history and culture.
I was admiring the collection of Aphrodite sculptures when Rashid caught up to us.
Museum staff didn't have a specific location identified for our Roman poetry fragment, but did suggest that we look in two papyrus galleries on the second floor.
We passed another two of our favorites statues as we headed to the stairway to the upper level.
The best way to photograph much of the papyrus room display is from the opposite side balcony with a telephoto lens. I couldn't resist capturing a couple of more pictures to add to our Egypt collection.
We moved slowly through the Papyrus galleries, looking carefully at the contents of the sloped display cases. Suddenly, there it was!
For the benefit of other Latin poetry aficionados, it's located in Gallery 29. Here is the view of the gallery entrance as seen from in front of Gallus' work. Mother Brendan must have been looking down on me from heaven, providing guidance. Here's a link to some background on Gallus and a translation of our fragment provided by Roman Times online magazine.
While we were on the upper level of the museum, we paused to stand in line with many others to visit the Tutankhamun exhibit - yes, it is still located in the old museum. The line is slow moving but worth the wait; but no photos inside! Another very significant room to visit, and not nearly as crowded is the Tanis Collection. See our visit to Tanis post here, and tour the Tanis Collection at our blog post here.
We headed back downstairs to take a look at one of our favorite galleries documenting the Amarna Period and pharaoh Akhenaten, frequently acknowledged as the father of monotheism.
We had several posts from the Armana area last year, beginning here.
As we were moving toward the exit of the museum, we encountered an entirely new exhibit: The Reconstructed Tomb of Hesy-Ra. With exhibit space opening up as many artifacts move to the Grand Egyptian Museum the old Egyptian Museum is finally receiving some maintenance and upgrades. Signage and lighting is improving, particularly on the second level to this point. Some artifacts are apparently coming out of storage and/or being re-presented.
The Tomb of Hesy-Ra is a particularly improved and reconstructed example. This tomb was discovered near Saqqara in 1861by the early French archeologist, Auguste Mariette. Containing a number of carved wooden panels of Lebanese cedar, five of these treasures were moved to Cairo (the Museum of Bulaq was the primary home of Egypt prior to the opening of the Egyptian Museum in 1904) in 1868 and the tomb was covered over and abandoned until around 1910.
The condition of these restored wooden panels is quite remarkable.
After exiting the museum, we walked across the plaza in front of the Ritz-Carlton toward the infamous Mogamma government center, undergoing remodeling for at least the past five years with plans to turn it into a first class tourist hotel. But this year, banners on the building proudly proclaim that it will become a Mariott Autograph Collection Hotel. This is part of a very ambitious plan to renovate much of downtown Cairo as government agencies move to the new capital about thirty miles to the east.
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