Yesterday, I finally trucked it on over to the Egyptian National Museum. For those who don't know, this museum is where all sorts of crazy famous stuff is kept. Like the finds of Tutakhamun's tomb. Or the Fayum Portraits (the only known instance of portraiture in the ancient world, the Fayum Portraits are a series of paintings from the Christian community of the 3rd - 5th centuries done on wood panels designed to resemble their sponsors... as they were attached over their mummified face so that their soul could find their body after the Resurrection). Or thousands of thousands of other treasures.
The collection truly is unlike any other, dwarfing any other archeological museum in the world. That said, the curation job does its best to destroy the impressiveness of this collection. Nothing in the museum is meaningfully labeled, and priceless artifact upon priceless artifact are stacked to the ceiling. Nevertheless, it is not an experience to be missed, and I'm glad I went.
That said, while wandering around these amazing 4,000-5,000 year old artifacts for hours, as I returned to the love of Pharaonic (and continued my love of post-Pharaonic) Egypt, I realized that I have a kind of permanent sense of disbelief for Pharaonic objects. Notably, that I suspect that every Pharaonic object, every sphinx, every obelisk, every carving is made of styrofoam. Basically, I realized that my conditioning of Egyptian "artifacts" stems entirely from the Lost River of the Pharaohs ride at Water World in Denver, CO. It's kind of hard to get over this association once it's in your head, no matter how priceless and rare the object. Kind of like having a song stuck in your head, but rather that you unconsciously associate all of the antiquities with a cackling styrofoam head, fake smoke, and being thrown down a manmade stream in an inflatable raft.
This probably says a lot about me.
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