Thursday 23 November 2006

Erik in Cairo part 2: The Egyptian museum and Koshary :D


Another pharaonic day we had today, met up at the Egyptian museum, remember me describing it as really huge? (check topic "Out and about in Cairo"), today we managed to go all around it: both floors, all extra rooms and also the two rooms of the royal mummies.

A lot of the things you see there are really impressive! All small pieces and stuff, different tiny vessels, jewellery, statuettes etc...Some of the stone sarcophaguses were quite amazing! they looked just like new, Erik was fooled by some of them, thought they were models not originals, until he started reading the notes on them, the symbols curved on them look so clear and sharp like they were made yesterday! All the colours they used are quite interesting too and quite well saved, and i needn't talk about almost everything in Tut Ankh Amon's room, especially the world famous mask of him.
The mummified (i love that word, it sounds so funny) kings and queens are something to see, just thinking of dead bodies surviving for thousands of years in the shape you see, well...that's quite impressive! Almost all of them still have their teeth! (one of the queens had her pet baboon mummified next to her too). But the mummies that impressed me the most were those of animals, you just must see the two crocodiles and that huge fish in the animal mummy room on your right hand side, that's a real sight!
Another interesting thing about mummification was the four vases that were used by pharoes to store the internal organ of the mummified person, just imagine all the people sitting around the dead, getting all that from inside him and storing it into vases, and they had four vases, which make you think that for examlpe, one was for the heart and lungs, one for liver and kidneys, one for the brain and the eyes, and the fourth for whatever they decided to keep from the rest of the organs. I also think the vases were actually designated for certain organs because in most cases they had as covers the heads of four pharaonic gods that repeated for each set, e.g. the head of Isis contained the liver and kidney, the head of horus had the head and eyes, and so on.
After finishing with the museum, i took Erik for a walk around, first along the Nile to the Qasr el Nile bridge, for two reasons: 1-It's probably the most famous bridge on the Nile. 2-The feeling you get standing in the middle of it...you actually feel it vibrating under you with the passing cars, the bigger the car the sounder the vibration, freeky? but cool!
Crossing the bridge to the other side, we went into the Cairo Opera House, went around it, made some photos of course (although i'm quite disappointed with myself these days, i make so little photos, maybe coz i'm so used to what i see) and went back, walked into down town looking for Koshary El-Tahrir that i thought i saw there somewhere, but i couldn't find it, i think i'm starting to imagine things that don't exist or exist in another place. So i just deicded to go to the one i guaranteed to find, the one in Nasr city.
Koshary time! i actually missed that dish, really missed it...For me, i always consider taking a foreigner (including Arabs) for Koshary is a risky move, it's quite a specific dish and quite a lot of people don't like it, so i was quite happy with Erik's reaction to it, he quite liked it and started wondering why they don't have something similar to it in Norway as fast food. I'm starting to think we can get him to live in Egypt without much trouble, especially considering his impressive pronounciation of Arabic words!
So another sightseeing day over, regardless of the crowded Thursday night streets, my mood is boosted up to its maximum, and even those same street didn't succeed to ruin it.

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