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Egyptian Museum of Antiquities : Cairo, Egypt : Trip Report

Egyptian Museum of Antiquities

A museum so good we visited it twice.

Most of the sites we visited had already been cleaned out by grave robbers and the few tombs which had anything in them had their contents moved here, to the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in downtown Cairo. The most notable tomb that of King Tut Ankh Amon (King Tut) whose tomb was found completely intact has almost the entire collection in this museum. The few things that aren't here are on a traveling exhibition which for some reason we missed in Chicago when it was there just prior to our trip. The highlight here was seeing the solid gold mask which we're told will never leave Egypt again.

The rest of the museum is amazing in terms of the things there but the way it's organized leaves a lot to be desired. When there is a label it's a small typewritten cards in Arabic and English. Most of the cards look very old and are yellowing. We would have appreciated a more modern "presentation" of the artifacts. Ok, enough whining, the museum is still amazing.

On our first visit we had only two hours in the museum and in most museums that would be enough but not here. After leaving the museum, Lily, Melanie and I decided to come back later in the day. We cut our visit to the souk short and took a taxi back to the museum to catch another 1 ½ hours before it closed. After satisfying ourselves we walked around and found a restaurant that was open near the museum and had a fairly decent meal before hailing another taxi back to our hotel.


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Next: Visiting the The Citadel.