22/10 and 23/10 : Exploring the ancient treasures

Hello again! Thursday and Friday Quentin and I went to visit the 2 most famous Cairene attractions : the egyptian museum of antiquities on thursday, and the piramids of Giza on friday. It was wonderful to see it again. In the museum i particularly ejoyed the rooms of the Old Kingdom, which has always been my favourite period, since it has still some prehistorical features. We saw the statues of Rahotep and his wife, of Sennefer, of the dwarf Seneb, and many many coffins. I didn't know where to look first, because there is just sooooo much to see. The Narmer palette, a hughe statue of Amenhotep III, the head of Hatsjepsoet, the jewels of Hetepheres, the gold pf Tanis and of course the famous funerary items of Tutanchamun. What interested me most was the jewels the egyptians wore, not because i'm a golddigger :p, but because it is just thrilling to know that they actually wore it, that they have put it around there necks, arms, wrists, etc. These little objects really all have a story to tell, if only they could talk! Too bad the museum is badly lit. Some objects were hard to see due to the lack of light. But they are currently building a new museum in Giza, which will open in 2015.
Quentin and i were very surprised to see that a lot of people ignored the rooms with tomb models. Those rooms were stuffed to us with amazing artefacts, but maybe that's because we're not normal tourists =). The tomb models were all so crafty, and they show us what the egyptians did in everyday life, and how they did it : brewing beer, stearing a boat, baking bread, cutting the heads of animals,... Very interesting. We even saw one showing three egyptians polishing a stone block.
One little anecdote : we were in an Old Kingdom room, and suddenly a very fat american man (kind of a stereotype, isn't it?) sat down... on a 4000 year old stone offering slab!!! He was joined very cosily by his equally fat friend. Quentin and i were almost bursting with anger.

The piramids of Chufu, Chafre and Menkaure were great as well. Very impressive that they managed to make those colossal monuments at the time. Luckily the weather wasn't too hot. The sattellite piramids were nice to see as well. We could get into a tomb adjacent to the piramid of Chafre (the middle one in height and with an almost intact piramid top). There were reliefs on the walls, depicting people offering animals, and of course hieroglyphs. We could get into the shaft leading to the actual burying room with sarcophagus. It all felt very Indiana Jones-like :p! We also saw the sphinx, who eternally stares into the distance.
Too bad the piramid area is crowded with some very very annoying salesmen, who try to sell you very stupid things, by putting it into your hands and asking the money, as if by taking it you agreed to buy it. So before you know what's going on, they urge you to pay them. After a while we got so angry at them, that one of them ran away cursing at us :D!

I'm very happy to have seen these wonders of Cairo!