Egypt: Day 2 - Egyptian Museum @ Museum of Cairo

Our second day in Egypt started early. Well, early for someone who’s on a holiday anyways, heh! JC and I didn't have much plan for the day except for our "appointment" with the mummies at the Egyptian Museum, which is located just across the Nile from our hotel. It's pretty much free and easy after the museum tour although later on in the evening, we would be taking a domestic flight with Egypt Air to Luxor.

As we arrived at the hotel quite late the previous night, we were not aware of the areas around our hotel. Turned out it is located in quite a nice location so we just took our time to take some photos while on the way to the museum.

We then continued walking towards the museum. From afar we could see empty buses parked near the museum.

And then we saw the queues. Long queues.

No, not long queues but very long queues that snaked well outside and along the museum fence.

And we were like, “Oh sh*t! We should have come here earlier!”

(And yes, you should either come here early or a bit later to avoid the tourist crowd.)

And so we read a book instead in the compound of the museum. A National Geographic guidebook on Egypt that was brought by the nerd between the two of us, heh!

We checked where we would like to go, which sections and which floor of the museum. The museum only has two main floors but it has the world’s largest collection of artefacts of Pharaohs, some as old as 3,500 years. The most famous one is probably the Gold Mask of Tutankhamun – made of solid gold, some 10 kg of it.

Apart from treasures from the tombs of Tutankhamun and some other pharaohs, there are also several real mummies of kings and royal family members of the Egyptian Empire, which is really cool (although “cool” is not exactly the word that I’m looking for) and kind of scary too. Probably not for the fainthearted ;)

Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside of the museum. All cameras have to be left at a booth near the museum entrance.

After getting a good eyegasm for a few hours at the museum, we left and killed our time exploring Tahrir Square and the areas on Zamalek, where our hotel is located, before leaving for the airport around sunset time.

Have you been to the museum before? What do you think of it?

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Further Information:
Egyptian Museum Wikipedia
Egyptian Museum General Info 
Photos of some of the artefacts at Egyptian Museum

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Going to Cairo, Egypt?? Do check out these Cairo hotels for your accommodation requirements there. For other www.RambleAndWander.com blog entries on Egypt, click here.