Alice in Pharaohland

I went to the red-brick colored Egyptian Museum on Friday. I walked in the front gate(s) and was immediately shocked by how many tourists there were. I know I'm a foreigner. But I'm used to seeing Egyptians, not other foreigners. Sometimes even running into another AUC student on the street gives me a bit of a start.

Tourists - everywhere - in all states of undress. I've gotten so adjusted to the usual apparel here that I was simply struck dumb by what some of these people had on - or didn't, actually. One broad shouldered and broad accented Australian man kept taking his shirt off. He could do that, because he kept putting it back on. I didn't understand why. And a few slinky Eastern European female types were gallivanting around in what even my Western mind would call prostitute duds.

I felt a bit native, in a way. I knew, for example, that they were charging about three times as much as water usually cost. Oh, smug me.

Inside, the most common smell wasn't granite or age: it was the tang of human sweat. The museum isn't air-conditioned, so the monumentally calm statues gaze down on suffering, sweating peons of the present. The 100 degree (f) temperature outside didn't help, either.

The range and depth of antiquities in the place is beyond outstanding. There are so many spectacular pieces that they don't event attempt to group them by priority - just time period. There were quite a few pieces taking part in traveling exhibits, but it hardly mattered. I can imagine being the museum guy with that job:

"Hmm, which one of these five priceless necklaces shall we send out to be slobbered on by the Boston Museum? Well, how about this one?"

Tut and I had a man-to-man. He didn't say much, and I went away feeling a mite small.