Thursday May 18, 2023
Today, we are starting out with the Egyptian Museum. It was required to have a reservation and ours is for 0920. We are able to take Tram 15 to cut down on some of the walking to get there. The museum is dedicated to ancient Egyptian archeology and history. It was founded in 1824 and is the worlds oldest museum devoted to Egyptian art and culture. It has a collection of over 40,000 artifacts which is second only to Cairo. We arrive a little early and since no place else that has said reservations are required has checked or seemed to care about our timed reservation, we check our bags and go to the entrance. Well, we have found a place that cares and tells us to come back in 15 minutes at our entrance time. We do get to go into a small temporary exhibit about papyrus with some artifacts.
Our time arrives and we enter the museum proper. As soon as we get into the first room, we see our first mummy. This is an early one, no fancy casket, just placed inside a large burial urn or pot. There is a statue of a kings daughter, Princess Redji, dating back to 2590 B.C. There are objects and human remains which came from a single tomb found in 1911 about 30 km south of Luxor. The tomb was untouched by antiquity hunters and natural events. It was packed with coffins, mummies, pots, wooden models and other grave goods. A bundle of bandages actually contains a body in a very contracted position and was inside a chest.
Also interesting are Middle Kingdom coffins which introduced lines of inscriptions on the sides and lids. They also have a set of eyes on one end of the left side which became a typical feature in theses coffins. Thedeceased in this case a provincial governor named Ini was lying on his left side facing the spot where the eyes were. This allowed ini to see and thus receive the items left in his tomb for sustenance in the afterlife. There were baked clay vessels, seed bags, and scaled down wooden models of boats, granaries and bread makers. I find the eyes intriguing, if not a little bit creepy (somebody’s watching you from the grave).
There is a blue dyed clay hippo that sticks out from the many red clay colored objects. There is a tomb for the chief steward of the Temple of Amun Re, appointed by King Ramses II. A statue of Penmernabu presenting a shrine surmounted by the head of a ram, an animal sacred to Amon Re. Some pottery and items were kept in houses as a cult of deities connected with domesticated aspects of life such as Tavares, a hippopotamus (remember the blue one) representing pregnancy and Bes, a dwarf shaped God with a grotesque look on his face to drive away evil spirits. There are statues of Pendua and Nefertari and pictures from some of the digs in the early 1900’s.
One interesting display uses cat scan technology to show items that the deceased is wearing including jewels, bracelets, necklaces, and an ancient IPod. The museum is laid out really well with English descriptions on practically all the displays. It is a place to learn about the ancient civilization with over 24 mummies, an important statue of Ramses II and an intact tomb of Kha and Merit. Other statues include those of Seti II and Ramesses nd a sarcophagus of Ibi.
There is a series of statues to Sekhmet that span a period of time and tells the differences between them. Sekhmet, known as the powerful one, was a fearsome Goddess.Her violence was symbolized by her lioness head. Daughter of the sun, she personifies the sun disc during the day. She is the pupil of Re, a necessary but dangerous form of the sun, which can give life, but can also burn and kill. She can suddenly turn into an angry lioness which inflicts on Egypt the scourges of the summer such as suffocating heat, starvation and illness. Her father then must outwit her and get her drunk so he can bring her back to Egypt in her tame form, that of the cat Bastet. She sounds lovely. We end with the Hall of kings which has a series of monumental statues that portray different Egyptian kings.
When we leave the museum, it is time or lunch. We do a repeat of the other day opting for a nice simple homemade pasta lunch at Buon Pasta. We get the same items as we each enjoyed the ones we got. We also decide to return to Palazzo Madama and see the displays we missed on the 1 Euro special night. We climb the tower in the palazzo, which gives us great views of the piazzas below it. We wader through a porcelain collection we missed and take a few pictures. Then, we go into the moat, not to swim but to enjoy some beautiful flowers, as it has been turned into a garden. This seems to us to be a good stopping point for today.
Can you guess what we had on the way back to our apartment. If you said natural gelato, you are a winner. We then shop for some dinner items and wine before we arrive and take the elevator ride up. Will we get another piano concerto tonight. We sure hope so. Another wonderful day in Torino.
Expenses Lunch at Boun Pasta 26E Gelato 4E Groceries for Dinner from Pam 11.88E Wine and items from Borello 15.22E Golden Eagle Apartment 106.60E Walked 5.7 Miles
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