Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The best museum yet

A sphinx guards a hall of ancient Egyptian gods and pharaohs (You can see me in the background)
Firstly, this post is on behalf of yesterday, so there will be two tonight.

Yesterday, we visited the Egyptian Museum Of Turin, said to be one of the best collections outside of Cairo. And I must say, their collection was amazing and displayed a good amount of ancient Egyptian art from the Old (first), Middle, and New Ages of ancient Egypt.

My favorite of the exhibits (there were three) was the hall of mirrors. It was, as the name suggests, a hall of mirrors, but my jaw dropped open in complete awe when I saw it. The hallway with dark walls, was dramatically lit, enveloping and highlighting a myriad of statues still standing proud and with an air of grandeur as in ancient times.

The hall of statues
Within the hall of statues, I had a few highlights, listed and described bellow.

The hall held many statues of Sekhemet, the goddess of childbirth, a fierce warrior and companion of Baste, the cat goddess often depicted with a woman's body and a lioness head. As a warrior and quite protective, she was outside many tombs, guarding the dead bodies.

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In the hall there was also a small assortment of Old Age sarcophagi. Here is one.



Stone sarcophagus 
Griffin, after asking for "KING TUT, KING TUT!" all afternoon, was pleased when we told him that this statue was, in fact, King Tut.

King Tut with a god
Next, an extremely well-preserved statue of Ramses II sit serenely upon his stone throne. Said to be one of the "highlights" of the museum, he is shown with the blue crown of war and pleated dress-like clothing. It is used in the symbol of the museum and is on the museum pamphlet. 
Ramses II
He's on the pamphlet!!!
 In the hall, there was a statue of a pharaoh in the crown of both upper and lower Egypt with two gods.

Pharaoh (left) "chill'n with the gods
Lastly, a ram guardian. He watched over the tombs.



Moving on. The first room we came into was a larger hallway flooded with natural light and filled with row upon row of sarcophagi, surrounded by glass cases of charms and the like.

There were quite a  few cases such as these, with the sarcophagi all lined up with their upper and lower layers right by them
Anubus, the jackal-headed god of the dead, looks on sternly from the side of a sarcophagus 
The room also contained long scrolls(spanning the whole room) with both The Book Of The Dead, telling of what happens to souls when the body is dead, and some sort of scroll about daily life in ancient Egypt.

Ancient Egyptian farmer harvesting wheat
Part of this exhibit had another couple of rooms here are some pictures of it.

This is a mummified cat. Cats were mummified to honor the cat goddess, Baste

FOOT!

A small statue of a pharaoh 

a fragment from a tomb wall

a boat for the afterlife for a pharaoh that includes slaves
There was also the tomb contents of Kha and Merit,  a fairly rich (but not royal) couple. Here are a couple of pictures.

The second layer of Kha's Sarcophagus

Well-preserved bread, seeds, and fruit for the couple's afterlife

Merit's makeup kit
Well, that'll be all in this post.
Thanks for reading.
Ciao!
-Hailey

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