20250311 Tuesday, March 11, 2025. Return to Cairo, The Grand Egyptian Museum

20250311 Tuesday, March 11, 2025. Return to Cairo, The Grand Egyptian Museum

We pulled our curtains aside this morning and were surprised to see the hot air balloons rising over the West Bank.  There was a column of smoke that was probably from a burning sugar cane field that the balloonists had to deal with, but it did show how the air currents in the area varied with altitude.

This was a morning of good byes to the ship’s crew members and an exchanging of contact information amongst passengers as our journeys begin to diverge.  We stayed in our Bus A, Bus B and Bus C groups on the way to the Luxor airport.  Getting through the security gauntlet was just as bad as ever, getting patted down twice and having our bags x-rayed twice.  All the Chinese in our group got “randomly” selected for secondary bag inspections where we had to open our bags so the security people could rifle through the contents and then sign into a log book with names, and passport information.  Maybe they were afraid we were trying to smuggle Egyptian cats in our handbags.  The flight was mostly but not exclusively Viking passengers.  

As we flew towards Cairo, we could see lots of military training sites below in the desert with nests dug into the sand for tanks in various formations.  In contrast to that, the lifegiving nature of the Nile is quite evident in stark contrast to the vast tan wastelands that stretch as far as the eye can see on either side of the green stripe of the Nile’s course.  A lot of the desert is badlands giving ancient testament to times in the ancient past when the area was subject to a much wetter climate.  It isn’t sand dunes, which one might envision as being the desert in Egypt.

After the short flight, we were sorted into new bus groups based on what choice of optional excursions passengers had elected for the last day in Cairo.  The two main options were the Grand Egyptian Museum and the Coptic Quarter, which is where most of the Egyptian Christians gravitate towards.  There is supposedly a Church built over the site where Mary and Jesus sought refuge during the time when Herod was committing atrocities against the Jews.  It is also believed that Christianity began its spread in Egypt when St. Mark arrived in Alexandria, becoming the first Partriarch, although it remained an underground movement during the rule of the Romans.

We opted to see the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM). We received bag lunches after arrival to the InterContinental Cairo City Stars Hotel which consisted of small rolls with beef, turkey and cheese, along with some lettuce, pepper and olives for garnish. 

There was also a small tray with Egyptian sweets for dessert.  We did not get off the bus, but our luggage was unloaded for delivery to our rooms. We then rode the bus across town to the Grand Egyptian Museum, which was about an hour’s drive across town and over the Nile onto the West Bank and Giza.  We drove past the Citadel we had visited on the first day’s tour of Cairo and headed to the base of the Pyramids where the Grand Egyptian Museum is located.

The museum is aptly named because it is quite a grand museum.  There are 12 galleries arranged in orders of periods and items of sociological, religious and historical significance.  When completed, the GEM will be 82,000 square meters, which will be larger than the Paris Louvre, which is 73,000 square meters.  When completed, it may also be the only museum in the world with as many Egyptian artifacts as the British Museum.  Currently, most galleries have some exhibits installed and more are being installed daily.  There is a separate wing that will ultimately house the Tutankhamen collection, including all the items we saw earlier at the Old Egyptian Antiquities Museum, but that is several months away from completion and opening.  We did notice that our admission tickets are valid for 6 months so who knows.

The GEM is built on a site that aligns with the two largest of the great pyramids of Giza, and these feature prominently through the windows of the back of the galleries.  The building is also designed with pyramids and triangles everywhere.  While this is cool, it can make negotiating the stairs a little tricky because everything is at odd angles.  

Fatma, our Viking Egyptologist was key in making the most of our 3 hour visit, showing us some of her favorite highlights of the present collection, and fitting the items into context of Egyptian society both in the past and as it pertains to currently beliefs and practices.

 
There are thousands of statues and carvings to be sure, as well as all manner of other artifacts, tools, artwork and funerary accessories.  There are plenty of coffins and sarcophagi, but most of the mummies are still located at the old Egyptian Antiquities museum that we had seen earlier.  

It is interesting to see how artistic expressions have morphed over the last 3-4000 years or so.  Did you know that during the early Egyptian dynasties that all people were depicted with two right feet?  It wasn’t until the Ptolemaic era when the Greeks pointed out that people have both left and right feet.  We can also see the Greek influence in the depiction of women with more curvy bodies in the Hellenistic era.

 
Fatma was good at pointing out the parallels between major religions that seem to have branched out from common roots. Ancient Egyptian priests practiced their rituals 5 times daily, a habit subsequently adopted by early Christians in the monastic period, and subsequently adopted by Muslims.  And the concepts of immaculate conception, death and resurrection are also notable.

And there are plenty of examples of “How did they manage that” with statues being carved into stones that were too hard to work with copper tools a thousand years before the Iron Age.

An intriguing item on display was a carved make up compact in the shape of a locust.  It was like a transformer which could be opened up to reveal the make up pigments, brushes and applicators.

Isis in the form of a falcon conceiving Horus with the reconstructed Osiris

Hathor

The GEM is more than simply a museum.  When it is completed, it will have public facilities like a convention center, complete with hotels and subway links to the Cairo Airport.  The museum will be physically linked to the Great Pyramids of Giza with an electric tram.  It will be interesting to see who things have changed in another 5-10 years.

We were pretty tired at the end of 3 hours, and got to check into our rooms. Somehow we got assigned a room on the 12th floor, a smoking floor.  We can smell the tobacco smoke in the hallway, but fortunately the room itself wasn’t noticeably smoky despite the presence of an ash tray on the coffee table.  The room is huge with two double beds so we have a room to spread out, even if just for a night.

There was a final dinner in the hotel restaurant. Unfortunately, the dining room was crowded, chaotic and the tables they had designated for Viking seemed to be randomly scattered through out the main dining hall, rather than in a small quieter area.  A lot of people wanted to exchange their farewells.  We have met a lot of nice people. It seems everyone on this ship was very well travelled.

After dinner, we took as stroll through a huge shopping mall connected to the hotel.  It was bustling with customers and there were no boarded up stalls in the mall.  There was a store on the ground floor that was an Egyptian version of Fred Meyers with groceries and general merchandise, and it was interesting to see similarities and differences in the food and wares for sale. People all over the world have a lot more in common than differences by far.

Tomorrow we have breakfast and then head off to Alexandria. We’re not looking forward to that bus ride.