The first thing you should know about the Egyptian Museum is that as of this writing, you’re not allowed to even carry a camera into the building. Take some photos in the gardens (there are sufficient artifacts there) either before or after you go through the museum. You’ll have to take your camera to a little stand and they give you a claim ticket. Those people who use flash when they shouldn’t ruined it for everyone.

For a car, a guide, and the entrance fee (including time at the Mosque) the cost was $50. The collections in the museum are massive, and you could easily spend days here—kind of like the Louvre. However, you can get plenty of highlights in a morning. The displays are divided into Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, with the second floor dedicated to the treasures of King Tutankhamen—including a jewelry room with the mask, wow! This is one of the few places where I would think you absolutely should have a guide, preferably one that knows hieroglyphics. Our guide taught us some of the common symbols, how to read the cartouches (there are two names for a king, his birth name, and his king name), how to look for some of the gods and goddesses (Hathor has two horns and a moon, Horace is a falcon, etc.)

The King Tut floor is amazing. How very fortunate that Carter found the tomb in tact. I had read that there was an extra charge for this, but unless it was included in the tour and we just didn’t know it, there weren’t any ticket stands, etc.

The Mummy Room, however, does cost an extra 70 Egyptian pounds. I’ve read debates online as to whether the mummies are worth all that extra money, but I’d have to say that they were. There were about 10 mummies in the room and the best one, in my opinion, is the mummy of Ramses II (the only Ramses worth mentioning). It’s so cool (and freaky) that you can still see hair, teeth, fingernails, etc. Of note, only the royal mummies have their arms crossed. No crossed arms, probably not a royal mummy. They took out the organs and put them in jars—liver, stomach, intestine, lungs. The heart was left in the body, because it would be weighed in the afterlife to judge whether the king was good or bad and could continue on to Osiris. The brain was sucked out after being melted with a big hot poker.

The gift shops here are a little lacking, I think, being that you can’t take photos inside. There are lots of postcards, but not of the artifacts. Regardless, you shouldn’t miss taking the photos in your mind.

We entered the museum by going through two security checkpoints with metal detectors. They first let you into the gated area surrounding the museum (this is as far as your camera can go, as no cameras are allowed inside the building). The second one was when you entered the actual museum building. Unlike most tourist spots in Egypt, this was one place where you could not beep when going through the metal detector.

We started our visit at probably the most famous artifact in the museum, the Palette of Narmer. For me, it was an amazing experience to see the piece of actual true palette that I had spent 2 weeks studying by the use of pictures in a class the previous semester. The palette depicts King Narmer uniting Lower and Upper Egypt. He is often considered the first pharaoh to rule over both upper and lower Egypt. The palette dates to around 3,200 BCE and is one of Egypt’s oldest surviving historical records. It is hard to imagine that the palette was caved over 5,000 years ago, because it remains in such good condition. I believe that seeing this palette is definitely worth pushing your way through the crowd of tourists surrounding the case.

The rest of the museum is just as overwhelming. There are many rooms on the two floors of the museum. The walls of each room are covered with cases containing artifacts, and in many rooms, statues stand in the middle. My favorite thing to see besides the Palette of Narmer was the Tutankhamen exhibit. The exhibit took up a good portion of the museum’s second floor. The exhibit included the well-recognized golden burial mask of Tutankhamen, the many enormous sarcophagi that he was buried within, and many other items that were buried in his tomb.

Before leaving the museum, I got my camera off the bus and took the only photos I could of the outside statues and the building. I could not pass up buying postcards of the Palette of Narmer and mailing one with a stamp of one of the Tutankhamen statues that are in the museum.

The Egyptian Museum is not like most museums on Earth. It is old, it is absolutely filthy, and it is dark. Museums in the West tend to be well-lit, thoughtfully spaced, and consist of galleries, whereas the Egyptian Museum has things lying all over the place. Overcrowding of objects is obvious by the unceremonious way that some of them, such as mummies, are displayed. That said, history is everywhere and it is a worthwhile experience - to see the full treasures of Tut is amazing. These pharaohs had some money.

As much as I try to better myself, the truth is I am just not a museum person. I was terrified when my friend told me he visited the Egyptian museum 3 times. My guidebook recommended setting aside 4 hours for the complete experience. I couldn’t leave Cairo without going to the Museum of course, but I was getting depressed thinking about it.

Luckily, I met another traveler with the same view of museums as me. My museum buddy and I barely lasted an hour and a half before the massive storeroom of antiquity was too much to bear.

Right before I left home, I explored the Egyptian exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For anyone who has been there... well, the Egyptian Museum isn’t it. It isn’t beautifully designed. Objects seem almost randomly placed. Only about 2/3 of the exhibits are labeled. Getting around is confusing, as different rooms (eras) look similar. The lighting is not very good.

But the actual exhibits themselves are amazing! The King Tut room is an absolute stunner, more gold than I could imagine in one place. The jewelry was by far my favorite of all exhibits, both in King Tut’s room and elsewhere. The sheer number of items and the variety in the collection was overwhelming, but in a good way. Apart from the jewelry, I liked the models best, especially wondering if the modelmakers really believed that the model people would come to life or if model boats would grow to full size on the other side.

The Royal Mummy room costs an extra fee to enter, but it seems impossible NOT to enter. You’re in Egypt, when will you ever see mummies of this age again? Some are still wrapped, some show their blackened skin, some still have hair and nails, and all of them are pretty fascinating. It’s a quiet and peaceful place, but very small and you may have to shuffle in a line to see the different cases.

The Museum is open from 9am-6:45pm. You are not supposed to take photos but of course everyone does and the guards are not strict. We tried to arrive early before the doors opened to beat the tourbus crowds, but they are just unstoppable. We were still technically the first ones in but the groups were immediately behind. Although it seemed like a sea of tourists outside, once inside it was easy to find ourselves in rooms alone. Very different from the descriptions I heard from people who went later in the day—everyone’s trying to get out of the afternoon heat, but then it's hot inside and very crowded. Admission is 20EP with a student ID, 35EP for the Royal Mummy room.

It's amazing to walk amid objects of art and history that are older than any man-made thing in America. There are mummies, coffins, shoes, King Tut, and Ramses. It's overwhelming to be among such ancient treasures.