From the Bucket List: Egypt

I don’t know how long I’ve dreamed of going to Egypt, but its history and the romance of the Nile have captivated me for what seems like my whole life. And now I’m actually here!

Arriving in Cairo and meeting up with my group — eight travelers and two guides — we spent our first day at the Museum of Egyptian Civilization. Just inside the entry lies the oldest skeleton excavated in the country, dating back 35,000 years.

Egyptian history and mythology are intertwined, and the museum guides you on a well-organized journey through history, from the Stone Age through the Greco-Roman era to Pharaonic times, with detailed exhibits about mummification. Our guide, Ma Ha, gave us a graphic description of the process of ensuring all liquid is out of the body (mummification is basically dehydration) describing the various tools used for extracting the brain through the nose! A grisly process indeed. Important organs — the heart, kidneys, liver, stomach and intestines were mummified separately, and all but the heart were re-inserted into the body before it was placed in the sarcophagus.

There are collections of jewelry and makeup, and clothing from the Islamic era, like this wedding dress.

I fear some of the larger images aren’t loading properly, so I may have to fix them later.

Mummies hold pride of place in this museum, with more than two dozen famous pharaohs and their wives displayed on the lower level. Sadly, no photos are allowed down there, but we saw all the Ramses, Neferteri, and Hatshepsut, among many others.

A long drive with many delays took us to a Nubian village for our one-night stay at the comfortable Nub Inn. We had a sumptuous dinner of two kinds of rice, fish, chicken, vegetables, potatoes and salad, after which a group of men with percussion instruments played Nubian music and lured us onto the dance floor.