The Egypt Chronicles: Day 6

After spending the night on the train, needless to say, we were all a little groggy and exhausted. We went straight to our hotel, where we ate breakfast and then held our own Sacrament Meeting. It was really neat. Kind of weird that it was on a Friday, but in all honesty, since we've had the Sabbath on Saturdays in Jerusalem, it wasn't all that different to get used to. The Sabbath is the Sabbath.

We had just a little bit of time before we left for the Egyptian Museum. I have to say, this was one of my favorite parts of the trip. There was SO much to see in this museum, ancient coffins, statues of the ancient rulers, ancient papyri, ancient everything. There was too much to even really say briefly in a blog posting, so I'll just say a couple of the interesting things we saw:

1. The treasures found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen or "King Tut". Most people know King Tut as the ruler who was just a boy when he died (He was technically around 18). He actually didn't really stand out much in history. The main reason that he is so famous today is because almost all the tombs of the ancient pharaohs were robbed by grave-robbers who took everything. However, Tutankhamen's tomb was somehow never found by them, and remained undiscovered until the mid-1900's when it was found by an archaeologist. Everything that was originally placed in the tomb was recovered and put in the Egyptian museum. It was incredible to see the riches and artifacts they'd found there.

This was taken a few days earlier, when we were at the Valley of the Kings (burial place of the ancient Egyptian kings). Me and Richelle outside the actual tomb of "King Tut"

2. The mummy room. Wow. Have you ever seen a real mummy? If not, I suggest you find a way to do it. It is a crazy experience! We had to pay extra to enter this special room in the museum, but it was well worth it. This room contained the mummified bodies of at least a dozen ancient rulers, one of which was Rameses II who is believed to be the Pharaoh during the exodus when Moses delivered the Hebrews from captivity in Egypt. I looked at the body of the man who very likely spoke face to face with Moses. So crazy. Their heads and upper bodies were all unwrapped for us to see, and was it ever a sight to see! I can't believe that after 4,000 years, those bodies are still here, and still look like that! Some of them even still had hair! Sorry I don't have any pictures. Cameras weren't allowed in the museum, for obvious reasons. But man, it was amazing.

For lunch, we went to Hard Rock Cafe, Cairo edition! The best thing about Hard Rock is that this was honestly the sign on the bathroom door:

"No drugs or nuclear weapons allowed." What do you say to that?

After lunch, we went to the Muhammad Ali Mosque, which was beautiful (as shown below). It's a mosque Muhammad built himself to house his tomb.

Sorry there aren't a whole lot of pictures from this day. I wasn't "all there" health-wise so I wasn't really into doing the picture thing that day. I was a little out-of-it. In fact, after getting back from the mosque, I went straight to bed and slept 13 hours!! Kind of a boring night, but it paid off big time. I was ready for Day 7!