Our next hotel was the Marriott Cairo, which was originally constructed on Zamalek Island to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. The hotel is decorated with many treasures and works of art, and has beautiful gardens with fountains and lush landscaping.
Today we visited the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. The museum has over 120,000 objects (some dating back to 4000 BC) in its 107 halls, and it comprises the world’s greatest collection of Ancient Egyptian artifacts. The highlight of the collections was the King Tutankhamun objects. I believe there were over 5,000 artifacts alone in this collection, including his throne, jewels, death mask, personal bed and funerary jars that held his organs.
Other highlights included the beautiful statue of Tuthmosis III and the extraordinary statue of Akhenaten with its strangely deformed head that contrasts the great beauty of his favorite queen Nefertiti.
The mummy room houses eleven royal Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt, including the Great Ramses II, Egypt’s longest ruling pharaoh. The mummy of Queen Hatchepsut was only recently identified through DNA that was obtained from her organ found in a burial jar. Hatchepsut was the only female pharaoh in Egypt. According to the description next to her mummy, she was obese. After her death, her name was removed from all the monuments and public places.
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