The Whore of Bearbalon: Christopher's Journal

This afternoon I went down to the Franklin Institute to meet Ron, because our friend Joy had bought two tickets too many for the Tutankhamen exhibit there and offered them to us. Let me tell you, Saturday afternoon is not the ideal time to go see it: the crowds were fierce. It was hard to get close enough to any of the cases to see anything with the throngs, but we managed to see almost everything. The highlights for me were a gold ceremonial dagger found with the mummy which was some of the most exquisite goldsmithing I've ever seen-- the handle was decorated with granulated gold and the sheath was gold as well, crusted with jewels on one side and with repousée lions on the other side; the diadem found on the mummy itself and thought to have been worn by Tut when he was alive; and a couple chairs, one with a still-intact original woven-string seat that belonged to a young princess related to Tut, and one that belonged to Tut himself with a beautifully-shaped wooden seat. The most exciting thing for me, however, was a piece of a balustrade from Amarna that I've seen pictures of for years but didn't realize was in the exhibit:



Akhenaten (the tall guy in the pointy crown) is probably my favorite Pharaoh, because he was such a freak. In addition to being one freaky-looking Michael Jackson of an Egyptian, he outlawed the ancient religion and replaced it with monotheistic worship of the sun-disc Aten. Tutankhamen started the restoration of the old religion when he was Pharaoh after Akhenaten, but he died before he managed to get it completely switched back. The lady following him in the carving is none other than Nefertiti, as well. Anyway, I didn't expect to see this stele there and was very excited to get to see it up close without having to go to the Cairo Museum where it usually lives -- not that I'd complain about the opportunity, but I don't see it happening any time soon!

We walked tons and saw some of the rest of the Institute too, since we never get down there (like most people, we rarely take advantage of the local institutions like we really should!) My feet are very glad to be home!

I do seem to be having difficulties with gravity today, though. We stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up food for dinner, and while we were waiting for the bus to come home, the handle came off the bag and I dropped it, breaking the jar of pasta sauce we'd bought and poking a hole in one of the cans of soda. *grrr* Ron came to the rescue with the bag from the Tut gift shop, and we got the rest of the groceries home. Of course I had to go out and buy more sauce, though. I'm going to try not to break anything else tonight.