The artifacts at the Cairo Museum represent the best that ancient Egypt has to offer, including fabulous statues, jewels of glittering gold and precious stones, miles of inscribed and decorated reliefs, the coffins and sarcophagi and mummies of kings, pottery spanning the ages, and countless pieces that are classified as “minor objects” but that are far from unimportant. Exploring the museum properly takes weeks—it is an unparalleled treasury of aesthetic pleasures and scholarly satisfaction, and thousands of tourists visit it each day. Opened in 1902, the museum celebrated its 100th birthday two years ago, not long after I […]
