A Trip to Ancient Egypt via Seattle

Last May I was in Seattle and saw the ads for the upcoming exhibit of some of the treasures from King Tut's tomb as well as other artifacts from ancient Egypt. It sounded interesting at the time, but it wasn't until a month or so later that it occurred to me that I should take advantage of this opportunity. Talk about a delayed reaction! My parents recently moved to the Portland area and they were also interested in going, which was good because their car is an automatic transmission and for anyone who has visited Seattle you know that driving a stick shift on some of those hills in downtown is not for the faint of heart. We started off early in the morning to avoid all the football fans going up for the Ducks/Cougars game. All tickets are for a scheduled time during the day and our time slot was 11:30. Every 15 minutes the staff would let another wave of people into the exhibit. After we had parked and walked around a bit, we still had about 45 minutes to wait before we could go in. We wandered over to the tropical butterfly house, not sure if you had to have tickets for that or not, but figured it would be easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Inside was an 80-degree tropical garden with fluttering butterflies everywhere you looked. They seemed to pose for photos before heading off to the next destination. It was pure photographic heaven because whenever I try to get butterfly pictures in the "wild" it is so frustrating as they go meandering off across a busy street or into someone's backyard.
Finally, it was 11:30 and we were ready to go inside. All the visitors were herded into a room to watch a short clip on Egypt and then they turned us loose into the 10 galleries. There was about 100 of us and there were still people from the previous time slot in the first gallery.  The photo on the left is of the first statue we saw as we entered the doors. I didn't take pictures of all the names of the pharaohs because I knew I'd have a hard time remembering which name went with which picture. There were familiar names, such as Hapshepsut, Nofret, and Ramses as well as others I'd not heard of. Probably my favorite piece was the  statue of King Tut. The statue ends just above the knees but was at one time 17 feet tall and was one of a pair. It seemed to be displayed at its original height and the two statues must have been very impressive when they were first erected. Even though it's now broken in places, this surviving statue is still quite remarkable. Across the room from Tut was his father Akhenaten. He had the most distinctive face of all the statues. I was impressed that they all looked different and very lifelike. The eyes really did almost follow you around the room. The jewelry was amazing. Several of the earrings absolutely made my ears hurt they were so large and heavy looking. The necklaces looked a bit more manageable, that is if you didn't mind walking around stooped over. They certainly weren't something you would forget to take off before going to sleep, for a jog, or a swim in the Nile with the crocodiles.

The lighting inside was less than ideal for pictures and I almost laughed as I tried to figure out what buttons I was punching on the audio guide. It would have been helpful if they glowed like a cell phone keypad. But maybe the idea of 75 or so glowing listening guides would have ruined the atmosphere. In  between galleries, huge black and white pictures from the original discovery were hanging on the wall. It helped to give viewers an idea of what it must have been like to have discovered such a remarkable treasure. 

Once we were back outside and in view of the Space Needle, I felt like I'd just been in a time warp. That was even more apparent when looking overhead as a plane flew by pulling a long banner with a marriage proposal on it. Somehow, I don't think they proposed like that in Tut's day.