Egyptian Museum

The Egyptian Museum holds around 120000 object of antiquity, was built in 1835 and, after several moves and changes, was finally moved, by the last time, in 1902, to the present place, near the Tahrir Square, where the 2011 revolution took place. Nowadays a new museum is being built which will hold new pieces of art and also some art works of the present museum. 

We visited this wonderful museum on December 17. Among the most interesting collections are the complete set of objects of Tutankamon Pharaoh, one of the few sarcophagus discovered intacta (most of the others were stolen along the years). This pharaoh ruled for just 10 years, from the young age of 8 until 18 years old. The collection is so rich that we started to imagine how rich was some of the other rulers of Egypt that lived for much more time. Unfortunately, those others had the tomb stolen.

Another very interesting room was the Akenaton's, who believed there was only one God, Ra, the sun. Therefore he changed Egypt from polytheism to monotheism, but ruled for a short time and could not convince everybody. After his death, Egyptians came back to their old beliefs. His name and his body were excluded from his sarcophagus to deprive him from eternity, as Egyptians believed that, to have eternal life one must have four things: name, body, soul and shadow. Akenaton was the father of Tutankamon. 

Juscelino Kubitschek, who ruled Brazil in the fifties, built Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil, inspired by Aketaton, the Egyptian city he visited before.

In the photos you see the museum entrance, the Akenaton coffin and the Cheops statue, which was made of diurite, a very hard stone, in an age age when there was no iron or diamonds discovered. So, how did they polish it so well?