Torino - An Egyptian Museum?

An Egyptian Museum in Torino? Yes! And the second most important Egyptian Museum in the world, after the one in Cairo. I visited the Museum on Sunday morning, before my visit to Canada House. I got there just as it open at 8:30am, and was out by 10:30am, by which time there was a huge line to get in. The museum is organized as a path from one end to the other through 3 levels of the building, so I guess I was always ahead of the crowd.

There was some pretty cool art, artifacts, carvings, statues, drawings, tools, jewellry, mummies (both human and animal), and sarcophagi. As is becoming my typical experience in Torino, almost every sign was exclusively in Italian. Only a few items (presumably of the most importance) actually had English signs. Even in the gift shop, the only book about the museum was offered in two versions, both with the primary text in Italian, and then one version with English and German text at the end, and another with French and Spanish text at the end. For instance, I thought this was pretty neat, but have no idea when or where it came from...



When I get home, and I have more time, I will read the book, look at my pictures (and the pictures) in the book, and hopefully understand more the significance of what I got to see at the museum. That said, it was a great visual experience, especially the dramatically lit hall of the statues...



This is a statue of Ramses II making an offering to the Gods, which is a little unusual, I think, in that the Kings of Egypt seemed to equate themselves with the Gods in most of the other statues (often showing the King flanked by the Gods)...



There were lots of tablets with drawings or writings that are called "steles". Most were hard to photograph because they were behind glass, and there were lots of reflections, but I managed to get a few good shots of these too...



The Egyptians used hierglyphics for writing, as well as some kind of script later on. The museum has a cast copy of the Rosetta stone which was the key to deciphering the hierglyphs by showing the same text in Latin, Greek. Here is a shot of a piece of cloth with hierglphys on it...



Of course, no Egyptian museum could be complete with out some Mummies, and they had several, including their sarcophagi. It was interesting to see the various kinds of sarcophagi; including rectangular stone boxes, human form stone shapes, and an assortment of wooden ones that ranged from plainly carved, to elaborately painted, to gold plated. Here is the beautifully adorned sarcophagus of an Egyptian architect (buried with his wife, and all of their belongings)...



Lastly, I was surpised to find that they mummified cats, dogs, birds, and even crocodiles (as representatives of the Gods), but here is a photo of a human mummy (note that this photo is kind of creepy, so kids may not want to look at it)...