King Tut!

I think the photo says it all... this afternoon we visited the King Tut exhibit with the Thisbe Family at the Franklin Institute in Philly. I think it is fair to say that we were all a bit surprised when we got to the end of the exhibit and there was no mummy-- just a holographic image of the mummy, but what do you want, that Egyptian antiquities guy is like something straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark! We're lucky we got to see a replica of the death mask in the gift shop! The highlights though included various fancy Egyptian jewelry and a nifty little gold and jewel encrusted mini-tomb for Tut's liver. Ah yes, a liver coffin for the afterlife. So, tell me, if you're the guy who makes those-- how explain that industry on a business card back in 1322 BCE?

Overall though, a few observations about going to museums in general.

First-- those people with the audio tours. I swear, it's like you put on an audio tour headset and suddenly you become some sort of audio tour drone. I've never seen people walk around in such a trance before-- completely oblivious to personal space and/or whether or not other human beings were in their path. It was kind of like Night of the Living Dead, only with head phones. On the plus side-- I've recently read that certain museums are offering their audio tours to be purchased on itunes and/or downloaded off the museums' websites. At least this would be a step in the right direction for hygene. I'm not an audio tour fan-- in big part because of the whole communal headphone concept. ANYHOO...

Next item: While walking around I came upon some sort of monolith/ballustrade carved item that depicted a couple of ancient egyptians holding up some sort of sacrifice to a "sun disk". There were two other folks standing in front of this item discussing it-- more specifcally trying to figure out where exactly in the image Nefertiti's boobs were. It was a very "Sex and the City" type of conversation. Here I'm thinking "interesting craftsmanship, gee, I wonder if this is alabaster or limestone" and these people were trying to figure out if Nefertiti had sagging boobs.

Finally, after we left the exhibit the Husband found a little hands on item called the "Age Machine". It was a computer and a video camera which allowed museum patrons to have their photo captured on the computer screen and then an "aged" photo of you would be generated. Cool concept-- especially if you're travelling with a 2 month old baby! Whoopie we're thinking-- this could theoretically settle the "who does Sophie look like" debate. So, we get an image captured and suddenly there is an older husband and wife couple hovering behind us. The Husband and I both assume these two want to use the machine-- the image mapping process was getting a bit complicated and the hover-ers just kept getting closer so we get up to walk away and then the couple says to us... "No, we don't want to use it, we just want to see how it works! Let's see how she ages!" OKAY, CREEPY! Get your own baby for the age machine!! We go to walk away and the people then take over the machine with our daughter's picture still on the screen and they're trying to make it work as if she's some sort of guinea pig! Hello!?! Am I the only one who thinks this is a bit odd? As we hurriedly get on the elevator to leave my last parting statement is-- "can't we get her picture off of there???"