Lately I’ve been taking an interest in the monuments of Mithras in Egypt. Apparently some are in the museum in Alexandria, while others come from Memphis and are in the Graeco-Roman room in the Cairo museum. I haven’t been very fortunate in finding images from either online. Is it possible that one or both of these museums discourages tourist photographs?
I’m quite tempted to fly out there and take some photos myself. It’s telling that a monument of the lion-headed god appears in various publications in the very same, low-grade, monochrome image! Clearly nobody has access to anything better. On the other hand all the flights that I could see, with British Airways and Egyptair, all fly out at the end of the day, to arrive near midnight. What’s that about, I wonder?
The hour changed last weekend, so everybody is jet-lagged (which is why I am writing this at 7:45 am; no sleep). But I intend to go over to Cambridge University Library late this afternoon, and photocopy an article in Mithras in Egypt, as well as a page from the CIMRM that was accidentally omitted from the PDF that I have.
Last night I managed to do a fix to the code behind the Mithras website, which should make image handling rather easier. Always so much to do!
A note arrived from the typesetter on the Origen volume. He’s working away on fixes to the footnoting, which went awry a revision or two back. Being a publisher is very hard work, let me tell you!
I visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo back in 2009. It was in a rather sorry state. It looked like a warehouse jammed with treasure and signs from the 1930s. It was very difficult to enjoy the exhibits. It left me with a depressed impression: how can you possibly allow the national crown jewel to be in such a dilapidated state?
Furthermore, most visitors were interested only in the exposition of a certain well-known pharaoh (for which you had to fork out extra pounds as well).
Taking photographs was discouraged, I believe, which was very understandable, regarding the vast stream of flash-unsavvy trigger-happy tourists.
We visited several smaller musea during the same trip. Their exhibits were much less spectacular, but their organisation was much better. Especially the small pyramid museum of Saqqara left a good impression on me.
Thanks for the update. I haven’t been there in twenty years, but it was rather crowded and depressing. The lack of signage was sad.