OK! I’m over it! I’m over my wife leaving me.

Sounds like a broken marriage – but in my case my darling wife is back ensconced in Brisbane and I have it on good authority (not just from herself) that she is well and feeling good after her five week sojourn here.

It was horrible when she went, but being back in email contact is good and it has been over a week now. With my own time running out, I haven’t time to feel sorry for myself.

Anyway, we are none of us getting any younger and it was my birthday on Thursday (our equivalent of a Brisbane Friday night). One of my work colleagues went well beyond the call of duty and arranged a party for me at her apartment. A small event but just great – with party whistles, a cake and all. There were eight of us there, and no two the same nationality (oddly, no one an Egyptian either). It really is like the United Nations here and that is a great part of the fun. My gracious hostess is Norwegian and the other guests were French, Spanish, Dutch, English, Swedish and Japanese. A great time was had by all but this was the latest night I had had since being here. The five of us staying at my hotel returned around 2:30am (we started late!) to find this place really bopping.

In the foyer small children were running about doing what small children do everywhere and being noisy about it, but …. At 2:30am? In the restaurant, up on the “Mezzanine”, (the restaurant where I have had so many meals at 7 or 8 pm, totally alone), it was standing room only and filled with shisha smoke and middle eastern music. This is a totally different social arrangement here, although I am sure my sons find this normal. But many of these people were potential pensioners like me.

For some reason I have been waking early every day and despite the late night, Friday was no different so I had an early breakfast and indulged in domestic chores, reading and resting. But on Saturday, I indulged myself in the one thing that I had been saving up for this time after Cathy’s departure – a visit to the Egyptian Museum (of Antiquities). Cathy and Maryann made the visit a month ago, and Cathy and I had been there as part of an organised group late in 2005, but the visit was far too short.

I mentioned in a much earlier posting the beautiful and unique pink building that is this world famous museum. It is old and massive and, even if it were empty, it would be worth the visit, a museum piece in itself. In walking in, despite the x-ray security machines, I still feel as if I have time travelled back to the time of Agatha Christie.

So I spent over 2½ hours wandering around, looking at and trying to “feel” the exhibits. It is mostly about the Pharaonic period, all of the “kingdoms” but also covers the Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman times. The popular highlight has to be the treasure trove of Tut Ankh Amon, of which all but Tut himself, his inner coffin (or sarcophagus) and a few items on loan to an overseas display are in this museum. The young pharaoh actually still resides in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. We had entered his tomb in 2005 on the holiday trip and, although extensive, the rooms seemed far too small to accommodate the supposedly 5 000 items that now sit in a wing of the museum.

He actually lay for thousands of years in bandages, in a funeral mask, in a coffin, in a coffin, in a coffin, in a stone sarcophagus, in a wooden “box”, in a wooden box, in a wooden box, in a room (full of the last box). He was the original Russian doll.

Replete with chariots, beds, bows, jewellery, even food. There are still discernible loaves of bread – and we complain about preservatives in our loaves. Much of the goodies are gold or alabaster and mostly highly decorated, intricate and in great condition. But Tut is but one of many mummies and sarcophaguses in the museum. One can get up close and personal with Ramses II - unveiled. His fine reddish hair is still visible.

And not only people were mummified. One collection includes lots of mummified animals. I found these particularly interesting – can’t imagine why. In some, pathology was clearly evident; I guess that’s why they died.

Amidst the many statues and mummies of pharaohs and noblemen, are the equivalents in Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman periods. Statues look a bit like a cross between Tut and Julius Caesar with a Pharaoh’s clothing and stance but aquiline noses and curly fringes on their foreheads. And the mummies, sans separate funeral masks, have in their place portraits painted on the cloth near where the face would be. These are largely in the style of the orthodox Christian icons, some good - some amateurish, and generally not showing the skilled art of the earlier Egyptians.

The museum is big enough to get lost in – typically I did several times, although thankfully I always knew I was in the museum, just not sure which part of it. Among all the wonderful things to experience in Egypt, a trip here is worthwhile just to see the wonderful exhibits in this museum. But better be quick. A new museum is being built out near the pyramids. I am sure its display will be better – they really do the new museums in Egypt well. We have visited superb museums for the building itself and the display in Aswan and Alexandria. And I am sure it will be air-conditioned, making it better for the treasures and for the visitors (it gets stiflingly hot in summer in the existing one, and for my visit, the thermometers in the display cases read 18 degrees C – it felt colder, certainly on the tip of my nose). But the romance factor can never be as strong as in the present museum on Tahrir Square.

My stay in Egypt has come down to “I depart on Thursday of next week”. It will be exciting to get back to the people and places that I enjoy, and three months has been a long time to spend in a hotel room with my meagre possessions. I am heartily sick of eating in restaurants, long for some of the foods and drinks that I cannot consume here, and I have a growing sense that I have done what I came here to do and that it is time to move on.

Three months is a long time to be doing this – but my visit to the museum, and my contemplation of the very ancient wonders it contains, makes it seem an absolute blink in the space-time continuum. I will be leaving soon but leaving with a wealth of memories and pleasant recollections to think about from time to time, not to mention over a thousand photographs, some of which appear here.