October 12, 2004

Uncommon

We still had 45 minutes before the museum closed for the day, so I lead Masa to the mummies upstairs since these I had seen on a previous visit. After a bit, I sensed this wasn't quite what he was after. I soon found out why. He pointed to a photo in his Japanese guide of the solid gold mask of King Tut's mummy. I had doubts that this relic was in the British Museum, but Masa felt it probably was since the photo was in the Japanese guide. We asked a couple security guards who clearly didn't realize it was King Tut that Masa was pointing to. One of the guards said it was probably down 'that row over there'.

We went back downstairs to the Egyptian sculptures in room 4 and asked a guard there who announced rather loudly, "He's in Cairo. You'll have to go to Egypt to see that one". Strike 2.