Fine Craft and Egypt Was a Perfect Sunday

Yesterday DH and I attended the annual American Craft Council Show. We attend every year and we always enjoy it, although I strongly suspect I enjoy it much more than DH does. I took my time wandering through the aisles, looked carefully at each booth, and took cards for locations I wanted to return to. DH wizzed through his first run and sat at a side table, playing Bridge on his phone and waiting for me. I finally joined back up with him and we want through at a much faster pace while I showed him several items of interest to me. I didn't buy anything this time, nothing really pulled at me. 

I was looking for some more "statement" style
earrings to wear when I'm not bothering with
a wig. I considered these by Martha Sullivan,
and really liked them, but I didn't want to
spend quite that much. 

Usually we go have an early meal and a drink or two after the show, but since it was raining hard when we left the arena, we decided to just go directly home. After a lazy day and Chinese takeout for dinner, we settled down to watch Discovery Channel's "Expedition Unknown" which had a two-hour LIVE broadcast from Dr. Zahi Hawass's newest excavation in Middle Egypt. The broadcast had a lovely mummy in an above-ground tomb to start, with a beaded, netted gown and pectoral collar. Then they headed underground into various pit shafts and smaller tombs. 

All of the burials had Ushabtis - small statues to serve in the
afterlife. Ideally there should be a minimum of one for each day
of the year. When the deceased is asked to perform a task, the
ushabti of the day will step up and perform it for him. 

The second tomb was a family tomb - father, mother and children. What I really loved in this tomb were the finely painted canopic jars and the fact that the family dog was also in a place of honor. It really was a family tomb. Unfortunately, the family didn't have a lot of money and the mummy of the father that was opened live on the show was a disappointment - not very well preserved and quite skeletal. Still very interesting and I still love that dog. 

Dr Zahi Hawass is the most recognized face in Egyptian
archaeology. Although no longer at the head of the
department, he is still a force. Egypt has managed to
reclaim many of the European and Indonesian
tourists after last year's murders, but the US has
been slower to respond. Last night's broadcast
was one of several planned to get the US tourist
back to Egypt. 

They moved to another vertical shaft, climbed down another long ladder, and Dr Hawass led on a long and very tight crawl through a long horizontal shaft, into a large chamber with a beautifully carved sarcophagus. The entire dig centered around a temple of Thoth, and this interment was one of the high priests of Thoth. After a lot of maneuvering, the multi-ton sarcophagus was moved away to display a perfect linen-wrapped and gold embellished mummy. Stellar! The other thing that really impressed me was the discovery of a wax "reserve head" behind a small false wall. Reserve heads were used in the 4th Dynasty, but this burial was from the 26th Dynasty - a VERY long time later. 

Several Egyptian sarcophagi were opened during the two hour
live show. It actually was pretty darned cool. I didn't go into
Egyptian archaeology because I have such intense
claustrophobia, but I probably could die happy, if I had been
in Egypt at least once. 

All in all, I was totally stoked and what a wonderful thing to watch. It ended at just the right time too - time for me to get to sleep since I have a very busy week ahead of me. I hope some of you had a chance to see the show last night, or that you can catch a rebroadcast of it. It was a lot of fun even if Josh talked over Dr Hawass a bit too much. 

So, that's it for today. It's Monday, I finally have my social security resolved, and I'm ready to hit the machines at the gym and get rid of my Chinese take-out pounds. All's good, at least for the start of the week. Have an excellent day and I'll be back tomorrow.