When I was in high school back in the late 70's, King Tut came to Seattle. I think I was one of the only residents of the state who didn't get to go see it. Our Social Studies teacher was too busy with basketball to make arrangements for our class to go on a field trip. (I've held a grudge for 35 years)
I've always wanted to go.
This is Seattle's Pacific Science Center
Lan took me on a date here last Friday, it was to make up for us not running in the torchlight fun run the weekend before. This was one of the most awesome days of my life, in the top 100 days of my life, for sure. Not as high up there are feeding Seattle Slew a carrot or jumping out of a plane though.
We rode the Bremerton-Seattle ferry over Puget Sound in the early morning.
Parking in the city is hard to find and expensive but if you look around a little and are willing to walk an extra block or two it can be a lot cheaper. Across the street from the center it was $15 for the day. We paid $1 per hour for 4 hours since we knew we wouldn't be there all day. And walked an extra block. Ha.
Seattle Center is pretty big, colorful and loud; I've always enjoyed going there. There are a lot of things going on at all times and some of my best teen memories are of concerts in the now Key Arena, previously called the 'Coliseum'.
So we found our way to the King.
But first I had to get a photo of Lan with the dino's.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These statues were the first things you saw as you walked into the exhibit. They were close to life size but I did notice they had extremely big feet; for a body about 5'6" tall there were size 14 feet.
At this point I wasn't thinking about taking photos with the info but its got his name right there on the side of his seat.
This was a female queen. Someone took the jewels out of her eyes.
Stela of Any in a Chariot
This commemorative stela from his tomb shows Any, a scribe and steward, returning from an awards ceremony where he received from Akhenaten the "gold of honor" that he wears.
Colossal Statue of Amenhotep IV
This is about 8 feet tall and made of stone.
Wooden casket of a queen
This wood is 5000 years old and in magnificent condition. The paint is still bright in color and up close on the back of the casket you can see teeny carved feathers on her back, all up and down, like wings.
Golden Mask of Psusennes I
This was amazing to look at.
Its life size and was fit over the head of this pharaoh. It goes around in back and obviously is hollow but you never see the back of it. So I took a photo for your viewing pleasure.
This is King Tuts bed. He wasn't very big, just about 5'6" tall and this is a short bed. Obviously he slept alone too. The bed still has its woven rattan or whatever it is and the legs of the bed have feline feet.
He didn't always sleep alone because they had a wooden box with two golden mini caskets that held the fetuses of his daughters.
This golden Canopic Coffinette is about 18" tall and gorgeous.
This is a replica of King Tutankhamen. The shape of his head is alien-ish, maybe due to the fact his parents were brother and sister and they were offspring of incest themselves. Royalty thought it would make them smarter if they married siblings, uncles and close cousins.
This is a poster of the real mummy, on the bottom left is his father.
Parenthood was verified in 2008 by DNA testing.
Lan and I spent a good 2-3 hours in the exhibit. I read every plaque and spent a lot of time looking at every item.
I thought it weird that they included a toilet lid.
After we left King Tut we wandered into the rest of the Science Center and played around on the kiddy things.
Here we are with the Space Needle. It costs $20 each to go up in it now-a-days so we didn't go. Its cheaper to go into the Columbia Tower and that's way higher.
The goofy mirrors made up laugh.
Lan the Troll, with his 2 wives.
These round balls were a "Stoners Dream", according to Lan. There were about 20 balls that you could roll into the bowl, they would spiral around, around & down, then you do it all over again.
We did it, over and over again.
After 4 hours and a ton of fun we left the center and headed into Seattle to see bike shops & eventually rode my ferry home. This was one of the nicest days ever.
