I don't know how often I'll be able to blog over the next week; I intend to, but this tradefair is going to keep me busy. I leave this afternoon, but I'm already sitting at work with my suitcase packed. Evelin is off with her folks to visit Monticello (they're driving down there this morning and then going to book it back to get them on an 8:00 p.m. flight out of BWI -- it's a good thing her family is less tense about getting to the airport early than my family is ... I think I'd be a bit frantic trying to make sure we got to the airport the requisite two hours before the flight leaves ...)
On Saturday, we went straight from the airport to The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (Evelin's mother works at a museum in Massachusetts and always wants to visit museums when she's visiting). The "Eternal Egypt" exhibit of Ancient Egyptian artifacts from the British Museum was going on, with some really interesting pieces. What was a bit frustrating, however, was that neither the labels nor the audio guide mentioned the hieroglyphics that were on almost every piece very much. The descriptions of a few items did give rough translations of the script, but not many. Also frustrating was one piece, The Architectural Slab of Nectanebo I (ca. 380-362 BCE), which has a line of what looked like Demotic or Greek script toward the top of the slab (was it later graffiti of some sort?) that was totally unmentioned in the descriptions. More satisfying was a small exhibit elsewhere in the museum, "Secret Signs: Egyptian Writing," which featured items from the Walters's manuscript collection.
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