Have Twins, Will Travel

New York, New York – If you could only see one museum in all of New York, which one would it be? That was the question we were asking ourselves on our second day in the Big Apple.

Should we see the dinosaurs and dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History (which was a minor hit the last time around)? Or check out the Children’s Museum of Manhattan? Or a special exhibit on Mo Willems at the New York Historical Society? So many options, so little time.

We finally decided to head across the park to The Met. Ever since Halloween, the twins have been on an Ancient-Egypt kick, and they were intrigued and entertained by the exhibit at the MFA when we went.  So that was our goal. Little did I know that the Met’s Ancient Egypt exhibit occupies some 39 rooms!

Upon entering, the first thing to see is the Temple of Perneb — an awesome actual tomb dating from the 24th century BC. Let me do the math for you: it’s 4000 years old! (That was more impressive to me than to the twins.) But they were fascinated by the way that you could walk inside and examine the inscriptions on the wall and imagine the death rituals that took place here, not to mention the mummies. They were hooked.

I’m not sure we saw all 39 rooms of Egyptian relics, but we saw a lot. The twins spent ages drawing heiroglyphs, gawking at the bling that was excavated from various tombs, and contemplating the mummies that resided in others. And then we came upon the Sackler Wing, a vast light-filled hall containing the Temple of Dendur. Dating to 15 BC, the large temple is dedicated to the deities Isis, Osiris and Horus, and it is partially covered with heiroglyphics and other inscriptions – although you can’t really go inside like the first temple. A cool new addition: rich colors are projected onto the exterior of the temple, depicting the vibrant scenes as they might have originally appeared when they were first painted. It was truly impressive.

It took us several hours to work our way through Ancient Egypt; and normally that’s enough museum time for one day. But we had promised Twin V that we would also visit the exhibit of Arms and Armor, so that’s where we ended up. Sometimes I get impatient with my boys’ obsession with weapons and war, but even I had to admit that the intricately-designed pieces were very cool. And fortunately, there were somewhat less than 39 rooms of them.