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Located on the first floor of the museum, the Ancient Egyptian exhibit attracts visitors immediately; the ominous immense pyramid creates a dark, mysterious presence, and invites visitors to step inside. The first impression of the exhibit is of a focus on death and the afterlife. This may lead to the false impression that the Ancient Egyptian culture was driven around embalming and entombing dead bodies. As one makes its way through the labyrinth of the pyramid, one is surrounded by recovered organ jars, tombs, mummified Egyptians and the artifacts that they were buried with. The walls of the pyramid are authentic limestone taken from actual sites in Egypt. Large woven tapestries hang from one of such walls and describe the afterlife and the gods involved. Gods are all represented as having animal heads, and bodies of humans. Wooden cases that would be placed inside the immense stone tombs, stand upright and are open for public viewing: hieroglyphics on the inside of the wooden encasing describe the procedure of the afterlife for the person entombed inside. The pyramid houses many mummies, some of whose wrappings have come undone and allow the visitor to see the actual body of the mummy. The pyramid is a very captivating exhibit, and it's location - its proximity to the entrance of the museum creates a false sense of the Ancient Egyptian culture. A visitor who knows nothing about the culture is lead to assume that the majority of Egyptian life was used to prepare for the after life. .
At the end of the pyramid, the visitor is lead to a small exhibit whose purpose is to portray a sense of the daily life of the ancient Egyptian. The location of this exhibit, behind the pyramid, gives the impression of being a less important and less frequent aspect of Egyptian culture. The visitor is lead through a less cramped exhibit of the every day live of an ancient Egyptian. There is a display in which one can "envision himself as an Egyptian": the visitor can put his face up to a pane of glass, behind which is a model of an Egyptian face.
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