PANNING THE NILE

First established in 1824, Turin’s amazing Egyptian Museum boasts one of the oldest and most extensive collections of Egyptian treasures in the world. Unravel the mysteries and decrypt the codes invented by the fascinating civilization that flourished along the banks of the Nile on a private tour. Your guide will lead you through the halls of the museum and turn the key to the priceless artefacts no visitor should miss.

The Museo Egizio is located within the sumptuous setting of the Palazzo dell’Accademia delle Scienze, an imposing Baroque-style building designed in 1679 by architect Guarino Guarini. More than 3,000 items are permanently on display, selected from a dazzling 40,000-strong collection dating from 4,000 BC to 700 AD. A vast and wide-ranging assembly of objects from so many different epochs, including statuettes, sarcophagi, mummies, grave goods, steles and papyri, offers precious insight into the development of Egyptian art, beliefs and society from the Palaeolithic to the Coptic Period.

Your guide will certainly point out the extraordinary findings unearthed in 1906 inside the Tomb of Kha and Merit, including jewellery, cosmetic vases, wigs, clothes, games, furniture, measuring instruments and, of course, food – a complete, miraculously intact repertoire of must-haves that a 1,400 BC architect and his wife would have required to set up home in the next life.

The museum’s cherished collection of papyri, considered to be the most remarkable set of Egyptian documents to be found anywhere in the world, includes the King List. Written in Hieratic scripts and dated between 1,275 and 1,200 BC, this papyrus contains a record of 126 names of Egyptian Pharaohs, listed in precise chronological order together with the dates of their reigns, an invaluable source of knowledge for historians of Ancient Egypt. No less astounding is the 1,150 BC Papyrus Map, one of the oldest maps ever to be discovered, featuring a nine-mile stretch of Wadi Hammamat prepared for a quarrying expedition during the reign of Ramesses IV.

Among the many beguiling sights to impress you on your Egyptian experience are the 4,500-3,100 BC Gebelein Cloth, depicting boats sailing along the Nile, which could well be the most ancient painted fabric surviving to this day; the astonishingly well-preserved wall paintings of the Tomb of Iti and Neferu; the Canopic Vessels of Wah-ib-ra, once used as containers for internal organs removed from corpses during death rituals. Not to be missed are also the sarcophagus of ancient Egypt’s most beautiful queen, Nefertari, and the larger-than-life-size stone statue of her husband, Pharaoh Ramesses II.

The extraordinary fragments you admire as you make your way through the museum constitute the pieces of an ancient jigsaw which your guide will help you fit together in order to gain a full and vivid picture of a long-gone, irresistibly captivating civilization.