Event Report
20150318
It was Kathleen's
birthday and the Jones family was on-site to visit, so Kathleen
wanted to see the King Tut exhibit at Balboa Park. Mom
Jones wanted to see the San Diego Library, so we decided to do
both.
The photos below are
what we saw.
This
photo was taken in 2012 on a separate adventure. The
exterior of the library was still under construction as can be
seen by the scaffolding.
Because
we parked in the structure underneath the building, I did not
get a shot of the outside of the library after
construction. But, the foyer was very large and
impressive. Note the huge concrete columns.
The
facility has 9 large floors, this being part of the first
floor. The book stacks were, well, stacks.
The
underside of the framework as seen from a 9th story balcony.
The
balcony provided a nice view to the south toward the Coronado
bridge.
The
supports for the framework were quite beefy.
The 8th
floor reading room was visible from the balcony.
The
balcony also had some "sculptures".
At the
San Diego Library, this is called "art". At the Caid shop,
this is called "scrap".
A
restricted portion of the 9th floor had a commanding view of
Petco Park.
The
balcony also had a nice seating area.
Back in the lobby
foyer, the scope of the concrete work becomes apparent.
When we
finished at the library, we headed to Balboa Park to see the
King Tut exhibit at the Natural History Museum. The
approach to the Prado had a nice view of the spring flowers.
The
fountain outside the museum was actually flowing. I am
guessing that with the drought, they will be forced to turn it
off.
The
entryway into the Nat has a nice dinosaur replica, complete with
skin.
The
mammoth skeleton was accompanied by a nice artist's rendition of
what the ancient terrain must have looked like.
On the
ground floor was a skeleton of an Allosaurus Fragilis, but the
size of the animal suggests that it was many things, but fragile
was not one of them.
The main
gallery had a whale suspended over the first floor.
We
finally got to the Tut exhibit and found out that camera flashes
were not permitted. I brought a flash for my new Sony
A7M2, but expected that I would not be able to use it (hope
springs eternal....). So, in anticipation of going with
available light, I brought a manual focus Voightlander 35mm
f/1.2 lens. The available lighting gave an odd color cast
to things that I was unable to reverse, but tint
notwithstanding, the camera did well. This statue shows
the young king Tutankhamun sometime around the time of his death
and is reputed to be life-size.
The Tut
exhibit is very impressive despite the objects being replicas
(the original solid gold artifacts are in the Cairo
Museum). This was the outermost of 3 gold coffins.
This coffin was found
inside the coffin above and is gold inlaid with precious
stones.
The inner gold coffin
was very ornate and covered with symbology.
Inside the innermost
coffin was another gold mask covering the wrapped body of Tut.
A replica of the
inner mask with stone inlays.
The burial chamber
contained many elegant artifacts carved out of stone.
This cabinet held the canopic jars that held the embalmed internal organs of the king.
More interesting
funerary objects.
A side view of the
throne.
The tomb contained
many gold statues.
A golden shield inlaid with ebony.
The amount
of time, money and effort that was lavished on the dead in
ancient Egypt boggles the mind. It clearly points to a
society that was sufficiently rich in resources to allow slack
time for the development of arts and the science of
embalming. Very impressive. Some day, political
situation allowing, it would be nice to visit Egypt. Meanwhile,
we'll watch them fight among themselves.
Copyright Bill Caid 2015. All rights reserved.