Face to Face With King Tut

Yesterday we had an experience that summed up one side of things in Egypt. We were in the National Museum in Cairo, viewing the iconic mask of "King Tut" -- the big and bright gold one, which is on every advertisement of Egypt -- when all of a sudden four guys in plainclothes approached the display case, heaved up the glass barrier, and grabbed out the mask! The Italians in the room made a tsunami-like movement towards the four guys either to figure out what was going on or to touch the mask themselves, which some of them seemed to accomplish. The guys holding the mask, now accompanied by one guy in some kind of uniform, responded by making their way quickly to another corner of the room and then put down the mask on another display case. At this point, we still had no idea what was going on, and by the looks of things thought that a heist was in the works. That wasn't the case however. Apparently the staff at the museum wanted to repair the glass exhibit case and decided that they should do so in the middle of the day and without clearing the room, taking precautions with the solid gold mask, and sending in more muscle than a few small and disheveled guys in jeans and T-shirts. When we figured out the situation, we decided to join in on the fun, and made our own rush for the mask and managed to see it face to face, without a glass barrier, for about 10 minutes.