A Grand Day Out

When working intensely on a project, it is nice to get a day spent opening our minds to new horizons. So on Friday, we celebrated lab milestones achieved over the last two weeks with an outing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, prefaced by LOTS OF FOOD at Joe's Shangai and their famous soup dumplings!

Eating soup dumplings requires caution and practice. Observe the concentration!

From left to right: Ramatu (UG, Stony Brook), Laura (Graduated UG, John Jay), Bridgette (Graduate, John Jay), Sanah (UG, Jonh Jay), Paul (Corthals Lab groupie/roadie), Margarita (UG, John Jay), Carlos (graduated UG, John Jay), Dr. C (evil master)

At Joe's Shangai, we discovered just how much Dr. C was going to have to spend on feeding Carlos in Egypt... 

Dr. C better double the food budget for Egypt...

Despite a weather forecast predicting rain, the day was gorgeous and we strolled (some of us, others had to be pushed - hint, hint Bridgette...) through Central Park to the Met and its famous Egyptian Art Gallery.

Central Park on a beautiful day: what more can minions ask for??? ("Horse-drawn carriages to take us to the Met!!!" shouts Bridgette)

At the Met we learnt about the Old, Middle and New Kingdom periods of ancient Egypt.
We looked at the incredible scenes of every day life from the tomb of Wah. 

At the tomb of Wah

Then we moved on to the Hall of Queen Hatchepsut, and learned about the amazing Queen who, for the first time, sent a peaceful and scientific expedition south of the borders of Egypt, into Punt (possibly Ethiopia/Eritrea). 

By the large kneeling statue of Hatshepsut

In front of the most famous Hatshespsut statue

Of course, we paid our respects to the goddess Sekhmet and placated her wrath to prevent her from destroying humanity...

Thanks to us, and our offerings to Sekhmet, humanity gets to live another day!

One cannot go to the Egyptian gallery and avoid the famous temple of Dendur! And we wondered: did it get to be this crowded in antiquity???

Paul, Margarita and Bridgette form a phalanx to gain access to the temple of Dendur

Hard to assemble the minions in a crowd...

But the minions prevailed...

and easily captured the temple of Dendur! It shall be known as their official lair.

And we finished with the Roman Egypt galleries, where we starred at the haunting faces of the Fayum Portraits.

Minions with a serious case of museum feet, standing by the shroud of a woman from Roman Egypt