Rijksmuseum van Oudeheden: Egypt

The Dutch National Museum of Antiquities is here in Leiden and it is touted to have one of the finest permanent Egyptian collections in Europe.  It also houses antiquities of the ancient Greeks, Romans, the near east, as well as from areas of the Netherlands.   

This is the Temple of Taffeh.  It was constructed after the Roman conquest of Lower Nubia around 25 A.D. and was originally located in Abu Simbel (this is way down the Nile).  This area became submerged by flooding after the Aswan High Dam was built on the Nile starting in 1960.   The Temple of Taffeh was a gift from Egypt to the Netherlands for the Dutch participation to save monuments in this region.

The two blue creatures in the doorway are contemporary actors, portraying Egyptian Gods of the Earth, Geb and Aker.

We came across many mummies and sarcophagi, this one is layered with an outer coffin, and inner coffin and a linen and plaster one as well. Liam and Kai took these studies very seriously, taking copious notes on the terrific displays.

This is from the book of Amduat, a "tour guide book" of the afterlife.  The priests provided this in the burial chamber of a royal person for the deceased to be able to find the realm of the dead in the afterlife.  It is terrific fun discussing life and death cosmology with Liam and Kai, they just soak it in, fascinated. We talked about death as the great unknown, the last great adventure of every person who was ever alive and ever will be alive.  Great stuff.

The Egyptians didn't just mummify their cats when they died, which of course they mummified many thousands of cats and many were placed in their own burial chambers, but they also mummified falcons, eels, fish, and, yep, you guessed it, crocodiles:

After the Van Gogh Museum...

Friends of friends in Portland got us in touch with Juliet Hochman who moved from Portland to Amsterdam with her family last year.  After claiming that she would slit her wrists if she had to walk through the Van Gogh exhibit one more time, she met Liam, Kai and I outside after we finished our Treasure Hunt inside.  She played bike tour guide for us, taking Kai on the back of her bike, with Liam and I staying close behind as we could manage. 

First a quick lunch at Cafe Marcella, a cafe chosen because it has a square outside where Liam and Kai could kick the football around if they chose to (Juliet brought a ball with her).  They did for a short time before they were overwhelmed by school-aged Dutch boys who didn't have a ball to play with and they wanted Liam and Kai's -- you can guess who got to play football and who came running back into the cafe. 

Next stop was the Rembrandtplein, Rembrandt Square, where there is a nice statue of Rembrandt (sorry, cut off his head in this photo), and sculptures of each of the civil guards who appear in his painting, Night Watch.  Juliet brought along a photo of the painting so we could pick out the individual guards depicted in the painting and match them with their figure on the square. The painting is famous because it was commissioned by 33 guards who expected a grand painting of them eating a merry meal or some other boisterous event.  The very progressive Rembrandt decided to paint them actually doing their work, on the job, much to their dismay, so much so that some refused to pay him their share of the commission.  The painting was later donated to hang in the town hall, and when it was found not to fit on the wall between two windows, some 30 cms were cut from either side to fit.  Three civil guards did not survive the surgery. We took to joking about how someone must have gone down in history as having the grandfather who sliced up a Rembrandt.

 Next stop was the Amsterdam, a replica of an East Indiaman ship used by the Dutch East India Company that was lost on its maiden voyage in 1749.

The Dutch trade with Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries was the primary reason for Amsterdam becoming the center of European trade and wealth during this time.  Now wonder it was called the Golden Age.  I was amazed to learn that the Dutch held a monopoly of any outside trade with Japan for about 200 years!  Porcelain brought from Japan was copied by the Dutch and the Dutch made a fine business of it, turning their version into Delft Blue (which is now subjected to being copied).  

On either side of the captain's quarters are two small rooms with a beautiful view off to port and starboard. 

That's what this room is for??

A meal set out how the crew would eat. 

Walking back across the dock from the ship, Kai's mitten was taken up by a gust of wind and blown into the water below, a good 5' down.  I would've given it up for lost and went out to buy another pair, but Juliet's bold and friendly tenacity brought three workers out of their blue box resting on a raft where they had been taking a break.  One got into a boat tied to the raft and puttered around to pick up the mitten and toss it back! 

We returned to Juliet's house and met her 12 year old son, Thomas, who had just come home from school, picked up Juliet Stumpf from the train station and had a terrific pizza dinner with lots of fun conversation.  After dinner, Liam and Kai lounged on the couch with Thomas and a game...another late night! 

No Standing Up!

The Dutch can be very clear about what their drunk countrymen and patrons should and should not do.  We found this toilet seat sign in an Amsterdam cafe.  And the great thing is that this sign almost certainly improves the situation at this cafe/bar or they wouldn't leave it there.  The Dutch have a wonderful sense of civil obedience, alongside the progressive laws allowing prostitution and drugs -- the rules tend to be followed.  When we came across this sign over the weekend, all I could wonder was what effect it would have if it were in an American bar. 

Herring at the Saturday Market

Saturday, 11 am, Leiden market on the corner of Hartesteeg and Nieuwe Rijn, at the Gangetje bridge, we all had the real thing: pickled herring.  We didn't drop them down our throats like the natives do, but got the full taste and flavor, Juliet and Eric with onions, Liam and Kai with pickles. 

Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

Liam, Kai and I ventured further together, going to Amsterdam this past Friday.  We took our bikes on the train, and negotiated the mile or so from Amsterdam Centraal to the Hermitage, where the Van Gogh museum is displaying its paintings while its real home is under renovations.  First of all, Amsterdam biking is JUST LIKE Leiden biking, only add more people, add tram tracks, oh yes, and add the trams themselves, add more cars that are more assertive... the same organized chaos, just a bit greater intensity.   We continue to get some looks because we are the only people in the entire city wearing helmets, and I don't mind one bit.   More on biking through Amsterdam in a later post.

We picked up Treasure Hunt games that the museum provides for kids and ate a bit of pb&j for energy before entering the exhibit.

This Treasure Hunt game absolutely transformed our experience in the museum from slogging past countless unknown pictures and words like, "I'm bored", into two hours of focused work by both of these guys.  It included a bit of drawing, identifying and imitating brushstrokes, finding particular paintings or small bits of a painting in a room, and identifying what sounds Van Gosh must have heard while he was painting a certain piece. 

 
Photos were not allowed in the exhibit, but I rationalized two quick ones on the basis that my subjects were not the art on the wall so much as the kids in the foreground.

We only got through about half of the exhibit, so we're going to go back to finish up.

some other paintings we saw at the exhibit:

Landscape at Twilight

Irises

The Yellow House

Wheatfield Under Clouded Sky

Tree Roots:  Believed to be Van Gogh's last painting before he died.  It is touted as the first modernist painting ever. 

pannenkoeken bij Oudt Leiden mit nieuwe vrienden

Friday night we actually had a social life!  Oudt Leiden is a traditional pancake house that is touted to have the best pancakes in town.  Marie and Brandon took us there for our first pancakes of our trip.  I met Marie online, she answered all of my questions about bikes and the terrors of riding in this town before we arrived and facilitated us buying bikes within a day after we arrived.  Both Marie and Brandon grew up in Oregon and now live in Leiden, Marie for 12 years and Brandon for 3. 

Now, the pancakes.  They're huge, meant to be a dinner meal.  Yep, pancakes for DINNER.  A dream from childhood.  They're a little like pizzas, you can get all kinds of different stuff on top, sweet (like Liam's pineapple) or savory (like mine: ham, bacon, cheese, veggies), and then they have the special children's menu with Clownspannenkoek met Snoepjes:  pancake with soft candy.  YES, SOFT CANDY for DINNER!  And yep, there is the bottle of syrup on the table to smother them if you'd like.  Syrup on a savory pancakes is quite the dinner treat.

Kai's pancake had raisins, apple, almond paste, sugar and cinnamon.  Straight home to brush teeth. 

Yes, huge.  That thing was as big as my body.

Homeschooling...

First full week of homeschooling in Leiden ended today.  Juliet has been so busy that it's been the boys and me for most all of the school work:  an hour of violin first, then various projects of numeracy (math) and literacy (English).   Liam and Kai have been waking up early to get work done: at 6:30 am yesterday Liam was teaching Kai the parts of speech in a sentence.  Forty-five minutes of that before breakfast -- who knew that was possible?  Numeracy has included breaking down a "number of the day" into tally notation, scientific tally, roman numerals, factors, and constructing an array.  They've been doing "mind-math" as well, improving their ability to add and multiply in their heads.  They are also voracious readers and I think Liam's goal is to read all of the 30 or so books in English that are in the local library. 

After lunch each day we leave the apartment to do various adventures like visiting the Rijkmuseum (see Liam and Kai's posts), outdoor market, and sundial.  We also do the mundane but necessary food shopping, laundry and errands.  Mundane, but it always includes an exciting, if not life-threatening, bike ride.  More on that later.

 It remains cold outside, today was the third straight day of waking up to snow.  Not sure if this winter will ever end. Another project we're planning is how The Netherlands is responding to climate change.