This tour was very disappointing. The guide didn't know much about the Egyptian artifacts and did not have a background in Egyptology. I asked some very basic questions – such as what material an artifact was made out of, or how archaeologists think it was made – and the guide didn't have an answer. When we finished walking through the first floor, the guide asked if we wanted to see Mesopotamia or more Egyptian artifacts on the second floor. We said continue with Egypt (we payed over $400 for an Egyptian tour), and we went upstairs only to find...no Egyptian artifacts. The guide left us at the Mona Lisa with 20 minutes left in the tour. It took us over 30 minutes just to get into the Louvre, so the tour was more like 2 hours instead of 3. Big waste of money.
Please find below answer from our guide: Sorry to hear that. I studied Egyptology in École du Louvre, that is well known for its quality classes (travaux dirigés) which I mentioned to our customers during the tour. I also have an experience of guiding in Egyptian section of the Louvre and wrote myself a cycle of art history lessons (that includes ancient Egypt) for Levshin art school in Paris and always had excellent feedbacks. I also mentioned to our customers that by the end of the tour they will have an option between visiting the second floor of Egyptian art with more égyptien artifacts (which we did in the end, that’s when they discovered famous Séthi and Hathor law relief) or visiting Mesopotamia which would help to understand the unique nature of Egyptian art, or see some of the high lights of the Louvre, since it was their first time in the museum. We entered the Rechelieu wing of the Louvre, that took us less than 5 minutes, so the tour all in all lasted at least 3 hours if not more. It’s very sad that our customers had to lie about it, especially knowing that it was one of the fastest entrance I made for last 3 weeks. And this thanks to the fact that I came half an hour earlier and had seen that the entrance of inverted pyramid was too crowded and anticipated that. It’s really a shame that those efforts were not appreciated. As for one question that our customer had, I gave a precise answer about the black colon out of basalt. It’s a volcanic rock that Louvre doesn’t call this way, but has a different more general title for it. Unfortunately, it was interpreted as a lack of knowledge. It was at our customers request that I left them by Mona Lisa, right after we finished the second floor of Egyptian section (I only can wonder why they forgot taking pictures with Egyptian artifacts there, that they pretended not seeing at all).
