Everything Egypt

5/22/10
Locations: Cairo, Egypt

Everywhere you look, you see statues and relics from thousands of years ago. Some have been heavily damaged by time and the elements, but most look like perfect pieces of engineering that should have been created hundreds of years ago, rather than their true age of about 5,000 years. Today, the group went to the Egyptian Museum with our guide, Romani, and explored and learned about everything ancient Egyptian. The Egyptian Museum is an immense building and home to 120,000 Egyptian artifacts. Romani said that if you spent one minute at each one, you would be there for about nine months!

We started out looking at a copy of the Rosetta stone. The real Rosetta stone is in the British Museum, so we will get to see that in a few days. Romani explained the discovery of the Rosetta stone and how Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion determined how to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs through comparative translation. I think it’s so amazing that an ancient civilization has a language that we can read! Next, we saw Narmer’s Palette and Romani explained how it depicts the war between the north and the south kingdoms. Then we moved into the main hall which is absolutely full of Egyptian statues of pharaohs and gods, and sarcophaguses and columns covered in hieroglyphs and designs. Romani explained to us the Egyptian mythology stories about their gods Re, Osiris, Seth, Isis, Nephthys, Horus, and more.

Romani took us through so many halls and rooms just full of Egyptian artifacts. There was a lot of beautiful jewelry made of cut glass, semi-precious stones, gold, and other metals. I saw some gorgeous layered necklaces of turquoise, coral, and gold that I would actually love to wear today. There were so many mummies—both of past pharaohs and their wives, priests, and even animals like cats, dogs, birds, and crocodiles. The mummification process takes about 70 days, but it works well—the mummies they have examined are in wonderful condition. Most of them have had CT scans done so they have determined, or at least made educated guesses, about how the person was when they died and the cause of death. My favorite part of the Egyptian Museum was the King Tutankhamen exhibit. The King Tut tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 and over 5,000 objects were discovered! It was completely intact, save for a few robberies of perfumes and oils that occurred almost immediately after Tut was entombed. King Tut’s sarcophagus was actually a series of sarcophaguses like Russian dolls and were completely covered in gold and turquoise. The best known artifact of King Tut’s tomb is the head cover, which is 24 pounds of solid gold and King Tut’s face is depicted on it in blue, black, and white. It was so stunningly crafted; it looks just like a human face.

After touring the museum’s highlights with Romani, we were given an hour to explore the rest of the museum by ourselves. Even after walking for an hour, there were still so many rooms we didn’t even touch. I loved looking at the sarcophaguses during the free hour because they were all so different. All of them were elaborately decorated, but it was fascinating to see how the colors changed with the passage of time, how much gold and gems were used depending on the status of the person, and how the styles evolved as the Greeks and Romans controlled Egypt.

After the Egyptian Museum, we went to eat lunch at a little Egyptian restaurant. It was called Fafela and it had whimsical mosaic stone floors of flowers and circles and the ceiling was open to the fresh air and there were plants and greenery everywhere. It was like eating in a garden. They served us pita bread, hummus, vegetables, and falafel to start, and everything was so good! I was a little concerned about how much I would like Egyptian food because I wasn’t even sure what exactly their staples were, but everything was delicious. Next, they brought us mixed grill: chicken, beef, and lamb. I don’t like lamb, but the chicken and beef were grilled to perfection and the beef was especially savory after being in India for nearly a week!

After lunch, we had some free time and most of us journaled, read, or took naps, which we are always ready for because no matter how much sleep we get, we are so busy and spend so much time walking during the day. Then Romani’s friend Osama gave a PowerPoint presentation on Egypt’s history. I learned so much from him about past Egyptians leaders and politics. We had dinner at the hotel, and then we left via taxis for the Cairo Bazaar.

During the day today and immediately after arriving at the bazaar, the girls were bombarded with comments on our looks and lame pick-up lines. We thought we got a lot of looks in India, but India was nothing compared to Egypt. Everyone stares at us no matter where we are or who we are with. We are almost always with Romani, and during the day we are with our assigned security guard, as well. All American tourists have security guards after there were some attacks on tourists and the US threatened to put Egypt on the no-travel list unless they acted to make their country safer for visitors. Egypt is over 95 percent Muslim, so almost every woman we saw was dressed so only her hands and face were visible. Women cover their hair and neck with a burqa. It seemed that just because we were American girls who don’t practice Islam and therefore were not wearing burqas, we were targets for bold compliments and come-ons everywhere we went. It was especially bad at the bazaar, since they were trying to sell us things as well. The girls traveled in a group, so we got the comment “Oh look, the Spice Girls!” several times Apparently, since we’re a group of white girls with different colors of hair, we look just like the pop group from the UK that was popular over 10 years ago. Other examples include “You are so beautiful,” “You have magical eyes,” “For you, I’d leave my wife,” and comparisons to American celebrities or being referred to as “my queen.” It was a little creepy and uncomfortable to say the least, but there wasn’t much we could do besides look at each other and laugh it off.

I bought an embroidered bag at the bazaar, then the group relaxed with Romani at a café for an hour or two, then we took taxis back to the hotel. Egypt has surprised me. I really like Cairo, and it is a very historical and cultured metropolitan city. However, I was very taken aback by all of comments the girls and I received. I realize that even in jeans or pants and tees that we had a lot more skin showing than the Muslim women, but it was still so strange to me. I was not used to walking down the street and being viewed as a piece of ass and it made me realize how completely comfortable and respected I feel in the US in comparison. I haven’t studied much about Islam, but I did know that women are subordinate to men according to the Quran. It was very interesting to see those beliefs in person. I feel very strongly about women’s rights and equality among the sexes, and Cairo only strengthened those feelings because it demonstrated what it might be like to be treated as a second-class human being.

The Egyptian Museum

Cairo

The Bazaar