Well, based on how we ended our day yesterday, you can probably guess how we will begin today, right? That’s right. We get up, eat our breakfast looking out over the pyramids while talking to some Peruvians, and then head into the heart of Cairo again to the Egyptian Museum!
We pay our entrance fee (200 EGP / ~$8) and head straight in, super excited to see what we can see.
Just so that you know, as you enter it is filled with people offering tours. As far as we know, they must be accredited by the authorities to do this, and you can choose your guide as you walk in if you’d like. We don’t know the cost or anything, but you can imagine that my travel partner said no to them all. But, we include this information just in case you’d like to hire them on your way in.
Okay, we have to come clean from the start of this visit. Checking online it says that this museum can be easily visited in less than 2 hours, even faster if you want. We saw some tours that were scheduled for less than this. But… how?! We literally take two steps into the museum and we are both shocked at the amount of things you can look at. There are SO many things to look at! And this is only the entrance of the first floor!!
The above picture is in one of the hallways on the first floor. We don’t have a good picture to show just how packed this floor is… but imagine a large hallway stretching off into the distance. On either side of this hallway there are artifacts, so to your left and to your right. Then there are more artifacts behind those making it at least 4 rows (sometimes more) of artifacts to explore. Each with their own little card explaining what exactly you’re looking at. The above picture is between some of these artifacts. How will we ever be able to read it all? Now this is a real challenge, and we haven’t even started yet, haha. Anyway, all of this to say that we may take some shortcuts here and there and show you pictures without any real explanation. The best way to understand everything that is here is by coming to Cairo yourself, haha. With that being said, let’s head on into the Egyptian Museum!
First up, a sarcophagus of Khufuankh, the overseer of the construction works of the king (approximately 2575-2465 BCE). Extremely intricate, and it really helps to show that this sort of lavish artistry was not reserved only for the pharaohs.
This is the burial chamber of Deshri, chief of the estate (approximately 2100-2030 BCE).
A pair of false doors from the 6th Dynasty on the left and the 5th Dynasty on the right.
And we are quickly realizing that we will not be able to show absolutely everything we took pictures of, it’s just absolutely impossible. The best/easiest we can do is to tell you to keep an eye on our Instagram page for an eventual photo dump for this museum. We won’t be able to even show all of the “most impressive” things in the museum here because it would just be way too much! Haha. We will do our best though, promise.
This is the oldest known life-size Egyptian statue, a statue representing King Djoser (3rd Dynasty, 2649-2630 BCE) with the blue faience tiles behind him representing the ‘field of reeds,’ the afterlife paradise where the king would spend eternity. These were found throughout the complex where he and his family would have been buried.
Now, not only are there hallways, there are also rooms. Even more things to see! Haha. Each has a slightly different theme. This was in one that had many little statues.
Now this is a cool piece. Not only because it is of Khufu (the Great Pyramid), but because the little card indicated just how hard the work of archaeology/Egyptology really is. They explained that this piece (please note the tiny size) was discovered in 1903. It took 3 weeks between when the head was discovered to when it was removed from its site. Incredibly time consuming. Imagine if it was 3 weeks for this small piece, it must be so hard to get some of the larger pieces out safely (and maybe that’s why so many are slightly damaged).
And from so small, we go back to very large. This is King Khafre, the builder of the second pyramid at Giza. Now, this is filled with religious symbolism with various gods being depicted along with Khafre, but to us it was interesting to note that the throne has a depiction of a lotus and a papyrus reed intertwined, symbolizing the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Super cool to see the politics and symbolism of Ancient Egypt.
And just to finish off our tour of the pyramids of Giza, we will show you the triads of King Menkaure, the builder of the third pyramid of Giza. Here you can see the tour groups that we were talking about earlier. They have one guide that shows them specific artifacts, and then moves on. Most groups that we saw skipped entire rooms. We would be incapable of not at least looking at everything. But, once again, we eavesdrop a bit on some of the tour groups with our ability to understand more than one language, hehe.
Now just some quick pictures as we walk through the hallways of this impressive museum.
Now this is a cool one! (As if not absolutely everything in this museum isn’t cool, hehe). This is a statue of Hetep, an inspector of priests of the Pyramid of Teti during the reign of Amenemhat I (1981-1952 BCE). However, who it is is not the cool part. As you can tell, this is not exactly humanoid, nor is it in the shape of a god/animal-form of a god. Why? These forms became popular throughout the Middle Kingdom because they allowed for both humanoid representation as well as lots of surface areas where texts could be inscribed. Very smart!
We walk and look at cool exhibits. There are artifacts literally in all directions.
We haven’t even finished half of the first floor… we are actually about a quarter of the way done. There is absolutely zero chance we make it out in time if we don’t manage our time well! So, our descriptions will get even shorter, as above, hehe. But, we try to take pictures of the most impressive things and share them with you.
One such thing was this:
This is a sandstone chapel that has been surprisingly well preserved. Throughout the painted surfaces you can see King Tuthmosis III making a fire and water offering to Amen-Re, adoring Hathor (in human and cow form). The limestone statue (which was found as shown) has the cartouche (an oval with a line in it to indicate that the text is a royal name) of King Amenophis II (successor of Tuthmosis III) on the back of its neck. However, it is not clear who the statue is actually guarding.
So, now for a bit of “side” information that we just found interesting. And, we found it even more interesting because we recognized many of the names involved. Get ready for some Ancient Egyptian drama. (All of this information is from one sign in the museum).
The Amarna Period (1352-1330 BCE) was one of the most complex in Ancient Egypt. The complexities begin when Amenhotep IV rises to the throne. Cutting from tradition, Amenhotep IV worships Aten, the disk of the sun above the other gods. This is a big change because until then the “state religion” had been the worship of Amun-Re. So, why did he decide to worship Aten instead of Amun-Re? Well, this happened over 3,300 years ago so the best we have are theories. The first theory is that he truly worshiped Aten based on religious conviction. The second theory is that he changed the “state religion” to be able to wrestle some control back from the priests of Amun-Re who had been gaining in power. Either way, this marked a big change, and to solidify this change further Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten (“living spirit of the Aten”) in his fifth year in power. Really shows his devotion. And (not on the sign) it shows the use of the gods by the pharaohs to indicate that they are gods on Earth. Eventually he would completely ban the worship of Amun-Re, further solidifying his control. This is where the famous Nefertiti comes in, who may have been elevated to rule beside Akhenaten in his twelfth year on the throne. But, the worship of Aten would be short lived. Around 1336 BCE a young prince (Tutankhaten) became king. During his second year on the throne Tutankhaten would reopen the temples of Amun-Re and he eventually changed his name to show his change from the worship of Aten back to the worship of Amun-Re. And thus, Tutankhamun was born. Although the story is a bit longer than expected, we thought it was too interesting of an origin story to pass up for such a legendary king. Especially when one of the highlights of this museum has to do with Tutankhamun… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves! Back to strolling these packed hallways!
But, you didn’t think we would give you all of that information without some visuals, did you? Of course not. It is important to remember that all of these kings were worshiped as gods-on-earth. You can really see that with these three examples for Akhenaten/Amenhotep IV. The first (left) is Akhenaten’s coffin lid, amazing. Sorry about the angle, but people were lined up on the other side, hehe. The second (middle) is Akhenaten’s colossus, notice both the exaggerated style (thought to have religious significance) and the sheer size of the colossus. Incredible. And the third and final example (right) is the lower part of Akhenaten’s coffin.
Now, for a bit more interesting information. Some scholars believe that Tutankhamun succeeded both Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, so he directly undid the change of “state religion” which his father had done. Part of that change was moving the capital back to Luxor (which Akhenaten had moved to Tell el-Amarna). But, when moving the capital back to Luxor, he had to move his father’s coffin back as well to the Valley of the Kings. It is reported that he did so by moving his father back within a coffin of a woman. Could the above coffin lid and lining be from that coffin? Hmm… this information was written beside the coffin lid, so maybe? But that was not the biggest move that this coffin actually made. The gold foil from the bottom of Akhenaten’s coffin had been stored at the Cairo Museum awaiting to be restored to its former glory. However, the gold foils were stolen between 1915 and 1931!! They wouldn’t resurface until the late 1970s when they went for sale in Switzerland!! Insane. And then in the 1980s the Egyptian Museum in Munich (Germany) was able to restore them and put them on display in 2001 [unclear from the sign if they were the ones that purchased it in Switzerland]. Eventually Egypt was able to come to an agreement with Germany to have the restored artifact repatriated. Lucky for us because we got to see it!
And after a bit of information, we’re back to just showing pictures of cool artifacts, haha.
Now, we know that we have already highlighted the influences that different ancient civilizations have had on Ancient Egypt at yesterday’s museum… but we will repeat it here. We will readily admit that when we think of these ancient civilization we sometimes incorrectly think of them as discreet, self-contained civilizations, but that is completely wrong. And what better way to show that than having Ancient Egypt illustrate some Greek mythology? We very much enjoy Greek mythology, so of course we include this in our tour, hehe. First up? The fall of Troy.
Within this painted plaster we can make out the Trojan Horse (left) that Odysseus and his men used to enter Troy and win the war. On the right there is supposed to be a scene of the banqueting Trojans.
The second Greek myth is that of Oedipus. The painting shows different episodes from the myth including Oedipus solving a riddle before a sphinx, in the middle we see figures symbolizing both “riddle” and “Thebes”, and on the right we see Oedipus stabbing his father in the presence of a woman identified in Greek as “ignorance”. Pretty cool, even if the sign says that the “poorly executed painting” is likely a Roman copy of a Greek original, haha.
Next we round the corner and are on the “home stretch” back to the start, haha. We have really already seen so much, and we still haven’t even finished the first floor. But this area is, again, amazing. As we walk around the corner from the Roman Era of Egypt, we are reminded about the history of Egypt itself with a hall of sarcophagi. Wow.
They are all so incredibly intricate, well made, beautiful, everything. It was super, super cool to see them all. And it is literally one after the other, both standing upright as you can see above, but also laid out horizontally (as you would expect). Crazy. (You can get a better idea of just how much stuff there is through our 360° pictures on Kuula).
And our final picture from the hallways of the first floor is this one:
Remember how we told you about the gold foil bottom of Akhenaten’s coffin and how it ended up in Munich before coming back to Cairo? Well, the above picture is a replica of the Rosetta Stone. But, why show this and remind you of Akhenaten’s coffin? Because the actual Rosetta Stone is on display in the British Museum and has not been returned to Egypt, therefore the real Rosetta Stone is not available to be seen in Egypt, not for a lack of trying on Egypt’s part. Would have been a perfect addition to this museum and would fit in well with all of their other amazing artifacts, but this story really highlights the fact that plundering of Ancient Egypt’s tombs has been ongoing for over 2000 years and the consequences are still felt to this day, unfortunately.
But, that takes us to the end of the hallways of the first floor! Over two hours into our visit, and not quite half done, hehe. To actually get half done we must enter the main hall on the first floor. Wow!
So much still to see on the first floor! But we walk right through all of it to the end because we are drawn to this colossus.
This is a “Colossal group” of King Amenophis III, Queen Tyi (his wife), and three of their daughters (Henuttaneb, Nebetah, and an unknown daughter). Although much restoration work has been done, their heads are still intact. With a bit of additional research we find that the colossi were discovered in pieces and had to be reassembled for the opening of the Egyptian Museum in 1902. If you look closely at the picture, you will be able to see where this restoration and reconstruction was done. But still, they’re HUGE!
Our final picture of the first floor is this victory stela of Merenptah (1213-1203 BCE). It is always important to record your victories, and this is no exception. It is a stela commemorating the Egyptian victory over their Libyan enemies who had attacked the Delta with their allies the Sea People (displaced people from around the Mediterranean Sea). At the very bottom of the stela the Ancient Egyptians took the opportunity to write the names of their other enemies as well. Why not, right?
Alright, now we have finished the first floor of the museum! We make our way upstairs to keep exploring. What do we find? A hall of coffins. All along the hall they’re stacked like this for you to look at them (why did we not take a picture of the hall?).
But, they’re not all like that, of course. We can take a closer look at some of them. The artistry is so impressive, and then to think about how long they have been so well preserved.
Then it was into a small exhibit about mummification. There were a lot of examples of different types of mummification and how it was done. To be honest, we felt a bit strange taking pictures of mummified people, so instead we will show you the mummified remains of several animals. In order to mummify an animal it had to fall into one of four different categories; the animal was a pet and was buried with its owner, the animal was considered as food and used to provide sustenance for the owner throughout eternity, the animal was considered sacred, or the animal was a votive offering. In order to mummify the animals the internal organs and fluids were removed and the body was then desiccated. This process would traditionally take 40 days, but that could be extended to 70 days. The dried animals were then massaged with oils in order to bring back flexibility to the animal’s limbs. Finally, the mummies were then wrapped in linen bandages, leading to the typical look of a mummy we know today.
The variety of mummies was way more than we expected. Some of these animals we knew would get mummified before visiting this exhibit, but others…? We had no idea! Very interesting! In order you can see a crocodile, dogs and baboons, falcons, and scarab beetles.
The animals chosen provide much insight into Ancient Egypt. From the four “reasons” to mummify an animal that we outlined above we can see what animals were domesticated, what the diet of Ancient Egyptians could have contained, and even what animals existed in Egypt that have since become extinct. It gives a great window into this ancient society. But, for us, the most interesting could be their deities. A good example of this is the scarab beetles above as these were quite important in Ancient Egypt.
The Ancient Egyptians believed that the dung ball that the scarab beetle pushed represented the sun, and therefore the beetle was associated with Khepri, the sun god. The Ancient Egyptians also (incorrectly) believed that the scarab beetle was born/created out of this dung ball, and therefore the beetle was also associated with the process of birth, rebirth, and resurrection. You can tell just how important the beetles were considered when you see that they built little coffins for them in the picture above.
The final such example we will show you is of a sacred ram. By the decorations you can see just how sacred it must have really been. Inside it is mummified and it was painted with gold and had amulets placed all over its body.
But then we leave the small exhibit on mummification of animals and head back into the main halls of the museum. But, that obviously doesn’t mean that the mummification talk stops. But, why exactly was mummification so important in Ancient Egypt? The Ancient Egyptians believed that by living a just and ethical life their soul would live eternally, and could even reanimate the corpse. So, if you can reanimate the corpse, you have to try to preserve it as best as possible.
We explained the basic procedures for the mummification of animals above, and now we will talk about human mummification a bit, especially as it is so important in Ancient Egypt. The actual process of mummification evolved over 3,000 years and varies depending on the time period, wealth and status of the deceased, and the fashion/practices of the day. However, the “ideal” mummification was carried out by removing the brain by the nose and replacing it with melted resin. The internal organs (stomach, intestines, lungs, and liver) were taken out by a small incision, dried, and then either placed in canopic jars or placed back within the body. The body was then cleaned to prepare it for desiccation. The body was fully buried in natron for 40 days to completely dry the body. The body was then removed to be cleaned and oiled to restore the body for the next 30 days. At this point prayers were read over the body while being wrapped in linen with amulets being placed within these bandages. At this point, the body is taken to the tomb for burial. At the tomb the priest would carry out the Opening-of-the-Mouth ritual on the mummy to restore its sense just before burial. The mummy was then placed within its coffin for burial. (Some mummies had different coffins and sarcophagi depending on wealth, social standing, etc.).
After all of this, the person’s spirit would go to the Hall of Judgement to have their heart (which has remained within the mummy’s body) weighed against the symbol of Maat, the goddess of truth. If the heart is heavier, the monster Ammit would devour and destroy the deceased. However, if the heart balanced with the symbol of Maat then Osiris, the god of the afterlife, would receive the deceased to live eternally in a divine and perfect version of Egypt. Again, this shows why it was important to live your life in a just and ethical way. This also underscores once again why the Ancient Egyptians put so much effort into their funerary traditions.
There really are so, SO many coffins to look at within this museum.
Although there are many, many coffins… the ones we like the most are the ones that are presented in their original “sets”. One such example is the coffin set of Neskhons A. She was the daughter of King Smedes (founder of the 21st Dynasty) and she married AmunPinudjem II, a high priest. Even though this obviously sets her into a very high social and religious standing within Ancient Egyptian society, that still doesn’t mean that she got her own coffin. Instead it has been discovered she was actually buried in the coffin of Isetemkheb D (daughter of high priest AmunMenkheperre). Isetemkheb’s name was actually painted over in yellow and then Neskhon’s name was written on top. Quite interesting, and we have seen that this sort of thing is not at all uncommon. And, on top of all of that, this coffin set shows the after effects of robbers as they ripped off various gold-containing parts of the inner coffin. Quite an interesting story. The story was actually even more interesting because they explained all of the artwork that was found on the inside coffin and the symbolism that it shows, but, we weren’t able to accurately capture it… so it wouldn’t make sense, haha.
To drive home the point of tomb robbers a bit more, we have the tomb of Queen Ahmose-Merytamun. As you can see, she was a queen, so very high standing. Her tomb was directly cut into the bedrock at Deir el-Bahari, near Luxor. Fifty years after her burial the temple of Hatshepsut was built over the entrance to her tomb. Would this make her tomb safe from ancient tomb raiders? No. The robbers found the tomb and looted it. This resulted in the outermost coffin being broken by the robbers and it being lost to history. However, the innermost coffins survived (the middle one is shown below, the innermost is at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization). Then, in about 1050 BCE priests restored her coffins and mummy, and even left an offering of flowers at the foot of her coffin. Quite the tumultuous afterlife for this queen!
Now we continue walking along the hallways of the museum, popping into all of the little side rooms that are filled with different exhibits.
As you may be able to tell, it’s just coffins stacked above coffins in the above room. It’s so hard to explain just how many coffins there are on this upper floor. So, SO many. But it’s not only coffins that there is a lot of, there are just so many artifacts in general.
From more coffins, to little statues of divinities, to the impressive jewelry of Ancient Egypt, it’s all here for you to explore. We really don’t understand how people say that this place can be explored in just two or three hours. We’ve already been here over three hours at this point, and we’re probably approaching 75% explored of the museum. Meanwhile… all of these people are probably just rushing through the museum without really taking a look at anything. We could never do this.
Now, the last two pieces before we get to the “main event”. The first is the outer coffin of Thuya, the mother of Queen Tiye. We had to include two pictures to try to take it all in.
And then the gilded mask of Thuya on the left and Yuya, Thuya’s husband, on the right.
And then we take a look back down into the main gallery, and if you really zoom in (probably not possible in the below picture) you can see where we’re headed to next!
Well… if you couldn’t quite make it out, we will tell you. We went slightly out of order to leave the “best” for last. We use the word “best” loosely as this has all been so cool, but… how could we not when we’re about to look upon King Tutankhamun’s own treasures?!
We gave you a bit of a history of King Tutankhamun (1336-1327 BCE) when we talked about his father, but one of the things that most people know is that he was a “boy king”. He is said to have ascended to the throne at the age of 9 and it is believed that he died around age 19. During that time he settled the religious upheaval that his father had created by changing the main deity of Ancient Egypt from Aten back to Amun-Ra. He was also married to Ankhesenamun during this time, the third daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. His final resting place was discovered on the 4th of November, 1922 by Howard Carter, a British archaeologist. This would go on to be one of archaeology’s biggest finds, and it was carefully excavated for nearly 10 years in the Valley of the Kings. Over 5,0000 artifacts were discovered at the time, and some of those are on display here. But, this wasn’t only a discovery for 1922, like most museums these artifacts have been continuously studied and CT scans of King Tutankhamun’s mummy have given insights into different funerary practices at the time of his death.
Now, as you can see above, we had to line up to go inside and look at the amazing King Tutankhamun treasures. But, as you can also see, there was no photography allowed inside. Obviously we respect the rules and didn’t take any pictures, although other people tried and security approached them to stop. So, we should try to describe a bit of what we saw… but we will also warn you that what we saw will no longer be accurate almost immediately after we visit as many of these artifacts will be transported to the new Grand Egyptian Museum closer to the pyramids.
We walked in and it is quite dark inside, with only the exhibits really being lit. There is plenty of security around, but they’re pretty busy telling people to not take pictures. And there’s a lot, a lot of people. But it makes sense. It’s not every day that you get to see some of the most famous pieces of archaeology. What are the pieces? It has some jewelry, canopic jars, and amazing sarcophagi. They are so amazing. Everything just screams opulence with gold shinning everywhere. But… the most important piece is saved for last… the golden funerary mask of King Tutankhamun! WOW! Simply incredible. If you can think of any artifact from Ancient Egypt, this funerary mask has a very good chance of being the one you thought of. It is incredibly famous and is often used as the picture of Ancient Egypt. My travel partner just stood there looking at it this way and that way trying to take in all of the details. Once he had had enough, he circled the room again just to take in all of the riches one last time, and again he slowed for both the sarcophagi and especially for the funerary mask. If you are planning to go to Cairo, definitely search for where this exhibit is and go see it!
But after the “best for last” you would think that we are done? No, no. We still have a tiny bit more to see! We continue exploring the legacy of King Tutankhamun, but this time outside of the main exhibit, so photography was allowed again. Lucky for you, and us.
First up is the canopic shrine on gilt wooden sledge. Wow. The canopic jars filled with the mummified internal organs of Tutankhamun were placed here with the goddesses Isis, Nephthya, Selket, and Neith depicted surrounding the shine protecting the mummified organs of the king.
Next is the throne of King Tutankhamun. This throne stems from the start of Tutankhamun’s reign, when he was still known as Tutankhaten (The Living Image of the Aten) and his queen was still known as Ankhesenpaaten (Her Life is Aten) and you can also see the icons from this time period including the sun-disk and the ducks in the marshes. This iconography along with signs of re-working have suggested that this throne was originally made for his father Akhenaten and later altered for Tutankhamun. In the centre of the backrest you may be able to make out the depictions of both Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun lounging under the sun. There are also many symbols for the protection of the king, the most obvious being that of the winged cobras and lion heads around the armrests. The final symbolism is that of the lotus and papyrus being intertwined symbolizing the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Incredible.
We also saw another ceremonial chair for Tutankhamun. Again, the artistry is simply amazing.
These are the final two pieces we took pictures of while in the Tutankhamun area. It is absolutely incredible to think of both the artistry and opulence that was available to the royal families in Ancient Egypt. Absolutely incredible. And you can see that many other people think so as well as they visit the ancient artifacts in their tour groups, haha.
Well, that’s it! We have seen the entirety of the museum! Wow. We’ve been here over 4 hours, and the museum is about to close… so do we leave? Of course not. My partner decides to run through the museum again and film and take 360° pictures while he still can, haha. And then he is approached by someone offering a tour. What…? The museum closes in about 5 minutes! How? My partner obviously says no, but the man says “no money” and follows along as my partner walks around, and then starts to give some information here and there. He asked if we had noticed all of the important works on the first floor. We said that we thought we had, but he took us around anyway. We were really rushing! To be honest, we had noticed what he had pointed out to us. He took us to the room with all of the colossi, the gigantic stella we showed you above, and a few other statues. The one we had seen but not realized what it was was this one.
This statue of a scribe is depicted on the 200 Egyptian pound bill. So that was pretty cool to notice. But, unfortunately for the guy who was taking us around, we had not had good experiences with people telling us “no money” and then charging us, so my partner was trying to avoid the guy but still be nice.
As the security guards come to kick us out, our “guide” tells us that he is a masters student of Egyptian archaeology at the university, and that the department of antiquities allows them to practice by giving tours within the museum. My partner just says “mhm” as we all shuffle out of the museum as he expects to be asked for money. We must exit through the gift shop and my partner takes his time to put distance between us and the “guide” as we didn’t ask for one and he was with us for exactly 5 minutes. The gift shop had many typical things from Egypt including papyrus, magnets, and lots of perfumes/scents. However, you don’t have any time to look because the gift shop also closes at 5 pm, so the guards are now kicking people out of the gift shop as well, haha. Maybe they could stay open a little later than the museum? It was packed with tourists, and not many were able to check out the gift shop. But whatever, haha. As we were exiting the gift shop, our “guide” was still there, haha. Oh no. We just walk out of the museum and take a picture.
The “guide” asks us where we are staying, and we say Giza. He tells us that that is great and he can take us to the metro station and then back to Giza if we would like. We say no thank you, we will explore Cairo a bit more, and then he mentions money. Of course my partner reminds him that he had said “no money” and it had been about 5 minutes that he followed us around in the museum. He says “no problem” and leaves towards the metro while my partner crosses the street to take this last picture of the museum before heading deeper into Cairo to explore!
As we start walking my partner starts to feel a bit bad about not giving the “guide” money. “He’s a student,” “it’s his ‘job’ to give tours of the museum to afford to study,” and etc. etc. But, it’s too late for that… and he keeps reminding himself that he didn’t ask for a tour and it was less than 5 minutes. So, we must move on with our lives, haha. And to do that, we take in the start of the sunset!
Again, you may remember that this is Tahrir Square and we are looking out towards the Qasr al-Nil bridge where we were yesterday. Although yesterday was nice, we randomly head in the opposite direction today to explore something new in Cairo. What else can we find before heading back to the hotel?
We walk with only a rough idea of where we are going. We’re just looking at the map and picking random streets to walk on. It’s starting to get late with the sun setting, but that’s fine. There are still a lot of people out and about. We walk, walk, walk. On the map we see that there is a green space in a sea of concrete, so we decide to stop by there to check it out.
As you may be able to make out, there’s a fence. The gate is closed from this end, and we don’t really see how to get in. It looks like it is mainly young people and children enjoying their evening. There are kids playing and people eating/drinking at little cafes. It looks nice. But, we see something just beyond the park. Since it caught our attention, we obviously had to go and check it out, impossible to be so close to something and not check it out.
What is this place…? We have zero clue. It seems like it’s a museum…? But it looks fancier than a museum… hmm…. All we know is that there are some young guys playing football (soccer) in front of the place. It doesn’t seem like it is a security risk or anything, so we get a bit closer to get a better view.
On one of the corners you can see security services looking out over the area, we’re not sure if they are police or something else, but they don’t even look twice at us, so we didn’t do anything wrong, haha. We just stand here as the young guys play soccer as my travel partner looks at the map to decide where to go next. Once he figures it out, we go.
Now, we’re pretty close to where we actually want to go, so we walk one more kilometre (we’re at three now) through the streets of Cairo. The sidewalks sometimes get narrow, sometimes they’re not level, but it’s fine. We walk by several different styles of shops and cafes/restaurants. No one pays any attention to us as we randomly walk around Cairo, exactly the way we like it. We make it to our goal, a big road with a bid building next to it, the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo!
Unfortunately for us, it’s closed. But what did we expect at this time? Yesterday we had considered coming here as well but, like today, we could not go through the museums fast enough to make it to a second museum, haha. The pitfalls of looking at every exhibit in too much detail I guess!
Well, we look along the outside of the museum and imagine what we may have seen inside. We imagine the artwork that we saw in Doha and Sharjah with their museums of Islamic art. But we can’t linger for long if we want to keep exploring! Our only problem is that to keep exploring we need to cross the street… and the street is about three or four lanes in the direction closest to us and about two lanes in the other direction. We just stand and wait on the sidewalk for quite some time until my partner has watched enough people struggle while crossing that we think we can manage it as well. We wait for a “break” in the traffic (quotation marks because it never really stops) and we slowly cross. Eventually we make it across and the streets narrow even more. We have zero clue what we are doing, haha. We start to walk through the ever narrowing streets and there are tons of stores on either side of the narrow street, and there are quite a few people, but mainly it’s just keeping an eye out for cars coming in either direction and negotiating the narrow street with them. However, it all proves worth it in about 200 metres.
This is the Mosque of Al Maraa (Woman) Fatima Shaqra (1468 CE). Very close to the museum, so if you go you should probably go take a look! And if you’ve walked this far, you may as well keep walking a bit more (~200 metres) so that you can see…
Bab Zuwayla. Wow. It is absolutely massive! Apparently this is a place where you can get a panoramic view of Cairo for 40 LE (~$2). Let’s see if we can make it back to this place when it isn’t closed (hours: 8:30 am – 5 pm). Maybe you want to time your visit towards the end of the day so that you can walk through the streets after dark and be treated to views like this one:
You can really see how busy it is. We took our opportunity to take this picture while we were waiting for the cars to move so that we could keep walking, haha. Everyone is just trying to squeeze through and continue on their way, haha. But these are the streets between the Museum of Islamic Art – Cairo and the Bab Zuwayla, after this gateway we turned down away from Bab Zuwayla as we saw many people walking around and were curious. Well, the street gets even narrower and we were in a cloth market. There are so many little shops on either side of the street (really an alleyway) and they have very nice clothing for sale. And, we think the majority of the people here at this time are Egyptians, so that tells you that the prices must not be “tourist prices”. Let’s keep that in mind if we need to get some things before leaving Egypt! But that’s enough of the market, we get to what seems to be the end, and turned back around towards the huge gateway. Just beyond it, we see the entrance to this mosque, Mosque of Sultan al-Muayyad Shaykh.
So beautiful. And, as you know, we are not experts in anything, but after seeing many such buildings and many museums that have taught us a lot, we must point out the typical Islamic geometric designs. You can see it in the above picture, but we also approached the doorway to get an even closer look.
Now, we continue walking up this way, just seeing what we can see. Just keep in mind the geometric designs and be on the lookout for them. That way we won’t always point them out, but little did we know that we would be seeing them more and more as we walked in this neighbourhood.
As you saw, Bab Zuwayla is a pretty big doorway into the neighbourhood, but this quickly narrows. On the streets you’re competing for space between all of the pedestrians, motorbikes, little motorized rickshaws getting people around, and every so often you see cars that just take up the entire path, haha. All with stores on either side of you selling absolutely whatever you’d like to buy. It is a very interesting neighbourhood! And every so often the stores end and you see a beautiful mosque. We don’t actually know the name for sure… but the map says Sabil Muhammad Ali Pasha.
We keep walking and eventually make it to Al-Azhar Street, a large street that cuts this neighbourhood in half. We don’t cross the street, but we go towards what may be the reason for the name of this street, Al-Azhar Mosque.
Here you can see a few things. Number one, the walkway to go beneath Al-Azhar Street, thankfully because the street is quite big and busy. Number two, you can make out a few stalls around the entrance where people are selling all kinds of little things for all of the people that are visiting the area. And number three, which you probably noticed immediately, you can see the large minarets towering over the people below. Let’s see if we can enter!
We continue along this side of the street towards the entrance of Al-Azhar Mosque. At the entrance, we don’t notice anyone who looks like a tourist, so instead of just walking in we ask security if we can enter. They say that the mosque is closed to tourists and to return tomorrow during the day. Unfortunate. But, before leaving, we ask if we can take pictures from the outside and they say no problem as long as we don’t enter. At least we can show you a bit more of this huge mosque.
We continue along this road a bit further for one reason and one reason only. The sidewalk gets narrower and narrower until we are corralled into a small amount of space, especially when compared to the street.
Eventually we make it to the end where the buildings just sort of end… we turn to take a picture of the building and a family just stares at us like we’re crazy. And, we are a bit. We took a picture of the Al-Hussein University Hospital by accident. That’s not what we came to see at all, haha. The pains of not speaking/reading Arabic, haha. But that doesn’t deter us! We know we are in the right area, so we turn back and cross into the middle of Al-Azhar Street to take this picture.
So, this seems quite random, doesn’t it? It’s just a random building. Well, yes and no. We believe that this is a building/entrance to Al-Azhar University. Now, this was actually our goal on our walk and it only took about 5 kilometres of walking from the Egyptian Museum, haha. But why would we walk all this way just for this? We’ve told you about us looking for doorways because Duolingo really stressed the word baab (باب), well this is in the same vein. Duolingo always uses Al Azhar University as an example of a university. That made us curious about it, so when we saw that it was in Cairo, we had to come take a look for ourselves. But why is it so famous that it is used as a Duolingo example? We had no idea until we did a little research of our own. This university is the oldest degree-granting university in all of Egypt and it is one of the most prestigious universities for Islamic learning (since 1961 it also teaches non-Islamic courses as well). But what does “oldest” actually mean in Egypt? Al-Azhar was founded in 970 or 972 by the Fatimid Caliphate. This would make it one of (if not the) oldest universities in the world, except that Al Azhar did not always “qualify” as a university based on western standards where they have been considered a “madrasa” (school), a “centre of higher learning”, and a “religious university”. It is only classified as a “university” since 1961, interestingly this matches the exact year that many secular faculties were added to Al-Azhar’s curriculum under President Gamal Abdel Nasser. You can decide for yourself if they deserve the title of oldest university or not with this information.
Now that we made it to our goal for the evening, it’s time to go back. We start walking back, but take this picture from in front of the Al-Azhar Mosque.
Apparently the minaret is for the Hussein Mosque, but in front of that you can see a lot of people. Seems like there may be a market or something going on, but we’re really not entirely sure. My partner is getting pretty tired, too tired to cross under the street to check it out. So instead of doing that we start walking back the way we came. We wind through the streets and alleyways.
Eventually we arrive back in front of the Abdeen Palace Museum where we had been earlier. We both decide that this is enough walking for today and sit to wait for our car to come pick us up. It is now 8 pm and my travel partner walked 8 kilometres after the museum which now seems forever ago. But we got to see many beautiful things in the Cairo night. We drive back by Tahrir Square and the Nile on our way to our hotel in Giza.
We arrive back in Giza and all we want to do is get some food and go to sleep, but Giza has some other plans, haha. As we’re on our way to get some food we are stopped by a man on the street. He tells us that he is not asking us for money, he has a business. We politely tell him that we are not interested and try to continue walking. He then tries to talk to us personally; “where are you from?” “What is your name?” And other such questions. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but not too bad. Eventually he tells us that we should go see his store, but there isn’t any pressure to buy. We relent and follow him to a big store just a little bit further down the street. He walks us into a store that all the lights are turned off… Very weird. But, the lights are switched on and he yells and a guy appears. It is a perfume store. The guy that got us on the street excuses himself and we are passed onto the guy from the store. He sits us down and gives us tea (my travel partner said he didn’t need any, but it’s rude to not drink the tea). He explains the different perfumes, how they are made the old traditional way by hand, how they are expertly packed to survive travel by plane and so on. We tell him that we had agreed to see the place with the man from the street, but we weren’t going to buy anything. He brings a few samples made from mint, papyrus, and rose. The papyrus smell was the best. But my travel partner is just focused on finishing his tea so that we can leave, haha. He eventually does and says “thank you very much” and gets up to go. As we reach the street below the man who had brought us appears again and asks us what we bought. We told him that we didn’t buy anything and that we had told him that we wouldn’t buy anything before going up there. Well, now he asks us for some money and tells us something about needing money for his family. We remind him that he had told us that he was working and didn’t need our money and we just keep walking and he goes to some other tourists that were passing by, haha. What a way to end the night!
Now we go to the same restaurant to get some food and then head to sleep quickly after planning our explorations for tomorrow! Good night from Giza!