Back to the Egyptian Museum

I woke up a little earlier than normal because of the slightly earlier bedtime that stemmed from Mt. Sinai exhaustion. Jack was not awake so I just messed around on the internet and tried to catch up on current events. It is weird having looked at the market and news sites for hours everyday this summer and then coming here and after two weeks be completely out of the loop. Technology helps alleviate some of issues but it cant help with the time difference. Jack eventually woke up and after showering we went downstairs for some breakfast. It was the same as usual although we no longer eat the fruit and they make comments about it now. The two ladies that always run breakfast are very nice and they joke around with us now since we have been around for two weeks.

We blogged a little bit and then headed off to the metro. The plan was to go to the Egyptian Muesum, eat lunch and then go for a felucca ride. I kind of let my guard down at the metro station and led us onto the train going the wrong direction. Oh well, we ended up where we wanted to go with the only cost being time lost. At the Museum we walked through some of the rooms Jack had missed on the ground floor and then headed upstairs. The Museum acts as a big empty warehouse that is organized by time period. It is shocking to see some of the ancient artifacts just shoved into a corner with no description or anything on them. The main thing on the ground floor we saw was the Amarna Room which houses Nefertiti’s bust. Apparently a better version of her face exists in the Berlin Museum. After her room we wandered upstairs and into the King Tut area. Everything they found in his tomb they brought to the museum except for the outer sarcophagus and the mummy itself. Some of the stuff we saw was astounding. His mask weighed about 25 pounds and was pure gold. His smaller sarcophagus (they have four) was also pure gold and weighed almost 250 pounds. They had some jewelry along with a myriad of other items. Outside the official King Tut gallery, they have four chambers of gilded wood. These supposedly fit inside each other (they got progressively smaller) and inside the last one they put his outer sarcophagus. For more information about King Tut and the tomb you can check out this link. 

Near King Tut’s gallery there are other rooms housing items found in more completely intact rooms. They are described as the second best archaeological finds to King Tut’s tomb. They were still very interesting to look at. We proceeded to walk through rooms until we reached the animal mummy room. There we saw cats, dogs, crocodiles, birds and many other animals. We read there were four types of animal mummies: food during eternal life, offerings, pets and sacred animals. These were kind of cool but I have decided that mummies in general are just gross.

Once we left the animal mummy room we went to the human mummy room that holds some of the most famous pharaohs. They have Ramses II, Seti I, Hatshepsut and some others. One of them had died in battle and you could see some of the battle wounds. Most still had hair but Jack pointed out the only one with eyelashes. The caption for Hatshepsut’s was actually really funny. It read some along the lines of, “Here lies an obese woman with bad teeth found in a side room in the Valley of the Kings. It was later determined she was Hatshepsut.” We spent some time looking at each mummy and it was worth the extra money we paid but I do not think I ever need to see that room again.

After the mummies, we saw some models that had been built long ago in Ancient Egypt. They showed armies and also more trivial things such as fishing. Jack immediately started quoting Lord of the Rings and 300 once he saw the model armies and pretended to have a sword. I really hope his kids have an imagination as big as his and he has a backyard large enough to accommodate it.

We went back downstairs to the Graeco-Roman period and at this point Jack realized he had lost his sunglasses. He searched around for him but could not find them. It was frustrating and he just gave up looking so we could move on. The best part about the Greek period was seeing Greek looking men in pharaoh’s headdress. The imagery just does not work, I am sorry. Near this area there is also a stone very similar to the Rosetta Stone. It has three languages and has been used to help decipher hieroglyphs. It also is a perfect example of how crowded the museum is. Here they have a stone almost as famous as the Rosetta Stone and you would completely miss it unless you knew to look for it. And as with every description in the building, it looks like it was typed with a typewriter 50 years ago.

We left the museum planning to get food but Ramadan got in the way of our original plans. We went to three different places that were all closed until finally we ended up at Felfela for the fourth time. I took some pictures that showed the place since we ate there so many times. On the way to Felfela we met a man who could be summed up perfectly as a jerk. He had no motive but to insult and make fun of American Travelers. He was from Australia and told us how it was better than America and proceeded to ask us about how much money we were paying for stuff etc. Of course, after every price we told him, he would just laugh and tell us what poor judgment we had. It was quite annoying.

Felfela from out table we got every time

Once we were done eating we headed off to do a felucca ride. We were looking for Dok Dok, a place recommended by Lonely Planet. It was supposed to be a 15-20 minute walk from where we were but on our way we ran into an aged man who spoke fluent English. It turned out to be a complete scam so let me take some time to explain the entire thing.

“Hey, my friend how are you? Where are you from?” Translation: Hey sucker, look over here, spend some time talking to me and let me try and scam you. One thing we have learned here in Cairo is anyone who starts off with “Hey, my friend” is anything but your friend. We responded by telling him we were from America. He immediately jumped up, welcomed us and started telling us his life story. He had visited many places in America, including Minneapolis, his son lived in Tulsa Oklahoma, his daughter was getting married the next day and he was the art director for the museum nearby. Jack and I kind of laughed but he insisted showing us his office so he could at least give us his business card since he loved America so much. We made the main mistake of following him. I should point out it is very very hard to say no to these guys. So we sat down in his “office” that turned out to just be a papyrus store and we met his son and his daughter (the one apparently getting married). As the tea was being made he said we should take a look at some of the pictures he has been working on so he could just tell us the stories. He also asked for our names so he could write them out in Arabic. Jack and I just laughed as he went through the pictures and did not say anything. Eventually he said to just tell him which one’s we “maybe” liked and he would give them to us for free. If we wanted to we could pay for the material cost of making the paintings. So we chose a couple, he told us the stories and then asked which ones we liked. We told him and he immediately picked them up and gave them to his daughter to write our names on them in Arabic. Again we made the mistake of not stopping him since he had told us they were free. As his daughter wrote our names he asked if we wanted to make an easy 3000 euros in Vienna selling his Papyrus paintings. He said we could just bring them to someone he knew and would make an instant profit. We said we had no room but he continued to pester us with why we did not want to make any money. At this point I started getting suspicious. We had already been scammed once in Luxor and although I wanted the papyrus then I did not want anymore. Once the names had dried and we had drank the tea he gave us the paintings and pulled out his calculator. He said to put the paintings in our bag and to type out in the calculator how much we thought the material cost was and were willing to give him for his daughter’s wedding. He even brought over his daughter so we could give the money straight to her. Jack was first up and I started saying we could not give that much. Jack put in 20 USD. The guy immediately told us to look around the shop at the paintings. He pointed out the prices of over $100 and said that $20 was ridiculous. The real price was $40 for the materials. This is when I decided I was not paying a thing. I pulled out the paintings and gave them back to him. He said he had no use for them since my name was on them. Meanwhile he took the $20 that Jack had offered. I became angry and reminded him he said it was free. He said no no no, and that he had said we had to pay the material cost. I started lying to him and told him I had a close Egyptian friend who said not to pay more than 20 EGP for a papyrus painting. The man thought this was preposterous since my friend did not see the special work he was doing on each painting. I kept lying and told him I had no money and kept also bringing my fake Egyptian friend. He then gave me a lecture of how unsuccessful I was going to be because I could not trust people who were just genuinely trying to help me. He went on to say that people like me are everything that is wrong with America. Americans bunch all Egyptians in same bad group. He claimed to be a millionaire and that his son owned 2 million EGP and that he really did not care about money. He then told his son to open the door in Arabic. He said his whole purpose was to show us how Egyptians could be nice and share a bond with Americans. He ended by telling us to finish our tea and get out. During his lecture he had taken my paintings back which he had just told us he had no use for. I told him if he gave me his business card and the paintings free I would write something nice about his shop when I got back to America. He did not like this trade but still gave us his business card. I guess money really did matter to him. And his business card by the way says “Broker” on the back and has nothing about being an art director. Nothing he said was true. There is no way his daughter was getting married (why would she be serving us tea?) and there is no way he was a millionaire art director (why would he be in such a crappy shop?). And there was just absolutely no way the material cost for the paintings was $40 (more than the other papyrus shops we had been in). It was a trap and a scam and I was not going to give him any money. I ended up with a free thing of tea but wasted half an hour of my time. Jack was not as fortunate as he added to his papyrus collection and spent $20. And I left thinking that if I have a gut instinct that tells me when something or someone is a fraud then I will be more successful then the Egyptian would ever be. I had just read the Big Short a couple of days before and the main message was that if something appears too good to be true it almost always is. It was freed and the belief that you can get something for nothing that got the entire world into trouble. I was not going to let that happen to me in this man’s shop. The next book I plan on reading is by Benjamin Graham entitled the Intelligent Investor. The main principle of the book is value investing (now commonly associated with Warren Buffet). Value investing tells you to control the downside and let the upside take care of itself. In that shop, I was listening to this advice and controlling the downside by not spending any excessive money on this man’s scam. I should point out that he was fluent in at least Japanese and German and I assume many more languages. I wondered how many people had fallen for his tricks. The whole thing put me in a pretty bitter mood. No only had he insulted me and attempted to lecture me but he also insulted America. You just should not insult me and my country to my face and expect me to pay you any money at all. I have pride in my country and as many Egyptians have told us this trip and as I strongly believe, Obama is good. Luckily for me, the only thing that would make me feel better was exactly what we had planned to do: taking a felucca our and sailing on the Nile.

I just love getting out on the water and feeling the breeze. I find it incredibly peaceful and relaxing, especially when I am not the one who has to do the sailing (Captain Aswan did that for us). Out on the Nile no one could honk at us and no one could hassle us. It was the perfect feeling, as you can see from the pictures. We were out for about an hour and then came back in. We made our way back to the hotel (fortunately without any incidents) and relaxed until dinner. For dinner, we decided to go back to a place we had been before called El Geish. We both ordered chicken and afterwards headed to the hotel. We thought about getting tea since Jack is now a UGE fan but decided not to. At the hotel, we went on the Internet, blogged and watched some How I Met Your Mother before going to bed.

Our ship and Captain Aswan

Dok Dok in the background

I would like to make a quick shout out to my parents. I think I finally hit the point where I was feeling homesick and I managed to sneak in a quick conversation with them yesterday that really helped. After being in Cairo for almost two weeks, I would do anything for some of my Mom’s French Toast or a steak my Dad grilled in the back yard or even some of Katie’s Mac and Cheese. I still have a while before I can experience those things again, but I think Vienna will be a little closer to what I am used to in that sense. Yes, Europe will be another culture shock but I do believe it will help alleviate some of the general weariness I am starting to feel in Cairo. Do not get me wrong, I have loved my trip and all the experiences I have had, but at this point, I am ready to move on to my next adventure.

Nutrition:

At Felfela we ordered some hummus and finished all of our bread. I just got some pasta because it was cheap and easy. Then at El Geish we had more bread and some chicken. The chicken was very hard to eat because you had to pick through it to find all the meat. When you did find a piece it was good though, as was the rice underneath.

Half Chicken from El Geish