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Egyptian Museum and Cairo Market

Today I’ve spent five hours in the Egyptian Museum which is located in 5-10 minutes walking distance from our hostel. The first three hours we’ve spent with our Egyptian guide Sonja who has a very deep knowledge in ancient Egyptian history and seems to know the story behind every piece in the collection. The museum is indeed very interesting and you should definitely not miss it whenever you are in Cairo. There are a number of pieces which are as old as 5.000 years and it is very impressive to see which construction and artistic skills the people had already during this time. It is also very interesting to experience that there was a very strong focus on the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians believed that their second life would even be better than their first one and did lots of work to prepare dead bodies for their second live.

The collection also holds a number of pieces from King Tutankhamun whose tomb was found mostly intact while most of the others got destroyed by tomb raiders. Lastly, the exhibition shows a number of royal mummies which costs another 100 Egyptian Pounds (17 USD) to see but it definitely worth it. I have already seen other mummies, e.g. in die Andes but nothing like this. Some of the mummies are very well preserved and it feels very strange but fascinating to see the bodies of people who died ages ago.

In the evening I went with two other fellow travelers to the huge market of Cairo. The market is divided into different sections such as a shopping area for the locals which I found most interesting but also a touristy section with cheap tourist souvenirs from China.

The taxi ride to the market and back showed us once again how crowded Cairo, the largest city in Africa, is. Crossing one of the large intersections can be dangerous since cars never stop and you somehow need to sneak through them on a 5-7 lane street while everything is continuously moving.

When we were back at the hotel there was a demonstration right in front of the hotel of which you can see a picture below.