Touring Cairo

 Thursday, February 5, 2026

Cairo 

A full and quite wonderful day!  Our group of eight met after breakfast with our Egyptologist Tarek Tawfik and began our touring at a remarkable museum, and one I had not known about, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.  This is not the new Grand Egyptian Museum which we will see on Saturday.  This museum opened in 2022.  It’s on two floors, the main ground floor which contains incredible artifacts from the entire sweep of Egyptian civilization from the far prehistoric, through the dynasties of ancient Egypt, through the Roman occupation and up to the modern day.  Below, in a phenomenal series of exhibition rooms, are mummies, beautifully preserved and presented (no photos there).  We spent most of the morning there; I’ll show just a tiny sampling of some of the treasures on the main floor. 

Here’s a 35,000 year old skeleton:

 

A wheat grinder from a tomb, 2200 BCE: 

Protective goddesses from the tomb of Amenhotep II, 1500 BCE: 

Funerary furniture from the tomb of Sennedjem, 1200 BCE: 

Harps from about 1200 BCE:

A depiction of the birth of Isis from the Ptolemaic period.  The goddess “Nut” giving birth to the goddess Isis on the birth chair while goddesses of birth (with cow heads) supervise the delivery: 

From the Roman period, a golden wreath and necklace: 

Just this portion of the museum was overwhelming, but then we visited the mummies below, and were totally entranced.  They were encased in glass cases into which they barely fit, so you could almost go nose-to-nose with them.  It was truly overwhelming. 

A word about women.  They do go out unaccompanied, and are in all stages of being covered.  We saw none in short skirts, brief tops, or anything even slightly immodest to Egyptian standards.  Most were wearing hijabs (headscarves) but not all.  Many were wearing bulky caftan-like garments (abayas), which leave the face exposed, and some were wearing the niqab which leaves only the eyes exposed.  I even saw one woman in a black niqab whose hands were covered with black gloves. 

Our next visit was to the Khan al-Khalili Souk which is enormous, and much of which has the same feel as the old city in Jerusalem: 

Something a bit confusing in this very conservative country was the large number of very revealing “belly-dance” outfits on display and for sale.  Many of them were on mannikins with enormous breasts: 

No purchases.  We had lunch in the souk, wandered for a while, and then visited Coptic Cairo.  Around 20% of the population is Coptic Christian, and we visited a church there.  This very interesting sign has writing in Coptic, with a transliteration in Arabic: 

We visited old Cairo where there are very old buildings, including the Cavern Church and the Ben Ezra Synagogue dating from the 11^th century (no photos allowed).  It’s no longer a functioning synagogue, and serves as a museum.

 Back to the hotel for washing up, and we all met for a get-to-know you welcome dinner.  We then crashed before a big day tomorrow visiting the pyramids and the sphinx.  More then.