Last day in Cairo

We set off from our hotel in downtown Cairo towards the bazaar with good confidence in the directions we got from the man at the front desk . Almost an hour later, after walking beside a highway overpass, through the trash, and being approached by multiple slightly creepy men wanting to guide us in exchange for baksheesh, we reached a shopping area that still had half of the shops closed. We walked past the shopkeepers still putting their wares out and ended up following the narrow alleyways back into the shopping area until we were lost in our search for the Egyptian bazaar. We were in the local's shopping area, the pathways only a few feet wide, the stores filled with cheap WallMart-style clothing. After a claustrophobic walk during which our every step was watched and laughed at we found our way back out onto the wide walking street of the tourist's bazaar. The same street that we had walked down earlier was now filled with merchandise and tourists looking for souveniers. The tourist shops were very much like what the Plaka (in Athens) and the Grand Bazaar (in Turkey) held, but the shopkeepers were much more polite and less intrusive than the Turkish sellers were. I spent most of our time there watching the scenery. The intermittently congregated around the bright-orange water coolers in the middle of the small street. German couples with their shorts, hiking boots, and cameras passed holding hands. The shop owners stood waiting in the minimal shade outside their shops for people to come look at their scarves, pyramid impressions, and chessboards. A small, tabby kitten bounded between shops, sticking her face in the shiny jewelry and crawling through the shade underneath the tables.

In the afternoon we visited the Egyptian Museum. For a museum housing some of the most precious archaeological treasures of the ancient world it was surprisingly dingy, lacking in titles, and hot. But looking at all of the Egyptian relics took our minds off the uncomfortable conditions. The mask of Tutankhamoun shone brightly in the middle of one room, the gold inlaid with turquoise, his head adorned with the two serpents denoting his majesty. On the shoulders were miniature depictions of a falcon made out of deep-black obsidian. He is Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, of whom the pharaohs were supposed to be living incarnations of. The shrunken corpses of the human mummies were slightly disturbing, their fronts covered with garish depictions of their occupants. The light falling in streams from the high windows was filled with swirling motes of dust, lending an air of mysticism to the antiquities. The most interesting room to me was the room of animal mummies. Huge crocodiles (about seven meters long) filled the glass cases along one wall, their green bodies dried out, their tails seemed to be posed mid-swing. A dog mummy still covered in hair had its mouth opened in a silent bark. There was a huge, flat fish mummy that was as tall as me. The shelves covering another wall were filled with mummies of cats, their upright bodies covered in the preservative wrappings. There are four different types of animal mummies: pets, victual, sacred, and votive offerings. The pets were animals extremely special to the owners, such as baboons or dogs, whose mummies were placed in their owner's coffins or tombs after they died to accompany them into the afterlife. Victual animal mummies were meant to provide food for all eternity to the humans. Sacred animals such as the crocodiles, fish, or rams were the living forms of gods and most of the mummies were of old animals who had died naturally after a lifetime of being worshiped. The votive offering mummies were used in the same way as votive candles are and were made of animals, usually birds, that were bred and killed for the express purpose of being used to give spiritual protection to those who placed them in the tombs.

After leaving the museum Kate, Courtney and I split off from the rest of the group to return to Alexandria on the train. But before we left we wanted to see the Nile River one more time, so we stopped to have fruit drinks and dessert on one of the ship restaurants lining the river's banks. The Nile's waters lapped gently as we sat sipping our ice-cold fruit juices, a perfect way to say good-bye to Egypt's 19th capitol city.

We arrive in Alexandria after midnight, and were a bit worried about being three girls alone at night, but we had no problem finding a safe cab drive to take us back to the port. A man who spoke minimal English interpreted where we wanted to go for our driver. After we were all safely in the cab he leaned through the front window to ask where we were from, America, to which he replied "America? Obama! Obama good. Bush was bad!" and he waved goodbye to us with a huge grin on his face.