The Egyptians

Cairo, Egypt

The National Museum of Egyptian Civilization was our only stop today. One museum in a day as an activity was just perfect. This museum is a manageable size, well-organized with a ton of interesting pieces. We saw about a dozen mummies (no photos allowed), all pharaohs who ruled somewhere around 3000 years ago - a couple different Ramses, Amenhotep, and Seti.

I loved the textile section of the museum. Weaving flax into fabric to make linen has been done for thousands of years. Amazing. They called white linen “menkhet” and would pleat it to represent the sun’s rays. I love seeing the looms and dyes and I imagined making my own linen textiles at home. Wrapped up in clothes and sleeping under blankets made from the earth feels right, creates a sense of calm.

A gorgeous 13m-long linen roll found at the steppe pyramid Saqqara was displayed at the museum today. Saqqara is the Egyptian’s test run pyramid built in 2700 BC, predating the Great Pyramids of Giza. We visited there two days ago. Incredible.

The more you know the more you realize you don’t know. Apparently Coptic is a/the crossover between Greek and Egyptian?? The Egyptian dynastic period lasted 31 dynasties from 4500 BC to about 300 BC when Alexander the Great showed up and created Alexandria, which remained capital of Egypt for the next 1000 years. Then the Arabs (just any Arabs?) arrived and conquered. So Egypt went from pharaohs as gods to Christianity to Islam. Now Egyptians are almost all Muslims and I suppose will be until they are conquered again.

Also, bread. I didn’t appreciate bread as a cultural clue. If you make bread, you harvest grain. In order to harvest grain you have to stay in one place at least for a growing season. You also need tools to grind grain into flour. So, we know ancient Egyptians developed a stable, non-nomadic lifestyle, knowledge of agriculture, and tool-building skills. They made bread from emmer, wheat, and barley. Emmer is, apparently, a healthier version of regular wheat and contains less gluten.

We have a few more days in Cairo, then fly to Aswan to take a cruise up the Nile to the city of Luxor where many of the kings and queens, or pharaohs and, what’s the feminine version of pharaoh?, were buried. After that we fly to Amman and tour Jordan and Israel, then off to Turkey for several weeks. From there, Europe. Tomorrow marks our 7th month gone, entering our 8th month of travel. Soon we’ll be back at home, back into our lives, and feeling like this was all a dream.