Week 3: 19-25 January 2025
Sunday was our last day in Alexandria. After breakfast at a restaurant near our hotel, we headed to the Graeco-Roman museum. For me this was the best museum we have visited so far, housing over 40.000 objects, including a very impressive collection of coins.
Afterwards we headed to the library of Alexandria. There we got a quick tour – apparently all of the architectural features have a lot of symbolism – and were then released to explore the library and all of the museums inside the building by ourselves. The antiquities museum was of course super interesting, but it was the museum about Egyptian movie director Shadi Abdelsalam that really stood out for me. His drawings of the costumes and sets for his movies are very impressive. Our last stop in Alexandria was the Fortress of Qait Bey. Built in the 15th century, this Ottoman fort sits on the same spot where the Pharos of Alexandria once stood. When you stand on the defensive wall surrounding the fortress, looking out over the Mediterranean Sea, you can almost imagine what the view from the top of the Pharos must have looked like.
On Monday we only had an Arabic class on the schedule, but before heading to our class at the NVIC, Mayke and I stopped by the German Institute to get a library card. After class we split up, some of us heading to the German Institute to work on our site presentations, others going back to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (EMC) to continue work on our museum assignment and to pick out an object to write our paper on.
On Tuesday we headed to Dahshur and the Memphis open air museum. For this trip we were guided by PhD student Andrés. He gave us an introduction of the site, but also quizzed us on our pyramid knowledge, because from where we were standing, we could see all the way to the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. Afterwards, he took us around the Bent Pyramid of Sneferu, before also taking us inside, to go see the burial chamber. This was a lot of going down stairs and going up stairs and climbing through narrow passageways cut in the rock, and then doing it all over again in the opposite direction to get out. It was a super fun experience but also really exhausting. The second part of our day was less intensive, ending with the Memphis open air museum at Mit Rahina. The pièce de resistance here was definitely the colossal statue of Ramses II.
On Wednesday we were all prepared to spend hours at the passport office for our visa extensions, but ended up getting in and out in less than an hour. This gave us some free time before our last Arabic class. Most of us worked on our site presentations or museum assignment in a café near the NVIC. I am disappointed that we had our last Arabic class this week, because I really enjoyed them, but our teacher Khawla did not let us leave her classroom without urging us to keep up with what we learned and to keep practicing. If I ever have the opportunity, I will definitely come back to take up classes again. We ended our day with a lecture at the German Institute by Tom Hardwick on British politics and the excavation of the Tomb of Tutankhamun. I really enjoyed this lecture, because it talked about exactly the type of bureaucracy within Egyptology that is often not talked about, but I find super interesting. I also submitted my final assignment from one of my courses at home in Belgium, so from now I can focus completely on my time here in Cairo.
Our Thursday was a day for self-study, and we had Friday and Saturday off, because Saturday was Police Day. Many of us slept in on Thursday. I tried to get up early – but I was not really successful – to go to the EMC to consult the database one last time before submitting my museum assignment, and to find an interesting object for my paper. While I was walking around Downtown Cairo, the others went to the German Institute again to get some work done. On Friday most of us stayed home or went to a café to work on our site presentations. For some group bonding we ended our day all together with a movie night in Kaitlyn, Margarida, and Yasi’s apartment. To stay in the Egyptology theme, we watched the Prince of Egypt. Saturday was more of the same, staying inside or going to a café to get work done, although Ricardo decided to walk the entire length of Zamalek from all the way at the top, down to Cairo Tower. We finished our day with an online lecture from ARCE on Egyptian Rock Art, by Salima Ikram.
Our third week here in Cairo might have been a lot calmer than week one and especially week two, but it gave us much needed time te recharge and prepare for some upcoming busy weeks, because on Sunday, bright and early, we will be leaving for the south.
Machteld Schuurmans