Cairo - Museum

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Friday 5th

Sitting on our balcony this evening typing up the notes I am listening to the call to prayer, the call can be heard five times a day, but today being the first Friday of Ramadan is especially significant to the Muslims and the prayer and responses have been audible for a few hours now.

We were lucky enough to visit the Khan el-Khalili Market around noon today in time to witness the Muslim men spilling into the square as the mosque was full. A large group of at least 200 men were praying and kneeling in the street, all the men in the area, shopkeepers, traffic police, workers came together and commenced their prayer. During Ramadan as the sun sets the fasting which occurs from sunrise is over and the people come together to break the fast, outside hotels and restaurants the rich feed the poor and often you see tables set up in the street for the people to receive a free meal.

This morning we visited the Citadel & Mohammed Ali Mosque. The Citadel is a monument to medieval warfare and is a highly visible landmark on Cairo's skyline. The Mosque was very grand, the pencil shaped minarets are over eighty metres high and stand on a base only three meters wide. The Ottoman architecture of the mosque was very beautiful and ornate inside.

At Cairo Museum, we were able to view the Tutankhamen exhibition as well as many other interesting exhibits. Tutankhamen was a boy when he ascended to the throne, the young king was to rule Egypt for nine years, until he died from a fall in a chariot race that broke his femur and died from an infection. We were able to view the magnificent solid gold casket, although priceless the value of the gold of the casket is worth over $1 billion US. Having Randa give us a tour of the museum was fantastic as she is qualified in this area, and had undertaken many excavations in the desert and has a real passion for the antiquities displayed.

We are flying to Luxor tomorrow so we are unsure of when we will be able to update our travel log next.

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