Egypt Day 1 : Cairo
As soon as visiting Egypt was finalized, I started another mission. Learning Arabic. The initial motivation was to be able to read the numbers on Taxis since the cars in Egypt have Arabic numerals. Then the challenge kicked in along with the recent “loads of time on my hands due to retirement”. I persevered on Duo, some lessons on YouTube and also bought books from Amazon. A few weeks before the departure I realized that THE ARABIC I was learning is NOT the version of Arabic spoken in Egypt. The Egyptian Arabic is different from Tunisian, Moroccan Arabic and all of these are different from the Modern Standard Arabic which is the Arabic used for the written text in the newspapers and also possibly in Quran. Okay, I thought, I’ll still be able to read the signs and that would help. NOooo! the Arabic is generally written without the vowels! JST MGN THT! I was told that usually there is no confusion, and if any, it is removed by “the context”. This floored me completely. To sum it up: I could not understand the Egyptian dialect of Arabic, could not read the “non-vowelled” written words and had already failed at parsing the spoken words which are supposed to merge into the following word constantly. Basically, an Arabic illiterate after 3 months of effort. The wasted effort hurt!. 
But in the process, I learnt that the root of many words we use every day is actually Arabic… hisaab, wajan, mareej, dawa, kitab, kameez to name a few. An interesting anecdote: On reaching Cairo on January 3, the first day of our trip, our pickup person was looking for Anshul. Tanjul told him to look for a guy in Pink Shirt resulting in an utterly confused look. My Arabic skills came to rescue, “Wardi Kameez”, perfectly clear! Still feeling proud of it. And this was the first hour in Egypt. Unfortunately, that was the high point of my Arabic. Sigh!
Our first agenda after landing was visit to the Cairo museum (after polishing off theplas and mathri in the hotel room like true Indians). We had to brave the long drive and the tough security outside the museum. At first the gun toting guards might seem a little too much to encounter before entry to the museum, but their artifacts are their USP and it is not like they can order a replacement today. Despite the security delays the museum was worth it.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo looked dusty even before we entered it. Dusty, crowded and noisy. I have been to some museums which have a lot of artifacts but the Egyptian museum at Cairo seemed to be bursting at the seams. It was crammed with artifacts of all kinds, all related to Ancient Egypt with almost zero description on the displays. Without the guide it would be impossible to see. Even with the guide, we missed half of the things.
The Egyptians loved their cats ! Sometimes they put human faces on them
Sphinx are a plenty in Egypt, the Sphinx at Giza is the largest. They are supposed be to be protectors. A small statue or the name of the protectee is usually found between the legs of the sphinx. Here one can see the oval with some hieroglyphs. All artifacts are marked with hieroglyphs, the ancient Egyptian script. The names of a Pharaoh ( mind you there are multiple names of the same person, given at birth, given at coronation and more) are enclosed in the oval called cartouche ( a french word for cartridge due to the shape). Hieroglyphs was a very advanced language meant only for royality and priests. The commoners had a simpler version of the script.
The interpretation of the script was lost after the last of the Pharaohs. It was deciphered using the Rosetta stone by the efforts of Thomas Young and Champollion (funded by Fourier). Physicists have contributed a lot to Egyptology
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