The Things They Carried

On our last day in Cairo we went to the National Museum of Egyptian Culture (NMEC). The highlight here was the display of many famous mummies including Nefertari, Amenhotep and Ramses 2, among many others On the wall was a list of their achievements, and the mummies were startlingly well preserved: skin, hair , teeth. As I was looking at the mummy of Ramses 2, I couldn’t quite take it all in. I mean, Ramses 2, from thousands of years ago – the same Ramses who built Karnak and Abu Simbel, and here I was seeing his actual face in front of me. All these rulers made an attempt to fill their tombs with objects they thought they’d need in the afterlife, and of course none of those things mattered in the least.

On a much less grand scale , as Scot and I have been journeying on this continuous multi- month trip, we’ve been extremely aware of space limitations in our luggage. As Scot put it, “You can buy whatever souvenirs you want, but are you ready to carry whatever you buy from place to place for the next four months?”

More than a month into our journey now, very little has passed that test…