Egypt Travel Guide - Everything Ancient is New Again

When you step onto the sands of Egypt you will be stepping through the sands of time and transported to an ancient land where the winds blow across the millennia. It’s a beautiful atmosphere where anything seems possible and the stories of the bible seem come to life, and recent. It’s exactly the perfect place to buy an ancient artifact – or to find a fake. The atmosphere of antiquity is one you’ll want to take home with you, but no one wants to get ripped off.

It’s remarkably easy for Americans to get fooled into paying way too much for a genuine artifact, or way way too much for a counterfeit. There are a few rules that can help you to figure out if what you’re holding is ancient, old or brand new. I’ll be happy to share some:

1) If you see a dozen identical lamps sitting on a roadside table, unguarded, with exactly the same chip in exactly the same place you’ve just found a one hour old ancient treasure. Many sellers will be forthcoming that their wares are replicas but just as many will not.
2) Ancient things are amazingly salty. Ask permission, then touch the tip of your tongue to the article. If it sucks on your tongue it’s likely over 2,000 years old. If it tastes like pure salt with a great deal of strange tones as complex as a tinny burgundy, and is so salty it’s nearly shocking, it could be as old as 5,000 years.
3) Put a little water on the thing. After a few thousand years a piece of stone or clay gets really thirsty. The water will evaporate faster, the older it is. It’s very exciting to see a bit of water vanish almost by magic. Contain that excitement because now comes the buy.

Buying anything in an Arab country can be a counterintuitive process for Americans. Our natural response to seeing a price tag is to consider that the final price. If we think it’s too expensive, maybe we’ll ask five or ten percent off. In the Middle East price tags are laughably suggestive, and haggling is the name of the game. It’s a normal, expected part of the purchase process to talk down the price as much as you can.

1) Do not ask how much something is unless you want the negotiation to start high. Make an offer based on _ or so of the price tag.
2) The shopkeeper will make a counter offer, usually just a little under the original price, to show he’s willing to deal. If your original offer is accepted, you offered too much.
3) Be willing and ready to walk away. Do not pay more than half of the tag price. Usually, when you’re walking away the shopkeeper will accept your offer.
4) If your offer is not accepted you can say, and mean, that you will look around for another price. Often the shopkeeper will say you can return later for a good price. Come back later, better armed with price comparisons, and remind the shopkeeper of his promise and you can expect a better deal.

And the final rule? Don’t believe the thing is what the label claims. The shopkeepers are not Egyptologists or Archaeologists – they are business men. I once purchased a ‘genuine warrior wrist bone’ to discover it was a genuine antiquity. A real bone. A camel bone. I love that bone, but I doubt the camel was a warrior.

My final thought on bringing home a piece of the distant past? Some of the best finds are free. On a sponsored archaeology themed tour, I dug up pottery shards over four thousand years old with names inscribed inside in Aramaic. It cost me nothing, and every time I see them I remember the feeling of clay sand under my fingernails and my voice echoing in caverns as old as the world.

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