Unable to Exclude: Papyrus Store on Pyramids Street

Nothing about my physical appearance suggests that I am Egyptian. Nevertheless, while in Egypt, I passed as a resident foreigner. My clothing evidently created that impression: loose-fitting garments covered all limbs. More importantly, I was unaccompanied on the streets, heading for specific work-related destinations, except for the final day, when I visited the Great Pyramids and bought papyrus at a souvenir store.

A protective cardboard envelope for this fragile product was supplied by “New Pharaohs Papyrus,” a shop near Cairo selling papyrus to tourists. We were released into the store’s cool interior from a mini-bus with airco. The store was quiet, the personnel solemn in countenance, particularly so when the non-Egyptian visitors opted to purchase the least expensive papyrus on offer, a single sheet bearing colorful hieroglyphs.

We glanced at the hieroglyphs before they were slotted into the cardboard sheath. The personnel stepped back from the counter: the envelopes carried an image which appeared to study the buyers even before the cash transaction had been completed. Thanks to Dr. Maarten J. Raven, Curator for the Egyptian Department of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, in the Netherlands, I now understand more about the packaging placed in my hands that day.

The design on the envelope has no immediately available exact parallel in antiquity, but Dr. Raven was ‘unable to exclude’ that the motif had been copied from a coffin or papyrus writing from 3,000 years ago. This could mean that the “New Pharaohs Papyrus” design was drawn from a rare sample as yet unavailable to scholars, or, that the design was a somewhat incompetent replica of what is a ‘well-known combination:’ the Eye (Sun or Moon) of Horus, who was the Falcon God of Heaven, the Cobra, who warded off evil, and the Wing, a sign of Horus’ status as a deity.

Horus’ eye represents ‘wellbeing and survival,’ as the waning and waxing of the moon are said to represent harm caused to his moon eye and subsequent return to full ocular health thanks to intervention by other deities. The image on the cardboard envelope also contains the hieroglyph for life, the Ankh Cross, dangling from the Cobra’s body. All in all, an encouraging logo.

The text underneath the image includes hieroglyphs which, according to Dr. Raven, are not written in orthodox fashion. The word for ‘eternity’ emerges clearly, but again, he cannot exclude that ‘even this detail was faithfully copied from an original.’