The Egyptian National Library

The Egyptian National Library is a bit like our Library of Congress - but much older.  It reportedly holds several million volumes including some very rare manuscripts dating back  to 705 A.D.  It has been closed for remodeling for several years and just recently reopened.

Situated along the Nile corniche and just north of the Conrad Hotel, it seemed like a pleasant place to spend a Sunday afternoon.  Bring your passport if you intend to visit.


As it turned out, the staff we met were so welcoming and friendly that we only were able to see four small areas before the library closed.  We began in the music collection which includes a small museum showing the evolution of recording technology from the days of the German polyphone and the Edison cylinder phonograph to modern digital technology.




The library staff is currently at work digitizing and preserving thousands of what appear to be 78rpm recordings from Egypt's past artists - of course, Umm Kalthum's works are included.  They have currently digitized 4,000 of 24,000 recordings. This room also has a set of books in Arabic and English on music theory and classification.



From the music room, we moved into the Art and Architecture area which had a curator anxious to show off his works.  I found a huge volume from 1940 titled Early Muslim Architecture by K. A. C. Creswell, an English architectural historian.  The author did quite an impressive job studying mosques in Syria and Iraq - it was fortunate that he did this in the 1930s.  A "no photos" policy was strictly enforced in this room.


We moved on and found a room dedicated to the visually impaired.  With a large number of workstations and a shared braille printer, we were surprised at this accommodation.  We spent quite a bit of time with Muhammud, the supervisor, who expressed great appreciation for the work Americans do for the impaired.





Our final visit was to the newspaper room which has a large collection of Egyptian and Arabic papers in hard copy form from the days of the Suez Canal project until the present plus microfilm access.  The manager of this area showed us a current collection of interesting papers that highlighted the expanded role of women in society.  One publication he showed us was a caricature newspaper which was directed at the illiterate in the countryside.  That gave some context to our earlier visit to the caricature museum in Tunis.



When the museum closed at 3:00, the employees headed quickly to the exits.


We decided to make one more stop at Azza's ice cream parlor just outside of downtown.  A very large dish of ice cream is available for about $1.50.  No 31-flavors here; just five.






I chose the chocolate, of course.  Linda picked mango.  The texture is more like gelato than ice cream but is a welcome treat. Other flavors offered were strawberry, lemon and vanilla.