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Buying souvenirs in Egypt
(extended & updated: November, 2008)
When you are in Egypt, on perhaps the most satisfying
holiday of a lifetime, everything will look better, feel better, and
taste better than at home, leaving lasting
impressions. We want however to take
something more tangible than memories home with us, so we set out to
buy some souvenirs. Not without hesitation, though... We are now in a
strange and mysterious land, with different and unfamiliar customs. How
do we go about, how do we avoid either making a fool of ourselves, or
insult the locals?
This little introduction is the fruit of six journeys to Egypt
(mostly to Luxor), one week
each. I still make mistakes: coming home to find
I've bought terrible stuff for too high a price - but I am
doing better now than the first time. So maybe my
experience can be of some use to you.
In passing
this along, I also hope to have a positive effect on the
Egyptian souvenir business as a whole. In the end, a mature market place,
where buyers and sellers have the same information, will benefit
all. Margins will go down, but with higher customer satisfaction, sales
volumes will go up, allowing for more local production, and higher labor
participation. And most important of all:
tourists that feel that they are being treated fairly may decide to come
back again next year - instead of trying Mexico or Thailand
for a change....
Ways
to
travel
The way you travel will affect your opportunities. It
makes quite a difference, whether you travel in a group, or on your own.
Traveling in groups
Most tourists travel Egypt in organized groups – and if you lack any
experience outside Milwaukee or Newark-on-Trent, this is not such a bad
idea. If you pay attention though, you can come back a second
time on your own. Egypt may look a bit strange to the inexperienced, but
it is basically a civilized country.
One
major disadvantage of traveling in a group is, that you have
to follow the guide – not only to the sites, but also to the shops of
his uncles and nephews, where you will be treated fair, and where the
prices are good.
Bringing in groups will earn your guide a handsome commission. (Even those who speak very little English perfectly
understand the word "commission".) The
number of available shops to choose from is so large, that he can do his
picking as he pleases. It is only natural that he will favor those
shops, that pay him most. And it is just as natural, that you
will repay that commission to the shop keeper.
These practices are looked upon with intense sorrow by the “independent”
merchants in the town bazaars. With ever
less tourists
traveling
on their own, their shops remain empty.
Traveling on your own
If you do travel alone, or manage to get away from the group to do a
little shopping on your own, strolling through a bazaar, you will soon
enough discover that a shop keeper will always try to persuade you to
come into his shop. Once inside, he has far better options for influencing
you. He will offer you a seat and some tea, be polite and friendly, and
thereby create an atmosphere in which it would be rude to simply walk
away again. If you except his hospitality for more than say five
minutes, it will be really hard not to buy anything.
(Sometimes, he can be so persistent that he actually blocks your way
out. If you do not want to physically brush him aside, slowly raising
your voice is an excellent alternative. If there
is one thing that nobody wants here, it is to attract attention...)
On the other hand, as long as you are sitting in his shop, he can not
entertain other guests. If you stall, taking more of his time than he
expected, and if more customers arrive, he may even get a bit jumpy,
finally accepting your “ridiculous” offer just to get rid of you.
The
merchandise
"Antiquities"
Your chances of being offered “genuine antiquities” is almost 100 %.
If you just ponder a little on this, you may be able to figure it out
for yourself...
Still need some help? Well, consider this. First of all, in Egypt it is
not only illegal to export antiquities, but also to sell them. No shop
keeper in
his right mind would take chances selling to tourists – who are in the
final analysis strangers that one knows nothing about.
Secondly, the best prices will be paid by wealthy collectors who can
actually appreciate the merchandise. Tourists that can’t tell real from
fake may be persuaded into buying something, but not likely for the
prices that art collectors will pay for the real thing.
Another point to consider is, that "antiquities" are in fact not all
that difficult to make.
I have watched a modern-day artist make an ancient Egyptian relief on a
piece of limestone in a matter of minutes. When the stone is freshly
cut, it is still so soft that it can be carved with a penknife. To
further ease the work, the stone is wet with some water. Even intricate
details spring from the stone in unbelievable speed.
It looked quite nice. It was then treated with a water-based brown
paint, to make it look older. And then it looked very convincing indeed.
It would of course never fool an expert, but Mrs. Jackson from
Poughkeepsie will be ever so pleased with it.
The upside of all this is, that there is no risk attached to buying
these “antiquities” – that is: no other risk than paying too much. If
you don’t pay more than you would for any “modern” souvenir, you should
be o.k.
"Hand made"
Perhaps the most frequently
used recommendation
in the shops is: "It's hand made!..." Personally, I couldn't care
less if it were made by foot, as long as it looks good, but your
salesman will use it as a valid argument to ask a ridiculous price. In Egypt
though, manual labor is actually cheaper than making something
with a machine. And not every person who can make something with his
hands is a gifted artisan. The machine made stuff not rarely exceeds
the hand made in quality.
What is really the most annoying about the assertion of things being
hand made, is that it so often is false. If you want to make a point of it,
ask the
man if he has more specimen of what you're looking at. Not to worry: he
instantly puts five more on the counter. Then you can leisurely point out with
what remarkable accuracy the artisan has in each and every copy made the
same little mistake...
The
materials
Gold
Gold comes in many qualities,
or rather: grades, or caratages. Pure gold ("24 carat gold") is way
too soft to use in jewelry: that's why it will always be mixed with
other metals, mostly with silver and copper. Gold alloys used in jewelry
will vary between 8 carat (33,3%) and 22 carat (91,7 %) gold content.
The main problem with gold is, that a
lay person can simply not distinguish between these various alloys. By
increasing the relative amount of copper in the alloy, the color can be
manipulated towards a darker shade of yellow, to compensate for the
"dilution" in color resulting from a lower gold
percentage. When the gold has a particularly warm, reddish color, this
may be an indication of an excessive proportion of copper. On the other
hand, 18 carat gold can be quite red, too, when most of the 25 %
non-gold in the alloy is copper.
There is a lot of gold in the shops, but I am glad that it doesn't suit
my budget.
Silver
Silver is not
a really expensive commodity, so I did not expect too
much problems there... Wrong, wrong, wrong...
Last year, I bought a small silver
pendant. I specifically asked whether it was
massive silver, or silver plated. No: look at the hallmark, here on the
back: this is
real, massive silver.
Coming home, and looking at it under more favorable lighting conditions,
I saw something on the front side that I had missed before. The image was
that of a goddess with outstretched wings. In the grooves
between the feathers, several darker, yellow lines were visible: the brass
over which a thin silver coating had been applied. Conned again!
Both annoyed and intrigued, I did some research about the
Egyptian hallmarking system. I discovered that Egypt is one of
relatively few countries to have such a system, both for gold and
silver, but I could not make out what its legal
status is (whether it is compulsory or not). An official hallmark will
consist of three different, square markings, positioned next to one
another, in a row. From left to right, these are:
-
An assay mark: this indicates both the city of assay,
and the percentage of pure metal.
-
A national mark. For silver, this is a lotus flower.
-
And a date letter: an Arabic letter
that indicates in what year the object was assayed.
Any other type of marking may be fancy all right, but it
will only serve as a guarantee that the object in question has not been
properly assayed.
Gems
I am not aware of any other area of trade, in which there is so much
fraud and fake as in gems. Everyone knows about the use of glass or
quartz crystals for diamonds, but that’s just kids’ stuff. Greed and
ingenuity, nowadays supplemented with excellent skills in chemistry and
physics, provide an incredible array of techniques to fool the peasants.
And when it comes to a
highly technical,
specialized trade like this one, we are all
peasants.
If you like to cherish your illusions, don’t ever read a technical book
about gems. You would learn that stones can be made synthetically, or
pressed from powdered stone-dust. Some stones can be heated to change
their color, others can be treated with chemicals for the same reason,
or even dyed. For stones mounted in e.g. a ring, the spectrum gets even
wilder. Mounted stones can be combined: a thin colored stone on top of a
larger colorless one, to give the appearance of a large colored stone.
This is called a doublet, but there are also triplets: made from three
layers of stone. A stone can be painted at its backside, or fitted with
reflective foil to enhance its color. And lastly, stones can be swapped
endlessly: for every valuable stone, there are several cheaper
look-alikes. For some sorts, up to 8 or 10 “alternatives” are known. And
it can even get worse: some “stones” are not stones at all, but just
synthetic resin.
Really, I don’t think I’ll ever trust a
salesman of
gems
again. Even if he is honest, he may be
fooled himself.
Turquoise
In Egypt, you'll see turquoise jewelry
in astonishing numbers, all in the right, splendid
"turquoise" color, mounted in either gold or silver. It all looks hauntingly beautiful, but
until recently, I steered well away from it. Last year, I finally bought
a piece, with the express purpose of having it checked at home by an expert. No surprises: it was
fake.
In hindsight, I should have known from the start. Just look in any
book about gems: real turquoise just isn't that uniform in color and
appearance. This all too perfect appearance of the "stone", in
combination with prices that for real turquoise just wouldn't be
possible, give the scam away.
It turned out that my "stone" was not even stone at all: it was "a
kind of resin".
Lapis Lazuli
Even the ancient Egyptians used imitation for lapis: faience. And
even they knew that there was more fake around than the real thing: they
consistently spoke of “true lapis lazuli”.
Lapis lazuli is actually a mixture of several minerals. Highest valued
is a deep, even blue stone, studded with very fine, almost invisible specks of ”gold”: pyrite.
More pyrite, and strands of white calcite, reduce the value of the stone
considerably. This means that stones that abound in pyrite and/or
calcite have a better chance of being real. But even then, the “stone”
may actually be made of loose material or powder (debris from the mining
process), pressed or cemented together. Lapis can
also be made synthetically in a variety of ways. (A synthetic stone is a
stone that has the same physical characteristics as the original, but it
comes from a laboratory instead of from the inside of the earth).
My guess
is though, that in souvenir shops, most lapis in jewels
such as pendants and rings will only share the color with the original, and that
most lapis ornaments (such as small pyramids and obelisks) may be
of stone all right, but not of lapis: neither real, nor synthetic. Like
with the turquoise, its appearance is just too uniform. Two and a half
square feet of lapis souvenirs of exactly the same deep blue color: it's
too good to be true. Which of course means that it isn't true.
"Moon stone"
This very pretty “stone” has a brown color, evenly studded with
bright shining specs of “gold”. You will find lots of small pyramids,
obelisks, crosses, hearts and whatever made of it – but never a piece of
raw material. Nor will you ever come across an ancient Egyptian
artifact made of it. There is a very good reason for both: it doesn’t
come from a mine, and it was only invented in the 20th century. It is
made somewhere in Italy, and apparently no-one knows exactly how or from
what. But it definitely is artificial.
Onyx
Real onyx is a fine gemstone. When it has uniform color, it is
called chalcedony, when it is striped or banded, it is called agate. In
Luxor however, the souvenir shops sell dishes, bowls and vases of
“onyx”, weighing up to several kilo’s, for prices that are comparable to
those for earthenware. You don’t have to be an expert, to know that
here, the merchandise is not as advertised.
What they sell as onyx, is really onyx marble. “Onyx marble” is an
internationally accepted term, although it is neither onyx, nor marble.
It is a type of limestone.
Nevertheless, it is real stone, and the vessels in question are
handsomely made, with beautiful intense colors. Even the prices are o.k.
Just don’t put a vase on your window sill though: it may discolor in as
little as a few months.
So perhaps this “onyx” is not even onyx marble:
perhaps it’s just dyed alabaster... (Actually, the intense colors are
the give-away: natural colors just aren’t so bright, and certainly not
so uniformly bright.)
Alabaster
There is so much alabaster to be found in Egypt, that there is
really no need to fake it. That’s the good news: what is sold as
alabaster, will probably be just that. And it is still as pretty a stone
as it was 5000 years ago, so the weight limit of your airline ticket
should be your only concern. Just remember that it should be cheap: less
than the price you would pay at home for earthenware.
A special case are the so-called “alabaster shops” or “alabaster
factories”. These thrive on the bus-loads that are brought in by your
nice guide, so that he may earn his commission.
I was offered there two varieties of vessels (especially vases), labeled
“hand made” and “machine made”, respectively. The “hand made” was cut
from the inside to make it as thin as possible. With a light
inside it, or behind it, this produces a nice translucent effect. The
“machine made” variety was just hollowed out vertically with a
mechanical drill, producing much thicker and heavier pieces.
In spite of the condescending
comments by the salesperson about the machine made
stuff, this actually resembles the original ancient Egyptian vessels
much more closely than the “hand made” ones. If you take a look inside
those, you can see that their inner surface is so uneven and coarse from
all the probing and cutting, that it would not be suitable for storing
anything . And the ancient Egyptians made alabaster vessels for storing
ointments and unguents: not for holding electric light bulbs.
Basalt
Your chances of coming across something made of real basalt outside
a museum are very, very slim indeed. This is not because basalt is so
expensive, but because resin is so cheap. All those nice black cats,
monkeys and scarabs of “basalt” are actually made of synthetic resins:
mass produced in molds. Kids walk the streets with two pieces of it in
either hand, banging them together in front of your eyes, shouting
“basalt! basalt!” I suppose this means earlier fakes were made of
gypsum, painted black. Banging two pieces of that together would cause
chips to come off, revealing the white underneath. So the new fake is
much superior: it
won’t flake. (If you want to do a test: put the
point of a knife on the surface underneath, and twist it around a bit.
If it is basalt, this will ruin your knife – but I don’t think it
will...)
Granite
Even the granite is fake. All those stout busts of Nefertiti and
king Tut from “pink granite” have never seen the inside of a quarry.
Again: this is resin, mass produced in molds. But it is really hard to
tell: even when you turn them over, and look at the “undressed” bottom
side, it looks very convincing. It is also quite heavy – not so heavy as
the real thing, but who can tell? What was the last time you had a
granite bust in your hands? The feel will give the scam away though:
what is lacking is that distinct, cold and hard feel of true stone.
Carpets
Not being terribly interested in carpets, I’ve stayed clear from
carpet shops, carpet factories and carpet schools. The carpet schools
are an interesting phenomenon though.
In the countryside around Cairo,
there must be hundreds of these. I have been told by locals, that poor
farmer families send their young children there, “to bring in a little
money”. Perhaps the kids learn to read and write, too, but making
carpets (euphemistically designated as “learning to make carpets”: hence
“carpet schools”) certainly is the main course.
Perfumes
Good perfumes basically consist of two (types of) components: a
fragrance (often made of dozens, even up to a hundred different
elements), and a fixative. The fixative intensifies the scent, and
preserves it on the skin for hours.
The perfumes that you will buy in the perfume shops will lack the
fixative. The fragrance may be gone in as little as half an hour.
The quality of the fragrance is still another matter. When you come
home, and compare it with “the real thing”, it is not that
difficult to tell the difference.
If you don't see something: don't
ask for it!
For if you do, the shop owner will quickly dispatch a boy out on the
street, duly instructed to go fetch what you want. But goods that
travel, become more expensive. You'll have to pay two margins now
instead of one: one for the original shop owner, and one for your
helpful salesman.
The
merchants
It is well known, that
oriental businessmen will expect a game of bargaining – and we all
expect them to be better at this game, than we are. But we really
have no idea, how much better they are...
Logic dictates, that you should be able to buy a souvenir, made
in Egypt, in Egypt for a lower price than you would have to pay at home.
To actually achieve this though, is no easy task.
So first a few basics:
-
If you spot something you would like to buy, start with estimating
what it would cost you at home. Make a point of not spending more on it
than that.
-
Even if you want to pay in Egyptian money, you may
want to do your bidding in your own currency. This will give you a
better feel for what is actually transpiring. You can let them do the
arithmetics: they are quite good at that.
Bargaining
Before you start bargaining, you should be certain of
the starting point: the price that the salesman asks . This may
seem a completely
needless statement of the obvious, but it isn't.
In a gallery of shops, I once voiced interest in some
drawings on papyrus. My friendly and helpful salesman quickly supplied
me with a spoken price tag: "Twenty pounds, just twenty pounds. If you
take more, I will even give you a discount!" It was a bit more than I
had in mind, but that's what bargaining is for, so I dug really deep
into his pile of papyri, to select a few that I really liked. But when I
made my opening bid, the shop keeper wailed in dismay: that was
no fair price!... So it turned out that those twenty "pounds" per
papyrus that he had spoken of, were "Nubian pounds": each something over
four Egyptian pounds. Bargaining against an unexpected factor of four
quickly proved useless - so I had wasted my time.
On several locations, tourists that are leaving a site
are carefully maneuvered in a funnel along a row of little shops or stands. So too at the Valley of the
Kings. Kids came to me, with small figurines in their hands, shouting:
"Four! Four! See: only four!" Four pounds? That's cheap...
So, not without some suspicion, I ask: "Pounds?" "Yes, pounds!"
"Egyptian pounds?" "Yes, Egyptian pounds. Come, come..." and I was
practically dragged into a shop. But when it came to paying the bill, "four" suddenly proved to be short for "four hundred". Which
turned the bargain from "really cheap" to "outrageous,
ludicrous, a rip-off." So off I went - with the kid
tagging along, pleading all the way till the parking lot, taking ten
pounds off his price per step, completely failing to see that my mood of
frustration and anger was totally sincere - and that he wasn't going to
sell me something now for any price.
The least you should be able to achieve, is to get a
discount of one third. Suppose that something is offered to you for €
30,-, then this means that € 20,- should be easily attainable. Start
with offering 10, and then slowly rise till 17,- or 18,-. On that point,
you harden your position, until the merchant finally arrives at your
target: 20,- Then you graciously grant him a victorious
conclusion.
A common merchant's reaction, when you start
bargaining, is to say something like this: "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you
probably didn't want to go through the bargaining routine, so I gave you
a fair price straightaway..." While saying this, he makes sure to
look really hurt: hurt by your totally unjustified mistrust. Just ignore
this, shake your head, and say something like: "No no, your price is way
too high," and give him a new offer: only slightly higher than your
previous one...
A related approach is this one: "Business is so slow today, I will just
give you a very good price, for it is better to sell something, than
nothing..." Very clever: the man gives you a strong impression of being totally sincere and honest, and
he appeals to your latent feelings of guilt. After all, he knows that
you know that you are filthily rich, compared to him.
Another dealer's favorite is, somewhere in the
bargaining process: "Give me your best price!.." Which
suggests of course that he knows you have still some room to improve
on your bid. So disappoint him: "No really, I already gave you my best price!..."
During my last visit, I achieved my best bargaining result
ever almost
accidentally. I was in a shop, buying some postcards. Then I saw a small
sculpture of a cow's head, something like the one that in Tutankhamun's
tomb stood in front of the canopic chest. I asked the man for its price
- which was way too high: 250 Egyptian pounds. We haggled a
bit, but we weren't getting anywhere. It was already late, I was tired,
and I hated the prospect of a long bargaining session. So I said that I
was just going to take the postcards. I already knew that those were
going to cost me 30 pounds. Then the man, seeing that I was really going
to leave his shop, suddenly said: "All right, give me 100, and you can
take the cow as well." Which meant that the price for the figurine had
suddenly dropped from 250 to 70... It now stands
right in front of me, pretty and well.
New developments
Gradually, some new developments can be observed. As more and more
Egyptians travel, especially to Europe, there is more of an
understanding growing of how tourists would like to be treated. Some
shops actually advertise themselves as "hassle-free". Which means that
you can look around in the shop without immediately being pounced on.
Sometimes, there are even price tags on the articles. And completely
contrary to my expectations, shops in hotels sometimes offer prices that
are considerably below those in the bazaar.
But even when the merchants better there ways, the merchandise remains
very much the same...
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