MuseuPass Heritage Media L.L.C. is a four-editor publication based in Zamalek, Cairo. We cover Egyptian museums and archaeological sites with a monthly print briefing for subscribers and a continuously updated open archive for everyone. We do not sell tickets, we do not run a booking platform and we do not earn commission from operators. This page explains how the desk works in practice.
MuseuPass began in 2018 as a reading group of four people — two Egyptology graduates of Cairo University, one museum studies graduate of the American University in Cairo, and a heritage journalist who had spent the previous decade freelancing for European magazines. We met every two weeks in a flat in Zamalek to discuss new museum openings, restoration projects and the way Egyptian heritage was covered in the mainstream press. The notes from those meetings eventually became long emails to friends planning trips, and the long emails became the first dozen public reviews on this website.
We registered MuseuPass Heritage Media L.L.C. in 2019 in order to put the monthly print briefing on a proper legal footing — Cairo printer invoices, postage to subscribers in Europe, North America and the Gulf, plus the bookkeeping that comes with anything involving payment. The Commercial Registry number 219874 belongs to that L.L.C., and the editorial principle that we accept no advertising income comes from that same period. The reading group survived the registration with most of its rhythm intact, and continues today as the weekly editorial meeting.
The site you are reading is the fourth iteration of our publishing system. The first three were variations of a static-site generator built by one of the editors in his spare time. The current version is hand-written HTML kept deliberately simple, because we want every reader on every connection — including the slow rural connections that are still common in Upper Egypt — to be able to open a review without waiting for analytics scripts to load. There are no analytics scripts.
These rules are taped to the inside of the office door. If a contributor cannot follow one of them, the relevant review goes back into draft until the rule is satisfied.
Every review on this site has been written by an editor who has physically visited the museum or archaeological complex within the past twelve months. If the date slips beyond twelve months, the review is marked “archive” at the top until a new visit is booked, regardless of how popular the page is.
Ticket prices in Egyptian Pounds are read off the actual ticket counter on the day of the visit. Where a museum publishes a different number on its website, we note the discrepancy explicitly rather than averaging or ignoring it. Both resident and foreign-visitor rates are listed where they differ.
MuseuPass has no advertising, affiliate, sponsorship or commission relationship with any tour operator, hotel, museum, transport provider, airline or restaurant. The absence of these arrangements is the reason the briefing is paid. We will refuse free press visits if they require any form of coverage commitment.
When we make a mistake, the correction is published at the top of the affected review, dated, and signed by the editor on duty. We do not silently edit text. Subscribers can request the full audit log for any review going back to its first publication.
Every published review is signed with the initials of the editor who visited the site. Below are the people behind those initials, with a short note on each editor’s area of focus. Contributors who write occasionally are listed at the foot of the relevant review rather than here.
Egyptology graduate, Cairo University (2012). Co-founder of the desk, responsible for the editorial calendar, the print briefing layout and the long-read in each monthly issue. Specialises in Islamic Cairo heritage and the Ayyubid and Mamluk-period monuments around the Citadel.
Museum Studies MA, American University in Cairo (2014). Covers Luxor, Aswan and the temples along the Nile between them. Travels south every six weeks during the season; maintains the Karnak and Hatshepsut dossiers and writes the seasonal Nile-cruise notes for the briefing.
Spent eight years as a heritage journalist for Cairo-based magazines before joining the desk. Covers Saint Catherine’s Monastery, the South Sinai coastal heritage trails, and the Greco-Roman and early Christian sites of the Red Sea littoral. Reads classical Greek and patristic Coptic.
Trained as a librarian at Ain Shams University, with five years at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina before joining MuseuPass. Cross-references every review against published academic literature, government tourism announcements and our internal database of historical ticket-price data going back to 2018.
The brief history of MuseuPass, year by year. The dates are accurate; the anecdotes are written for the record rather than for promotion.
Four people meeting fortnightly in a flat on Abou El Feda Street, Zamalek, to discuss what was being written about Egyptian museums online and where the obvious gaps were. Eighteen private notes circulated by email; no website yet.
First version of the static website goes live with thirty-two reviews of Cairo and Giza sites. MuseuPass Heritage Media L.L.C. registered in May, Commercial Registry 219874. Editorial principle of no advertising income written into the company bylaws.
Site traffic collapses with international tourism. The team uses the closure period to write the first version of the monthly print briefing — initially as a PDF only, mailed to a small group of paying readers. The printed version follows once Cairo postal services normalise.
Salma joins full-time to take over the Upper Egypt coverage. The archive crosses 90 reviewed sites and the briefing reaches a hundred posted copies per month for the first time.
A printed Cairo field guide is released as a stand-alone product alongside the briefing. The desk also begins offering editor-led itinerary reviews as part of the most expensive reader plan, in response to requests from existing subscribers.
The archive crosses 148 published reviews. Seven curated topic hubs are launched to make the archive easier to navigate by purpose — see museums, ancient sites, half-day trips, regions, essentials, festivals and families.
The MuseuPass desk operates on a five-day editorial week, Sunday through Thursday, in line with the standard Egyptian business calendar. We are closed on Fridays, when the country pauses for Friday prayers and most family gatherings, and on Saturdays we close at midday. Email reaches the desk at any hour, but messages that arrive overnight or on the weekend are typically read the following Sunday morning. Itinerary-plan subscribers have a faster commitment: their messages are answered the same business day, which we keep deliberately limited in volume to maintain that standard.
If you are a journalist writing about Egyptian heritage and want to verify a number or attribute a quote, write to the same email address as readers — there is no separate press desk. Our editors are happy to be quoted on the record as long as the context is correct. We do not provide images for commercial use; the photographs in our published reviews are taken by editors during fieldwork and the rights are managed individually.
Walk-in visits to the office are by appointment only. The Zamalek building is small, the desk is small, and unplanned visits tend to disrupt the editorial week. Subscribers who happen to be in Cairo are welcome to write ahead and propose a meeting — we usually say yes, with a one or two day lead time. The same applies to research students and heritage professionals interested in our archive of historical ticket-price data, which we share without charge to anyone with a serious research question.
Editors reply to reader email within two business days. Itinerary-plan subscribers receive an answer the same business day.