…they owned vineyards, wineries, papyrus marshes, perfume businesses, and camels…where one kneaded dough with one’s feet and wrote from right to left, where Herodotus asserted that “women urinate standing up and men sitting down.”
-Cleopatra, Stacy Schiff, describing women’s right to property in Ptolemaic Egypt
Who is to say which one of us, KhairAllah or me, was more astounded by what we found in Egypt. Electric lamps after so much moonlight, stewed fava beans after so much boiled millet, beer and wine after so much well water. And we hadn’t yet even peeked into the Ladies.