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SOUQ by Egyptra

What we mean by genuine

Genuine is the word every souvenir shop uses and almost none of them define. Here is exactly what we mean by it, so you can hold us to it.

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  • Gold and silver

    The metal, the karat and the weight are listed on the product page and recorded on your receipt. That matters at the airport and it matters at home: a piece you can name is a piece you can insure, value or resell. Where a hallmark is not present we say so, rather than implying one.

  • Papyrus

    Most "papyrus" sold to visitors in Egypt is banana leaf. Ours is not. It is genuine Cyperus papyrus, made the way it has always been made: strips of pith cut from the stem, soaked, laid in two crossed layers and pressed until they bond into a single sheet. Hold one up to a window and you can see that lattice, a grid of overlapping strips running two ways. Banana leaf shows no lattice, darkens at the edges and cracks when you roll it. Real papyrus rolls without cracking. That is how it survived three thousand years, and it is how you can check ours before you pay for it.

  • Perfume oils

    Sold undiluted. No carrier base, no alcohol, nothing added to make the bottle go further, which is why a drop behind the ear is the right amount and why the bottles are small. Undiluted oil is strong: if your skin is sensitive, put a drop into a neutral oil yourself rather than applying it neat, and treat a new scent as you would any new cosmetic. What you will not find here is an oil sold as pure that has quietly been cut with something cheaper.

What we call handmade

We use that word for four things, and only for those four. Hand-work means variation: two pieces from the same workshop are never quite identical, and that difference is the evidence rather than a defect. Where something is machine-formed and then finished by hand, we say that instead of reaching for the shorter word.

  • Alabaster — carved and turned by hand, which is why no two vessels have quite the same wall thickness or glow the same way when you hold them to a lamp.

  • Blown glass — mouth-blown, so small bubbles and a slight lean are the signature of the method, not a fault in it.

  • Leather — hand-tooled, the pattern worked into damp hide rather than stamped out by a machine.

  • Papyrus — hand-laid and hand-painted, one sheet at a time.

If a piece is not what we said

Open the bag while the driver waits and refuse anything that is wrong — it goes straight back and is refunded on the spot. After delivery you have 24 hours to report a problem with a photo. We replace or refund every confirmed issue. You never have to find a market stall again to argue about it.

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