Practical matters

No. Mus Passes is an admission credential, not a consular service. Most travellers obtain the Egyptian e-visa through the official portal at visa2egypt.gov.eg, while others purchase a visa on arrival at Cairo International Airport. We do not process visas, hold passports, or intervene with border authorities. Please arrange your entry document separately and ensure it is valid on every day of your pass.

Yes. All ten partner institutions remain open during the holy month, though several operate a compressed schedule: typical closing time on Ramadan afternoons is 15:00 rather than the usual 17:00, with some sites closing entirely for the hour around iftar before reopening for an evening viewing. We send pass-holders a Ramadan timetable advisory in the week before travel. The Grand Egyptian Museum and Luxor Museum both run extended evening hours during Ramadan that are, in our view, among the most atmospheric visits of the year.

The Coptic Museum closes on Coptic Christmas (7 January), Coptic Easter Sunday (date varies, following the Julian calendar) and on the feast of the Assumption (15 August by the Coptic reckoning). The other partner museums remain open on these days. Ancient-site gates — Giza plateau, Karnak, Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel — do not observe Coptic holidays. Check the advisory email for precise dates before travel.

The practical answer is: begin early. Giza gates open at 07:00 and the first two hours of the day are markedly cooler than the late morning. At the Valley of the Kings, a sensible visitor is inside the first tomb by 07:30 and leaves by 11:00. Carry two litres of water per person per half-day, wear a wide-brimmed hat, and consider a cotton scarf for the back of the neck. Our passes include a complimentary one-litre refillable water flask at the Garden City office if you stop in to collect it — we hate the plastic bottles as much as the conservators do.

Yes, with a pass and without a flash. A Ministry decision of 2019 restored personal, non-flash photography in most of the opened tombs of the Valley of the Kings and at the Giza pyramids' interior chambers; Mus Passes includes this permit in the credential. Flash photography, tripods and commercial shoots remain prohibited — the ultraviolet in a modern xenon flash accelerates the fading of the tomb pigments, and tripods damage the uneven floors. The tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) is the single exception: photography inside the burial chamber is not permitted even with the pass, by separate ruling of the SCA.

Bakhshish — the customary gratuity culture — is part of how museum and tomb guardianship has always been paid in Egypt. It is not required, but it is appreciated, and it supplements the modest wages of the guardians who quietly ensure you do not photograph a sensitive panel or brush against a fragile relief. We suggest twenty Egyptian pounds for a courteous guardian who has shown you a small closed chamber or pointed out a detail you might have missed, and a little more for extended assistance. The pass itself covers admission; tipping is not expected at the main ticket booth.

Yes, where relevant. The Museum of Islamic Art shares a building with no working mosque, but the Coptic Museum is entered through the courtyard of the Hanging Church, and several of our traveller itineraries include visits to the working mosques of Islamic Cairo within walking distance. Modest dress — shoulders and knees covered — is expected. Women will be offered a headscarf at the door if one is required. Shoes are removed at mosque entrances; at Coptic sites, shoes remain on.

All partner museums offer Arabic signage as a matter of national practice. The Grand Egyptian Museum, the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir and the Nubian Museum offer full Arabic-language audio guides included with the pass. Karnak and Abu Simbel have Arabic printed handbooks at the gate, priced nominally. Our own credential PDF is bilingual Arabic and English. French, German and Spanish audio guides are also available at most institutions.

A sunset felucca on the Nile at Aswan is, in our firm opinion, among the finest evenings available anywhere on earth. We do not sell the felucca ride directly, because felucca operators are traditional boatmen and we think they should remain so. However, the pass includes a recommended-operators directory, and presenting the pass at three specific boat landings in Aswan (Nubian Village, Kitchener Island, and the Elephantine Island stair) entitles the holder to a modest discount negotiated with the boatmen's syndicate.

The Student Pass requires verification at checkout: either an International Student Identity Card (ISIC), or a scanned university student card with the current academic year clearly indicated, or a letter on institutional letterhead from your registrar confirming full-time enrolment. We verify manually within twenty-four hours. There is no age cap; doctoral students in their sixties are as welcome as undergraduates. Once verified, the pass issues by the same email flow as any other tier.

Our partnership with the SCA is governed by a renewable memorandum of understanding that sets the terms by which our credential is accepted at the council's gates. We submit a quarterly reconciliation listing all admissions recorded under a Mus Passes scan; the SCA audits this against their own gate records. The arrangement is the same as that used by the principal international travel operators, and ensures that every gate fee is paid to the host institution.

Unplanned closures — for a state visit, an archaeological emergency, severe weather at a desert site — are rare but they happen. If a site is closed on a day your pass is active, we add a credit day to the pass automatically, provided the closure was announced through the SCA's official channels. For Single Site holders, we either extend the 30-day activation window by seven days or, on request, refund the admission in full. No correspondence is required in most cases; our system reads the closure feed.

We offer a ten-day refund window from purchase, provided the pass has not been activated at any partner gate. Refunds are returned to the original payment method within seven to ten working days. The Refund Policy page, linked in the footer, sets out the full conditions. The ten-day window is longer than most Egyptian travel products and reflects, in our view, the longer planning horizons typical of heritage tourism.

At time of writing: the Tutankhamun supplement (KV62) is USD 20; the Seti I supplement (KV17) is USD 25; the Ramesses VI supplement (KV9) is USD 10. These are set by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and paid at the gate kiosk, not through our system. We list the current amounts in the credential PDF and refresh the figures each quarter. The three other open tombs of the day are covered by the base pass without supplement.

The Child Pass covers ages six to twelve inclusive. Under-sixes are admitted free of charge at every partner museum, with no pass required. "Accompanied" means that the child enters the gate within ten minutes of the adult pass-holder and leaves the site in the same party; stewards are instructed to be reasonable about brief separations within a gallery. Ages thirteen to seventeen purchase the adult tier at full price — Egyptian tourism does not recognise a teenage intermediate rate.

Yes, for nearly all. The partner museums remain open on Revolution Day (23 July), Armed Forces Day (6 October), Sinai Liberation Day (25 April) and on the two Eid holidays, with reduced hours. Abu Simbel and Karnak open on every day of the calendar year. The only partner to close outright on selected holidays is the Coptic Museum, which observes the Christian feast days listed above. The advisory email two days before your pass activates will flag any relevant closure.

Yes. Choose "Gift" at checkout and nominate the recipient's email address and visit dates. We dispatch a personalised credential PDF, optionally with a short Arabic inscription drafted by our registrar. For an additional handling fee we can arrange delivery of a traditional sand-gold gift card to a Cairo or Luxor hotel — a small touch some of our travellers enjoy receiving on the morning of their first museum visit.

Occasionally. When the Grand Egyptian Museum opens a temporary exhibition drawn from its reserve collections, Annual Scholar Pass holders receive a private-view invitation at no additional cost. Twice a year we co-host small curator-led tours at Karnak and the Egyptian Museum, attended by ten pass-holders at a time, drawn by ballot from the active Scholar list. There is no separate ticket; it is simply a small benefit of the higher tier.