Intro
When we recall our childhoods, we remember lots of memories including our list of firsts, our childhood friends, our favorite lullabies, days at the kindergarten, and more. Nevertheless, there are also the bad memories like when you lost your first tooth or when you took your first vaccine shot. An Egyptian child’s funniest of all memories are the myths that he/she grew up believing in, myths that only Egyptian parents invented and understand the odd logic behind them. Here are five Egyptian myths that the reason for their existence will remain a mystery.
Your leftovers will haunt you down
Okay, this one was too much for a child to handle. We all had nightmares about our leftover food haunting us down on judgment day. Like it
Playing with scissors will cut feathers off angels’ wings
Putting aside the fact of whether this myth was invented to keep children away from sharp objects or because it was maybe a not so good thing to do for whatever other reason, involving celestial beings does not help! Like how would I ever look at myself in the mirror again knowing that I took a sweet angel’s beautiful wings away?
The Egyptian tooth fairy
Parents worldwide might have invented the tooth fairy to distract their little munchkins from the pains of losing a tooth, but Egyptian parents had another say on that. This was their infamous “ya shams ya shamoosa” lullaby! But seriously, sun, even though you’d magically grow kids new teeth, why call them buffalos? I mean, isn’t that kind of offensive?
Slippers upside down are no good
Until this day, we still turn over a slipper if we find it upside down. But, why? Nobody really knows why we grew up doing it anyway, they just told us so when we were kids. Some said it brings bad luck, and some said it was inappropriate because it would be facing God! No, really, why do we turn them over?!
The scary bedtime stories
So instead of fairytales, we grew up listening to the stories of Omena El Ghoula and Abou Regl Masloukha. Not sure whether those were attempts to make us sleep or give us nightmares.
