Four editors, one desk in Mohandessin, one stubborn idea about how a guide should be written.
Muse Quick Field Guide is a small editorial publication based in Mohandessin, on the west side of Cairo. We publish condensed field-card notes on Egyptian museums and excursions. The whole publication runs on subscription revenue and small print sales — no advertising, no sponsored content, no commission, no affiliate links. We did not invent this format; field cards have been the working format of natural history museums and archaeological surveys for two centuries. We just translated it to tourism.
The publication was founded in late 2021, after a long ride back from Aswan during which the editors-to-be agreed that the existing English-language guidance for visitors to Egypt fell into two extremes — encyclopaedic essays that no one reads at the museum gate, or affiliate-stuffed listicles that no one trusts. There was no middle. The middle, we thought, would be a single dense card per place that fits on one phone screen and tells you the four things you actually need to know between the taxi and the ticket booth. That is what Muse Quick is.
How the company was put together
Muse Quick Field Guide L.L.C. was registered with the Egyptian General Authority for Investment and Free Zones in November 2021, with a commercial registry number 271856 and a tax registration (ETA) of 684-159-723. The legal form is a domestic limited-liability company; the ownership is split evenly between the four working editors and no outside investors hold equity. The decision to keep the company small and unfunded was deliberate: it is the only structure that survives the editorial rules in section three of this page without immediate compromise.
The office is on the third floor of a small building on Hassan El Akbar Street in Mohandessin, a working district on the west side of the Nile. Mohandessin is not picturesque and not historic — it is the kind of neighbourhood where engineering firms, accountants and small media operations have their desks. The location is practical: ten minutes by taxi to the Egyptian Museum, twenty to the Grand Egyptian Museum, forty minutes to Saqqara, and an hour and ten on the train to Alexandria. Editors can walk out of the office and be on a museum floor within a quarter of an hour.
The financial model is the simplest one we could find that still pays the bills. There are three reader tiers — Open Cards (free, web only), Notes Plus (low monthly fee, web plus monthly PDF compendium), and Field Plus (higher monthly fee, all of the above plus a printed quarterly pocket booklet and access to the planning desk). Revenue is split roughly into thirds: half pays the editors, a quarter pays the office and the field travel, the rest pays the website, the printer and the accountants. There is no funding round on the horizon, and no plan to take one.
The editorial rules
The publication has six standing editorial rules. They are not aspirational; they are the rules that decide which assignments are taken and which are refused. Following them costs us revenue. We think they pay back in trust over time, and trust is the only currency a guide actually trades in.
- Verify on the ground. Every card is based on a visit by a Muse Quick editor within the last twelve months — quarterly for the major Cairo and Luxor sites. The dated visit log is internal but available to a reader who writes asking about a specific card.
- Buy your own ticket. Editors visit as ordinary visitors. We do not accept press tickets, comped passes or organised familiarisation trips. The cost of the visit is on the publication.
- No commission, no affiliates. There is no link on this site that pays Muse Quick when a reader books or buys anything. Tour operators, ticket resellers and hotels do not have a financial relationship with the publication.
- No advertising. The site carries no display advertising, no native advertising, no sponsored content, no advertorial. The white page you are reading is paid for by reader subscriptions.
- Correction within 24 hours. When a reader writes to flag a closure, a restoration, a ticket-price change or a factual error, the card is updated within one working day. A correction note appears at the top of the affected card for the following two weeks.
- Independence from the season. Cards do not soften during the high season to please readers. If a site is unpleasant in August, the card says so in August. If a popular tour is overpriced, the card says so even if a competitor reviews it well.
The team
Muse Quick is four working editors. We do not have business development, marketing or growth — the website and the cards are the marketing. The team has worked together since the founding ride in October 2021 and the composition has not changed. Each editor has a beat. Cards are signed at the bottom with the responsible editor's initials, and the full byline is visible on the individual card page.
Sherif Maged
Twelve years at the Egyptian Antiquities Press and three years freelance for the Sunday literary supplement of an Egyptian daily before Muse Quick. Walks the major Cairo museums and the Saqqara/Dahshur half-day cards. Owns the rotation schedule.
Nesma Hosny
Egyptology degree from Cairo University, eight years as a licensed inspector with the Supreme Council of Antiquities on the Luxor west bank. Writes the Theban temple cards and the Aswan-side material. Travels south once a month.
Bassel Rashwan
Alexandrian, formerly assistant editor at a regional magazine in Smouha. Covers the Bibliotheca Alexandrina cards, the Greco-Roman museum re-opening cycle and the Sinai monastery and Red Sea material. Photographs every card he writes.
Engy Darwish
Trained librarian, four years at the American University in Cairo's rare-books desk before Muse Quick. Verifies every claim of fact in every card before publication and runs the post-publication corrections workflow. The byline on the corrections column is hers.
What the company will not do
It is sometimes more useful to say what we refuse than what we do. Muse Quick does not, and will not, organise excursions, sell tickets, broker hotel reservations, take affiliate fees from booking platforms, accept advertising from museums or operators we cover, take press trips, accept comped access or VIP entry, write listicles on commission, syndicate cards to third-party blogs for SEO purposes, or buy back-links. Each of these has been offered to us at one point or another since 2021 and refused. The refusals are not principled vanity — they are the only way the format remains usable.
We also do not publish in languages other than English. There are excellent Arabic, French, German, Italian and Spanish guides to Egypt written by people who actually live in those languages; we are not them. An Arabic edition is not on the roadmap. The decision is editorial, not commercial.
How the publication grew
The first card was the Egyptian Museum, Tahrir — published 19 November 2021 to about forty readers, most of whom were friends of the founders. By the end of the first year there were thirty-eight cards and around 1,100 monthly readers. The format settled at roughly its current shape during 2022 — the steps-on-the-card, the single horizontal photograph, the meta line with the rotation date. By the end of 2023 the archive had crossed one hundred cards and the publication was paying salaries (modestly) for the first time. The current archive count, as of the spring 2026 rotation, is 142 published cards across 34 sites.
- October 2021The founding ride from Aswan to Cairo. The card format is sketched on the back of a Misr Railways ticket envelope.
- November 2021L.L.C. registered at Mohandessin. The first card, Egyptian Museum, is published on 19 November.
- June 2022The first Notes Plus subscribers sign up. The PDF compendium format is finalised.
- February 2023The first printed quarterly Field Plus booklet posts to readers in Cairo and Alexandria.
- September 2024The hundredth card — Karnak — is published. The site is moved off shared hosting.
- March 2026The current archive of 142 cards across 34 sites. The spring 2026 rotation is completed on schedule.
Why the format works for readers
The card format is not a stylistic choice; it is a design decision driven by where it is actually read. Three-quarters of our traffic loads on a mobile phone, and most of that traffic loads in the last twenty minutes before the reader walks into the museum or boards the felucca. The reader is not at home in an armchair. The reader is in a taxi, looking at the phone while the driver navigates traffic, trying to decide whether to buy the camera ticket and whether to skip Tutankhamun's tomb. The card has to answer those questions in less than forty seconds.
The cards are therefore disciplined: hours, ticket structure, the side-door trick, recommended duration, the one room worth your time, the one to skip, the bottom-line cost in Egyptian pounds. A single horizontal photograph of the entrance — so the reader recognises the building. A meta line at the bottom with the editor's initials, the rotation date and the next scheduled re-visit. Nothing else. The temptation to slip in a paragraph of historical context is constant, and the discipline of resisting it is what makes the format work.
What four editors can produce, honestly
We try to be transparent about the scale of what one small Cairo desk can cover well. The numbers below are the spring 2026 figures, current as of the latest internal rotation review.
Three reader tiers, no advertising on any of them
Open Cards is free and stays free. Notes Plus and Field Plus pay the editors' salaries and the field travel. No tier is bundled with a third-party offer, and there is no upsell inside the cards.
Pick your tier