Thinking Back on "Ancient Egypt"

"Interesting and Informative" pretty much covers Lee and Heidi's instant response to our fifteen days spent exploring Ancient Egypt when asked our reaction by friends and others. Our Overseas Adventure Travel tour was very well structured, nicely paced and brought together a very companionable group of travelers we very much enjoyed being with throughout the trip. Our guide, Ibrahim Taha, proved an inexhaustable source of information and used each site we visited to provide yet another link in a chain of knowledge that allowed us to acquire a wonderfully broad and nuanced understanding of just what "Ancient Egypt" was all about, what it represents -- historically, culturally and religiously -- in the long pageant of world history.

While Lee's approach as a Trip Leader for the Smithsonian in Japan usually focused on providing sufficient background information to tour participants BEFORE we disembarked to explore a particular site (thus allowing folks to wander on their own, exploring their own particular interests), Ibrahim instead kept us together, paused the group in front of an object or a bas relief or a temple facade, then used it to point out details and interpretations of what it was we were looking at so as to enhance our understanding and appreciation of the larger site.

This approach proved essential to our growing appreciation of Ancient Egypt since none of us carried around a visual image bank filled with all the variety of gods or architectural motifs or decorative designs needed to grasp what it was our guide was explaining. We usually had enough free time afterward to explore on our own anyway, but Ibrahim's selective approach to whatever or wherever we were always helped keep us focused on the important aspects of the place we were currently visiting while also threading it into a larger tapestry enlarging our understanding of the culture we were exploring as a whole.

Putting together our exploration of Ancient Egypt with the contemporary culture in evidence everywhere around us was accomplished to a certain degree through three home visits and an afternoon round table discussion with Ibrahim but still left us a bit frustrated. We often seemed to be subject to the "party line" ("Egypt is safe" -- not the terrorist bastion we might have feared; "Everyone - Muslims, Christians, Jews -- gets along just fine;" "No one imposes restrictions on women; it's purely a matter of personal choice"). Some inquiries about aspects of contemporary life were essentially brushed off with minimal comment. There's so much more we'd like to have learned.

We still experienced modern life sufficiently to gain a feel for contemporary Egyptian society and culture. Traffic in Cairo, particularly, often gave us the opportunity to observe life along the road and, again, our home visits always added specific detail.

Clearly tourism is an economic mainstay, but neither of us would say that it was all that welcomed an intrusion, however necessary. After all few tourists were there to learn about modern Egypt, and the "Ancient Egypt" many came to see was of little interest to today's Egyptians. Those is contact with foreign travelers were inevitably gracious and courteous but not particularly warm and welcoming. Not that all tourists were worth the effort -- we saw enough evidence of disinterest and cultural disrespect to warrant the disdain lurking just below the surface among some of our Egyptian hosts! Europeans, especially, seem to have come to see Egypt the way Americans often view Mexico, as a vacation escape destination, not as a distinct modern culture worth getting to know.

Trip highlights: for Lee, the Temple at Kom Ombo visited while on our Nile cruise; for Heidi, our visit to the Nubian Village family in Aswan. We both liked the camel ride through the Sahara and the Aswan market stroll. Aswan was a favorite stop. And we enjoyed our time in Cairo, too, on many different levels -- just riding around town was great fun!

Looking back to the blog entry on our anticipations, Lee would have to say he found Egypt less trash strewn than he thought it might be; the touts, less problematic (but still a major distancing factor preventing us from fully interacting with or enjoying our surroundings). The abysmal povery of India wasn't present either, replaced to some degree by the disconcerting drab and dull appearance of Egyptian women, particularly older married women. Egyptians in general struck us as a bit angry with their collective lot, discontent but without evident hope for the future motivating their behavior or outlook on the world. The food was good but little distinguished it from "Middle Eastern" cuisine in general (except for the cool hybiscus tea -- absolutely delicious!).

So, there you have it. Some preliminary observations drawn from our current thinking about our Egyptian travel experience. The last entry should direct interested readers to a set of images drawn from the more than six hundred photographs we amassed while there -- look for it soon ...

Spiritual Cairo

Our last full day in Egypt the "Greenies" (as our guide referred to our subgroup - the color of our Overseas Adventure Travel bus placard - the other group had an orange sign in their bus window) we spent exploring a set of representative religious worship sites mostly located in Old Cairo - two Coptic Christian Churches, a Jewish Synagoge and a Muslim Mosque.

One Coptic "hanging church," also known as the Church of the Virgin Mary, was built atop the ruins of a Roman guard tower; the second (the Church of St. Sergius) honored one of the places where Joseph and Mary tarried after fleeing to Egypt with the Baby Jesus. Both churches were beautiful,, filled with colorful icons and carved wooden screens and chapel altars.

The Jewish Ben Ezra Synagogue was itself once a Coptic church (dating back to the ninth century) but had been sold centuries ago to the Jewish community; today, however, although there are eleven synagogues in Cairo, there are only about two hundred Jewish families, so services are seldom conducted. Instead the sites are maintained by the Bureau of Antiquities (due to their age and cultural significance to Egyptian history as representative of the first Christian communities outside the Holy Land and the long-standing interaction with Jewish life and history).

After lunch in the heart of the French-inspired "downtown" area at Falfela, we drove up to the Citadel, the highest point in the city, to visit Sultan Hassan Mosque, to listen to a lecture on Islam's basic principles and beliefs and to get a view out over the (very smoggy) cityscape below.

Then, late in the afternoon, it was off to the Khan al Khalili market, the largest in the city -- and a mighty disappointment. The once local spice market that grew into Cairo's most important commercial center, al Khalili now appears to function primarily as a tourist trap filled with "Made in China" Egyptian souvenirs endlessly and persistently hawked by very aggressive touts. We were exhausted after just fifteen minutes of battling them off in the souk's narrow alleys before we retreated to the relative calm of a street-side cafe for a bit of cool and sweet hibiscus tea.

Over the course of the day we saw lots more of the city in general as well.

Our Farewell Dinner followed at the Blue Nile where we ate Chinese while gazing out at the huge luxury hotels lining the Nile riverbank and nicely lit by the evening's brightly shining full moon - a nice ending, indeed, to a most interesting and informative day.

Now it's time to sit back and evaluate the whole experience! Look for those comments once Heidi and Lee recover from our homeward flights, first non-stop from Cairo to New York City on Tuesday and then on to Cleveland Wednesday afternoon.

"See the Pyramids Along the Nile..."

For those of us of a certain vintage, that phrase "See the pyramids ..." brings to mind a certain song title ("You Belong to Me"), a romantic ballad, probably from the late nineteen-fifties. Well, today that's exactly what we did! When we put to our tour group the question of what the SECOND line of that set of song lyrics was, however, no one had a clue. So I guess whatever else we should go see on our international travels, we won't be inspired by any other suggestion from this particular song...

At any rate, we were up and out of our hotel by eight this morning but got caught up immediately in Sunday morning traffic. The Egyptian weekend runs Friday through Saturday, so Sunday begins the work week. Plus this particular Sunday, many private schools began the new school year, and parents were accompanying their offspring to school just like at home. That made for some especially crowded streets!

However, the slowed traffic provided a great opportunity to observe numerous aspects of daily life: fashion-conscious teenage girls in head scarves and VERY tight jeans; school kids wearing brand new backpacks; career women driving spiffy foreign automobiles (not the banged up jobs of their male counterparts); a lone garbage collector valiantly attempting to gather up a mountain of trash from overflowing street-side dumpsters.

We realized as well that there were neither stoplights nor crosswalks anywhere along the divided boulevard we were traversing. Everyone entering from a side street had to turn right, then watch for a break in the median strip to make a U-turn if headed in the opposite direction! Pedestrians just wandered out into the traffic whenever and wherever they needed to cross the street! Yet there was no evidence of "road rage" anywhere around us as our twenty minutes journey essentially doubled because of the traffic crunch - amazing!

When we first caught a glimpse of the pyramids from our minibus, a collective gasp went up -- we even applauded! Here, at last, we were actually seeing the sole survivor of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. We made three stops on the Giza Plateau to gape at the awesome sights before us. Some clambered into the second pyramid; others posed for photographs on camel-back with the pyramids in the background. Lee took thirty-five pictures! Interestingly, it wasn't until our third stop where we were first able to see the Sphinx that the power of the place truly sunk in...

We also visited a museum housing (on the very site where it was discovered) the "solar boat" that transported the body of the second pharaoh buried here to his tomb. Discovered completely disassembled (over 2200 pieces) in 1954 in thirteen layers piled into a stone lined chamber at the base of the second pyramid, the boat has been put back together and is now beautifully displayed. Seeing it proved one of the day's true highlights for Lee.

Following an absolutely delicious barbecued chicken lunch served in a delightful shaded outdoor garden, we headed off to Saqqara to explore the beautifully preserved mastaba ("noble tomb") of Ptah-Hotep and the Step Pyramid, predecessor to the great pyramids of Giza.


On the distant horizon, we could also make out the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid, other progenitors of the "mature" pyramid style preserved closer to Cairo.

The drive our and back allowed us the added opportunity to see more of rural Egypt as well.
On our return trip to Cairo, we stopped briefly at a rug weaving school to marvel at youngsters whose dexterity allowed them to tie five knots a second on the rug looms they tended to in such a focused and disciplined manner.

Exhausted by then, we returned to our hotel -- but many of us rallied in time to make it to a sound-and-light show back at the pyramids this evening. The best part of that experience was being able to just sit and look at these marvelous wonders (the "real thing," not some cardboard mock-up) under the light of a full moon without vendors or camel drivers or the tourist crowd hassling us - truly a time to remember!

Back to the Big City

We flew from Aswan to Cairo this morning on EgyptAir, then drove for about an hour across the city to the Giza area on the West Bank of the Nile River. Even though we were here only a brief time earlier, our arrival was like returning to familiar surroundings. Cairo, as a result of our earlier visit, had become "recognizable."

Our accommodations for the last three nights of our tour are at the Amarante Pyramid Hotel, once the palatial home of a famous Egyptian movie idol from the 1920s. The hotel is located between the two major roads leading out to the pyramids, both streets lined with lively retail establishments, apartment houses, coffee houses and restaurants, Unfortunately each store is seeming responsible only for the public sidewalk right in front of the shop itself. Neither do there appear to be any general standards enforced regarding how that area should be maintained, Consequently pedestrians -- who often are forced out directly into the busy stream of traffic crowding the street from curb to curb -- need to pick their ways very carefully as they move along the edge of the roadway.

Heidi and Lee went out for a walk this afternoon into the midst of all this chaos but came back earlier than expected because of the difficulties associated with just walking from place to place through all the dust and the noise and the uneven (and sometimes treacherous) terrain.

Back at the hotel we shared a pizza for a late lunch, then decided to go swimming -- only to realize that the drop in temperature by some twenty degrees between Aswan and Cairo made the pool water feel awfully cold with the temperature of the air "only" in the high eighties!

This evening we all went to a home-hosted dinner provided by a divorced woman with two sons who lives in the same apartment house (one designed and built by her architect father) with her parents, a brother and an uncle (together with their respective families). Gharda works with the Swiss Movenpick hotel chain in a managerial position and, besides serving us a delicious buffet dinner, freely and candidly answered all our questions about her life, her family and her views on a host of other subjects. It was an enlightening evening, one of those special touches Overseas Adventure Travel does so very well.

Since, aside from the evening's dinner, this was pretty much a "down day" for us, Lee has raided Heidi's camera for her best images, presented here as a kind of highlight reel of our experiences thus far from her point of view. See how many of the scenes you can identify on the basis of what the blog entries have told you so far ...

What a Day!

"So, how'd your day go?"

"Well, let's see. From in front of the ruins of St. Simeon Coptic Christian Monastery high on the West Bank across from Aswan this morning, we remounted our trusty camels to ride out as a caravan into the Sahara Desert over the sand dunes to a Nubian village on the banks of the Nile River here on the outskirts of Aswan, Egypt..."

Now THAT's a response you're not likely to hear every day of the week, perhaps never more than once in a lifetime, in fact; but that's how we spent the morning today. Who'd have believed it?

Then, later in the day, after a trip buy motor launch to lunch on a private island in the middle of the Nile and an afternoon spent napping and lounging by the pool, we attended a sound-and-light show at the Temple of Philae and dined at Makka, a really fine Egyptian restaurant in downtown Aswan.

So how's your day been?

Reassessing Presumptions

Preparing for our trip to Egypt, Heidi and Lee began checking the weather daily a couple of weeks before we left. Luxor was always warmer than Cairo; Aswan was warmest of all. (Of course, the sun was ALWAYS shining!)

Furthermore, Aswan stood on the map very close to the southern Egyptian border with Sudan. It was as far south as one could sail on the Nile River. Not surprisingly, then, we assumed Aswan would be a real desert outpost, a backwater oasis on the edge of nowhere in particular, a dusty little town with little to recommend it.

As we drifted "upriver" on the Nile, these initial assumptions seemed to be correct: Luxor was much smaller and more provincial than Cairo; Edfu, smaller still; and Kom Ombu, smallest of all.

Imagine our surprise when we found ourselves in a thriving, prosperous, quite modern city of half a million people!

Our hotel is marvelously situated on a hillside overlooking the city center and the Nile with its lovely long riverside promenade. Today we had lunch at the Aswan Moon, a open-air, floating restaurant on the river right downtown cooled by a nice breeze and overlooking a falucca-filled section of the riverfront.
We also drove out to visit the Aswan High Dam constructed in the 1960s with Soviet aid this morning.
We were then were ferried over to a small island housing the rescued Temple of Philae rescued (together with more than twenty other ancient archeological treasures) from Lake Nasser's rising waters.

And everywhere we have gone, we have encountered open, friendly and welcoming local residents, Even the ubiquitious vendors seem a little less annoying.

Many of them are Nubian, original inhabitants of much of the land now submerged by the waters behind the High Dam. Early this evening we learned a bit more about their history and culture at the Nubian Museum across from the hotel.

Of all the places we've been here in Egypt, Lee thinks he wouldn't mind returning here someday -- just to relax in the desert sun!

Ir doesn't hurt at all that the city is also home to some of the world's best perfumes and the very best Egyptian cotton ...

Dazzling Abu Simbel

[NOTE: Lee has finally been able to upload his series of blog posts written over the past few days which have gone unpublished due to poor 'net connections which kept him from putting them on line before this. He has also added lots of photographs to previous posts, so look back over the past week or so of posts to gain a better sense of what we've been experiencing.]

The buses left in the pre-dawn darkness for the three-plus hour drive through the desert to Abu Simbel on the shore of Lake Nasser south of Aswan. We drove with armed escorts in a convey of large vehicles allowing each of us a full seat to ourselves. Equipped with snacks and with an on-board bathroom available, we sailed on through the early hours of the morning, witnessing the rising of the sun and lots and lots and lots of sand leavened with rocky outcroppings and distant mountain ridges. We passed checkpoints (with their sleepy guards) and military compounds and an occasional mining operation as the day brightened and grew warmer.

We arrived in the parking lot with several other buses dropping off those who had flown in for their assorted tours, and suddenly the serene emptiness of the desert was filled with a seathing crowd of visitors all being funneled through an undermanned admission turnstile complete with security check. Once inside, however, the crowd cleared a bit as multiple groups assembled and took their various paths down to the temple entrance. The longer we lingered, the smaller the crowds. By the end of our two-and-one-half hour stay, we pretty much had the place to outselves -- and that's when the majesty of the site could really sink in.

What interested us most were the quality and condition of the temple's interior carvings and coloration. One sees photographs of the extrerior statuary but seldom of the interior rooms, their walls and pillars rich with beautiful paintings and incised pictures telling the now familiar stories associated with Ramses IV who commissioned this marvelous place and the adjacent temple honoring his favorite Nefetari. Unfortunately, only exterior photography is allowed, so Lee can share only photos of the statues of Ramses IV and Nefetari flanking the entrances to the two rock-carved exteriors.

As you look at them, think about how difficult it must have been for UNESCO to move all this fifty years ago from the original site some hundreds of feet below the surface of Lake Nasser ...
Believe us, the trip was well worth the drive and the early morning wake-up all (even though it really spaced out Heidi for the remainder of the afternoon. After all, by the time we sat down to lunch at 2:00 p.m. or so back at out hotel in Aswan (the beautifully situated Basma Hotel), we had already been up and about for over ten hours!

Before a late buffet dinner this evening at our hotel, we went off to the local market. Aswan is known particularly for its spices (which many of us sought out to buy), but we enjoyed the entire overall shopping experience just as much, walking along the nicely kept stone roadway past well stocked stores and neatly arranged merchandise, joined by lots of others out for an evening stroll. Even the heavy-handed touts couldn't dampen the mood!

Beautiful Aswan

What a surprise it was to arrive in Aswan and find ourselves in the midst of a very modern urban setting enhanced by the lovely surrounding Nile River environment. All pastel, blue and green, Aswan spreads along a curving sweep of the Nile and up into the surrounding desert hills. At dusk tall fulucca sails fill the river, ferrying folks to the botanical garden on Kichner Island or merely sailing along admiring the setting sun. Because the city came into its own only with the construction of the High Dam fourty or fifty years ago, much of the architecture is strikingly contemporary and beautifully executed.

We all were dutifully impressed, especially after we, too, "abandoned ship" and sailed to the botanical garden aboard our own fulucca right at sunset! One can easily understand how the city became the favorite Winter residence for any number of European visitors over the years: a beautiful place in an beautiful setting with consistently beautiful weather -- what's not to like?

Tonight's our last night aboard the Royal Orchid -- and it will be a short one, at that. We have a 3:45 a.m. wake up call tomorrow morning and leave for Abu Simbel by bus at 5:00 a.m. so as to begin our visit there before the heat of the sun becomes unbearable.

Upriver Through Time

As one journeys upstream along the Nile River towards Aswan, one also moves along a timeline from early Egyptian history towards later Greek and Roman periods of occupation. This morning in Kom Ombo, for instance, we toured another temple dedicated in part to Horus the Elder (as well as to the crocidile-headed Sobek) constructed and expanded between the fourth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. when Egypt was ruled by first the Greeks and later the Roman Empire.

Interestingly, although the influences of both foreign Mediterranean cultures are apparent, both the Greek and the Roman eras appear primarily identifiable as continuations of earlier Egyptian tradition. The temple at Kom Ombo honors Egyptian gods in a typical way using familiar motifs in an architectural setting also drawn from the past, even though much of the work was undertaken under Greek and Roman authorities. So far this is one of Lee's favorite sites -- very compact, quite photogenic and wonderfully lit in the morning sun.

We've spent the rest of the morning catching up on blog entries and photo edits, rummaging through the on-board shop's merchandise, and watching Egyptian rural life on the riverbank drift by in its seemingly endless and ever-changing variety.

A Port Stop at Edfu

We arrived at Edfu around 10:30 a.m. and almost immediately boarded shuttle buses to be ferried off to the local Temple of Horus, the city's major attraction. As we've journeyed "upriver" into the heart of Africa, the temperature has risen accordingly; and Monday was no exception. We REALLY sweltered throughout our lengthy visit with "Horus the Elder, or Horus of Behdet, conqueror of Set and avenger of his father, Osiris," but what a marvelous experience (despite the 104 degree temperature)!

Many of us are beginning to be able to keep straight at least some of the names and attributes and relationships involving the myriad dieties honored in Ancient Egypt. We are also increasingly in a position to recognize differences and similarities encountered as we explore one religious complex after another. The Temple of Horus in Edfu, it turns out, is the best preserved of all the sites we will visit (or have visited) on our tour and so provided a fantastic opportunity to put all our new found knowledge to work.

The similarities are immediately apparent: the large entrance pylons; an open forecourt -- here a Grand Court surrounded by thirty-two columns forming a sheltering colonnade; the vestibule and the hypostyle hall beyond (in which the roof is supported by columns rather than rafters or arches) and the inner sanctuary housing the temple's main image. But there are differences as well: the columns now (in the Ptolemaic era, under Greek influence) are topped with floral capitals; a series of halls surround the various rooms and sections of the complex of structures decorated with relief and incised sculptures; some of the imagery, as well, reflects a more fluid (and realistic) Greek style of figural modeling.

We all were relieved, however, to return to the air-conditioned interior of the Royal Orchid. Those who opted for the Light Lunch (scheduled to be served outside on the upper deck) were also relieved to have the meal service shifted to the inside Lounge instead. And the majority of us chose to watch the passing scenery from the cool comfort of various interior spaces as we continued our journey southward to Kom Ombo, our anchorage for the night. There are, it would appear, definite limits to our collective willingness to live the life of an Egyptian while in Egypt!

Later in the evening, however, we all dressed for dinner - in Egyptian costume (or, at least, in our interpretation thereof), no less. And most of us participated in an evening of games and dancing and silliness before drifting off to a quiet retreat on deck or to our respective cabins for another good night's sleep. Before then, the ship's photographer surely accumulated enough evidence to blackmail us all for years to come ...

Life on the Nile

Tonight the scheduled video is Agatha Christi's DEATH ON THE NILE, a real "golden oldie", but, in our case, observing LIFE on the Nile has been really great since we boarded the Royal Orchid around noon today. Sitting on the sundeck or in the air-conditioned lounge or standing by the window in our Junior Suite (an upgrade arranged on board when our original room reeked of a very unpleasant smell no one seemed able to identify), we have watched everyday activities, lush scenery and interesting homes and rural villages slide by like an unrolling scroll painting as our three night river cruise has gotten underway.

Much of our time indoors, however, has been spent attempting to contact the outside world via the Internet, so far with little success (beyond being able to send and receive basic email notes). Lee is still hoping to be able to upload SOMETHING more substantial before we reach Aswan in three days' time (and, obviously, if you're reading this, he eventually managed, somehow or other).

Our final hours in Luxor were spent, first, observing how papyrus paper is produced; then, shopping in the local market and at a small grocery store for supplies needed to make lunch aboard ship. The latter, of course, was meant to give us a focus around which to experience an important aspect of "real life" and worked really well in that respect -- as did our carriage ride around town last night and our light supper taken at a local cafe.

The Tombs Across the Nile

[A VERY slow connection prevents Lee from uploading the full complement of photographs tied to this and the previous posts; he will add them later once we locate a faster means of doing so. Until then, words alone will have to do for the most part!]

We were up for an early breakfast and on the road by 6:15 a.m. in a worthwhile effort to beat both the heat and the crowds visiting the various sites on the West Bank of the Nile across from Luxor.

The sixty-two royal burials so far unearthed in the Valley of the Kings (the last in 1922) reflect a decision made thousands of years ago when it finally became apparent to a Pharaoh named Tuthmosis I that all those huge pyramids perhaps didn't really protect their dead inhabitants all that well, serving largely instead as advertisements for tomb robbers: "Here I am. Rob me! Rob me!"

Not that even these hidden tombs served any better to maintain their secrets -- in the end, only Tutankhamun's tomb of all those unearthed so far appears to have managed to escape the thieves.

Instead today thousands upon thousands of visitors dutifully troop through the tombs (three visits per ticket among those sites currently open to the public), admiring (if they're paying attention at all) the brilliantly painted bas reliefs adorning the walls and the huge stone sarcophagi found therein.

The wonder of just being in this amazing place somewhat mitigates all the standing in line required and the early morning heat and the bright glare of the sun. And, indeed, the tomb decorations are incredibly fascinating (Ibrahim gave us his usual insightful view of what to look for and what meaning to ferret out of all the symbolism involved). But, in the end, one is left a bit frustrated, if only because one doesn't leave the experience with anything but more and more questions in need of explication and explanation!

Heidi and Lee chose to stick with three Ramesses tombs (I, IV and IX), each of which proved well worth detailed exploration. Now all we have to do is wade through the dozens of pages in West's The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt to figure out what it was we saw! Thank goodness we have three days of river cruising ahead of us to provide the chance to do just that...

By 9:00 a.m., just as crowds of others were arriving, we were on our way to the nearby mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, the most famous female pharaoh, a beautiful architectural structure perched on the hillside overlooking the lush Nile Valley countryside beyond. Although thoroughly desecrated by her husband (Tuthmoise III) and other successor pharaohs, the structure is still quite stunning with lots to explore for curious visitors (which we were).


Our last stop of the morning brought us to a rural family farming along the Nile just across the river from Luxor. The older of the two brothers who spoke with us and showed us around seemed especially proud of his extended family's ability to be self-sustaining in almost every possible way: raising theor own food; building their entire mud brick home from scratch; even fashioning their furnature from palm fronds growing in their front yard!

Following an early lunch (at the Thebes Urban Garden Restaurant), we were back in the hotel by 1:00 p.m., exhausted from a "full day" of fascinating touring. This evening we're off to see the new Luxor Museum and for a horse carriage ride through town followed by a light meal in a local cafe.

Tomorrow we visit a local papyrus factory, then board ship to begin our Nile cruise to Aswan...

Incredible Luxor

Our introductory exploration of an Ancient Egyptian temple took us this morning to Karnak, the largest temple complex in all of Egypt! Not a bad place to start, don't you think?

Once again our guide, Ibrahim Taha, walked us from shady spot to shady spot throughout the complex, extrapolating from the architectural and sculptural splendor everywhere surrounding us real meaning and understanding as we came to appreciate more and more all the, literally, thousands of years devoted by pharaoh after pharaoh to the perfecting of this enormous religious edifice.

As we wandered through the temple, we marveled at the hypostyle hall with its hundreds of pillars incised with hieroglyphs, some of which still retained their rich coloration. We wondered at the tall obelisks that seemed to touch the sky. We trudged dutifully from chapel to chapel as we listened to tales of how each succeeding pharaoh sought to put his (or her) own unique stamp on this religious marvel dedicated to Amun-Ra, the most important of all the Egyptian deities.

Throughout the day, here at Karnak and elsewhere, Lee managed to implement his vow to include actual human beings in his photographs (in sharp contrast to his usual practice of taking largely "people-free" pictures). Few photos of Egyptian antiquities incorporate people, if only to provide an historical neutral aspect, freed from the influence of fashion, hairstyle or any other link to a specific time period or cultural frame. Such an approach means, however, that one seldom has a sense of scale. So Lee decided that, this time around at least, people WOULD appear as often as needed to provide that missing sense of just how big these historical artifacts actually are.

For the major part of the afternoon we hid from the sun, napping in our air conditioned room and enjoying the relatively cool water in the hotel pool (located right on the bank of the Nile itself). In the early evening, right at dusk, we drove to visit the Temple of Luxor, one of only two ancient temples illuminated and open to the public into the (much cooler) evening hours. The illumination brought out details we might otherwise have missed and added a real sense of drama to our visit.

Here we learned how the efforts of two different pharaohs, ruling a hundred yeras apart, impacted the layout and aesthetic appeal of this stunning complex.

A delicious dinner followed at El Hussain, a local seafood restaurant. Then it was back to the hotel and to bed -- we have a five o'clock wake-up call tomorrow morning so we can get underway early, early, early for our trip across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings and other important sites on the West Bank.

Off to a Great Start

What a revelation the city of Cairo turned out to be!

This morning we drove from our airport hotel to spend much of the day at the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo. En route we passed through the very upscale suburban city of Heliopolis, then motored serenely along an elevated skyway sailing through the city right to our ultimate destination.

Our comparative template throughout much of this trip undoubtedly will be India since that was our most recent international adventure. And, believe us, traffic in Cairo is nowhere near as noisy and chaotic as we found in Delhi last December!

Though drivers always seemed to be able to turn three lanes and a parking strip into six lanes seemingly without effort, there was none of the constant horn honking encountered in Delhi and Mumbai. Nor were there stray animals of every description roaming the streets.

To be sure, pedestrians crossed roads very much at their own risk, parking was totally unorganized, bus passengers often alighted and boarded randomly in the center lane, and taxi drivers negotated with potential fares without even bothering to halt their forward movement. But we never saw an accident, and traffic flowed with seeming ease everywhere we traveled.

Truly remarkable (not that the same wasn't true in India -- we never happened upon an accident there either).

The city was cleaner than expected and more lively, too, even during the heat of the day. We saw little evidence of extreme poverty (aside from the squatters residing in the City of the Dead, a huge cemetary complex spread out over acres and acres at the edge of the centtral city). Most buildings blended into the generally sand colored desert environment but often proved architecturally interesting, both historicaly and in terms of the ultra modern. Lee especially enjoyed the wide variety of styles present in the slender minarets we encountered towering over the city's ubiquitious mosques.

The several hours we spent roaming the cluttered, dusty, ill-labeled halls of the Egyptian Museum proved an extremely apt introduction to the days of visits to historical sites ahead of us, largely because Ibrahim steered us from object to object so skillfully. We would pause in front of a statue here, a sarcophagus there, a case of alabastar carvings in the increasingly crowded hallways; and he would deftly illuminate what it was that was important and valuable about what we were gazing at.

Everyone left the musuem with much better educated eyes than when we entered, that's for certain!

Museum highlights: for Heidi, seeing Ramses II's, (tubby) Queen Hatshepsut's and Seti's mummified remains and the gilded wooden set of boxes enclosing Tutatkhamun's coffin and his solid gold inner sarcophagus; for Lee, it was a room full of minature dioramas of everyday life -- carved figurines engaged in everything from brewing beer and herding cattle to sailing fully-rigged Nile River ships -- and the elaborate burial paraphenalia associated with Tutatkamon's mummified remains. There was also that fascinating room filled with mummified animals -- pets and food supplies and votive offerings preserved, like the pharaohs whose tombs they shared, for eternity!

Following a late lunch at a very refined Lebanese restaurant on the GIza side of the Nile, we headed out to the airport for our flight south to Luxor. Enroute we stopped for pictures at the incredibly elaborate residence (modeled on an Indian Hindu tmeple) built by the Belgium Baron Edouard Empain, credited with initiating the construction of Heliopolis on the outskirts of the city in the early twentieth century.

We'll be back in Cairo for three days at the end of our tour to visit even more of the city's sites, very much looking forward to experiencing more of its delights as well.

This evening we are ensconced in the Nile Palace Hotel on the banks of the Nile in Luxor, very much anticipating our visits to Luxor Temple and Karnak tomorrow morning, our first "on site" encounters with the artifacts and remains of the real Ancient Egypt.

An Afternoon at Leisure

Our New York City - Cairo EgyptAir flight went well and delivered us an hour or so early. After clearing immigration and customs, the twelve or thirteen of us on the plane met Ibraham Tara, our Egytologist guide, for the short ride to the Iberotel Le Passage Heliopolis hotel where we will spend out first night in Egypt before flying on to Luxor tomorrow afternoon.

Not that we are really integrated into Egyptian society out here on the edge of the airport. There are Egyptian families staying here, we suspect celebrating the conclusion of Ramadan; however, the atmosphere is otherwise "just like home." In fact we spent much of the afternoon poolside, soaking up the sun, snacking and swimming beneath a sunny sky spotted with (unexpected) white, fluffy clouds.

On our descent into the Cairo airport, we did pass over the Nile Delta, a green patchwork quilt surrounding clumps of sand-colored villages, the same color of the desert on the horizon.

And at the pool, one family group included two young women dressed to swim in tight-fitting unitards covering them from neck to foot, over which each wore a cotton pinafore-like tunic. Their heads and long hair were stuffed into swim caps as well. But once in the water they appeared to enjoy themselves every bit as much as the young European women across from them wearing hardly anything at all! Talk about cultural dissonance!

Orientation followed by a Welcome Dinner constitutes the extent of this evening's activities. We'll head off the bed thereafter and should emerge in the morning all bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to go!