Month: September 2018

Our last full day of sightseeing in Egypt took us to the temples of Luxor and Karnak. Starting at Luxor after breakfast, we walked along an impressive avenue lined with sphinxes leading to the partner of the obelisk in Place du Concorde in Paris. Just beyond the obelisk, the entrance to the temple is flanked by two gigantic statues of Ramses II.

The temple was constructed mainly in 1400 BC and contains several statues of Ramses II moved from the Ramasseum. This is because the Ramasseum has been flooded several times and the statues were in danger. They have been set up between columns throughout the temple complex.

In the rear of the complex, a church was created in one of the shrines during the very early Christian era. Some of the paint can still be seen on the walls.

After Luxor and before Karnak, we visited a perfume factory owned by the Al Fayed family. Al Fayed owned both Harrod’s Department store in London and the Ritz Hotel in Paris at the time. His son, Dodi, was killed in the car crash that killed Princess Diana.

As impressive as Luxor Temple is, Karnak surpasses it. Karnak Temple was built over a span of roughly 1,100 years and is massive. At one point the avenue of sphinxes at Luxor joined up with the avenue of rams in front of Karnak. The oldest part of the temple is the Temple of Ptah, which is so tiny, it was difficult to try to take a photo inside, especially since I wasn’t exactly alone. The newest structure is the entrance pylon. The main precinct of the complex (and the only part open to the public) is dedicated to Amen-Re, the sun god.

Probably the most famous part is the Hypostyle Hall, mainly built by Ramses II. This is a huge hall with massive columns covered in hieroglyphics. Originally it had a roof over it. Here and there are still some remaining pieces of the roof.

Hatshepsut had been busy there too. She made some important contributions to the Hypostyle Hall and built a small, red temple. There is a large obelisk of hers still standing and another that has collapsed. The Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan was supposed to have gone here too. There originally were several statues of her. As elsewhere, her immediate successors tried to erase anything in reference to her. Some of the statues were destroyed. Some had walls built in front of them so nobody could see them. I have a photo of one of the statues that had been behind a wall. King Tut is also represented by a statue.

Karnak is one of the few temples that still has its sacred lake. This might be partially because it is huge. It is also lined in stone with steps leading down into it. The lake was used for ritual bathing by the priests and for the geese that lived in the complex.

In addition to an initial guided tour by our Egyptologist, we had a lot of free time at Karnak to explore the parts that are open to the public on our own. I tried to keep Hatshepsut’s obelisk in view so I wouldn’t get lost in the maze of walls, columns, statues, obelisks, and piles of rubble. I managed to find my way back out when it was time to do so despite that fact that I pretty much explored every part I could get to (and possibly even some parts that I really wasn’t supposed to be – as I was the only one there and there seemed to be some excavating going on).

We flew back to Cairo from Luxor on Egypt Air. Then I flew from Cairo to JFK in NYC and on to Minneapolis. The entire trip was so memorable and I am so glad I took the opportunity to see Egypt when I could.

During the night we docked at Thebes (modern day city of Luxor). Thebes dates back to 2300 BC and includes the temples of Luxor and Karnak, plus the Valley of the Kings, the Colossi of Memnon, and Hatshepsut’s temple of Deir el-Bahari – all of which we visited during a couple days of being docked there before flying back to Cairo.

When I opened my drapes, I found myself looking directly into the stateroom of a complete stranger on another riverboat. We were right up against each other. Actually, we were sandwiched between a couple of boats and had to walk through three other boats to get to shore. A Nile traffic jam. This wasn’t too bad for just coming and going to sightsee, but was a little awkward when leaving the boat for the airport and taking our luggage with us. This was especially true when boats didn’t quite line up properly and we had to balance along the ledge of one to get to the opening of another. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever fallen into one of the gaps between boats.

We started our day at the Valley of the Kings, where for roughly 500 years (from the 16^th century to the 11^th century BC) the pharaohs, their families, and other nobility, were buried. At this point, archeologists know that there are at least 63 tombs. The possibility exists that there are still some undiscovered tombs. The most famous tomb in the valley thus far is that of Tutankhamun, which was discovered intact in 1922 by Archeologist Howard Carter and the 5^th Earl of Carnarvon.

We arrived fairly early in the morning before the heat reached its highest point for the day and before the valley was completely thronged by tourists. Here and there I actually managed to time taking a photo without a lot of people. As we sat under an awning listening to our Egyptologist talk about what we were about to see in the tomb we were going to visit, more people began arriving. By the time we actually ventured into the tomb of Ramses IV (KV2), we were no longer alone.

Ramses IV was a pharaoh from the 20^th dynasty. Although his tomb has a lot of graffiti on the walls from ancient Greek and Roman visitors, it is still in great shape with most of the original colors intact. This is in part from its position in the valley. The frequent flash floods that take place in the Valley of the Kings have not reached this particular tomb, unlike Ramses II whose tomb is in very poor shape.

Seeing Tutankhamun’s tomb (KV62) cost extra. Our Egyptologist offered to wait for anyone who wanted to see it, but tried to talk us out of it. He said that there wasn’t much to see – everything was in the Cairo museum except for Tut’s body which was in the remaining inner sarcophagus inside the tomb. I was determined to see it anyway. I was the only one from our group who was interested.

Photos weren’t allowed in Tut’s tomb. I couldn’t even carry my cameras in with me. I had to check them in with the person from whom I bought the special ticket. Fortunately I had taken a photo of the outside of the tomb as we passed it earlier. I left the rest of the group sitting in the shade and hiked over to the tomb’s entrance. Nobody was there to look at my ticket, so I just went ahead down the stairs. When I was nearing the bottom, I could see a few women over to my left looking at something that I couldn’t see. There was a man a ways ahead of me, looking over at Tut’s sarcophagus to the right. I stopped to take in what was on the walls of the tomb and give the guy time to move on before I reached the sarcophagus. I was excited to be there and wanted to get it all imprinted on my mind, especially since photos were not allowed (otherwise I would have been shooting loads of photos and video).

The man moved on and I went down the last few steps to the level of the sarcophagus. It had glass on top so that the coffin inside was visible. I stared at that for a while and then looked around the rest of the tomb. It was quite small. It was amazing to me how they had stuffed all the things I had seen at the Cairo Museum into these tiny rooms.

The women had gone up the stairs and out of the tomb. The man was on his way up the stairs. Nobody had come down after me. I could see what looked like two blackened feet sticking out from under a sheet in a glass case. Holy moly! Was that Tut? Was he out of his coffin and in that case? I swung around to the area that had been to my left and approached the glass case. Those feet were Tut’s! He was under a sheet except for his feet and his head. I reached his head, looked him in the face and said, “Hello Tut.”

Suddenly the lights went out and I found myself alone in King Tut’s tomb with Tut himself in total darkness. Trying not to panic while imagining a bony little hand reaching for my throat, I fished around in my travel purse for the flashlight I always carry. I had it in my hand and turned on when the lights came back on. Tut had not moved. I was relieved. I thanked him for his hospitality and headed up the stairs.

When I reached my group, I found out that the power had momentarily gone out for the entire Valley of the Kings. I told the group (and especially the Egyptologist) that Tut was now in a case instead of his sarcophagus. But we were on a schedule so it was too late for anyone else in the group to go down to see him.

We left for Hatshepsut’s temple Deir el-Bahari, which was carved from the side of a mountain on three levels. In 1997, 62 people, mostly tourists, were killed by terrorists on the steps of the temple.

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Tutmose I. She was married to her half-brother, Tutmose II. She reigned in between her husband and his son from another one of his wives, Tutmose III. Both Tutmose III and his son, Amenhotep II attempted to erase Hatshepsut from history. Her name was chiseled from monuments and records and her statues were removed or defaced. Here and there, however, something remained. That was enough for Hatshepsut not to be completely erased from history.

After spending time at Deir el-Bahari, we stopped off at the Colossi of Memnon. These are statues of Amenhotep III. His grandfather was Amenhotep II and his father Tutmose IV. His son was Akhenaten and grandson Tutankhamen. The statues had once been at the entrance of a temple that no longer exists.

The next day we explored the temples of Luxor and Karnak.

The 2^nd week of my 2008 tour to Egypt was spent on a cruise of the Nile, which began in Aswan. We flew from Cairo in the middle of the night so we could pack in a whole day of sights before boarding the roughly 200 passenger river boat. Immediately upon arrival in Aswan, we were taken to see the High Dam (completed in 1970), which created Lake Nasser and alleviated the severe flooding on the Nile.

From there we were taken on a flat-bottomed boat to an island to see the Temple of Isis from the Island of Philae. Philae was one of the temples that would have ended up under water due to the High Dam and so was relocated. It had been suffering from floods for several years in its original location as it was.

After visiting Philae, we journeyed to the Unfinished Obelisk. It was carved on orders of Hatshepsut, but was abandoned when cracks began to form. If it had been finished, it would have been the largest obelisk created. To get to the obelisk, we needed to climb quite a ways up the granite quarry. Sometimes there were rudimentary steps or some wooden slats, but it was mainly balancing oneself on the granite. I whipped out my folding cane. Really great gripping tread was needed on one’s shoes.

Once we got back down to the tour coach, we were given box lunches to take with us. Then we were driven to a special area guarded by soldiers with automatic weapons. There we formed a convoy of coaches and soldiers. We had two additional armed security officers plus an armed soldier on our coach. We also had two drivers – one to take us out and the other to bring us back. It was a three-hour drive each direction from Aswan to Abu Simbel. The soldier in our coach sat in the seat directly in front of mine (across from the middle door). He cradled his automatic weapon in his hands the entire time. I was afraid to move.

Fortunately the ride out was uneventful. I was also so tired from the lack of sleep the night before that I ended up dozing off several times along the way. Not much to see anyway, just the Nubian Desert. Abu Simbel consists of two temples – one for Ramses II and the other for his queen, Nefertari. Both were moved, piece by piece, like giant jigsaw puzzles, from their original location now under Lake Nasser. They were originally built in roughly 1264 BC. We could take as many photos as we wanted outside of the temples, but nothing inside. I did talk the fella guarding the door to the Ramses II temple into letting me take a photo from the doorway, however.

On the ride back, we didn’t do the caravan. The other two coaches had further plans in the area, but we needed to get to our cruise, so we got an extra soldier and set off on our own. Closer to Aswan, we did get passed by a truck full of guys who then tried to block our passage on the road. They changed their minds about whatever their plans had been when two soldiers with automatic weapons came off of the coach and aimed their weapons at them. They took off quite speedily. We arrived at the cruise boat about 7pm with a very good buffet dinner, with a lot of variety, at 7:30pm. I slept like a baby when I got in bed that night.

The next day we woke up at Kom Ombo. Temple. It was a double temple dedicated to the crocodile god, Sobek, and the falcon god, Horus. Some of the original colors were still on some of the walls and the piece of a ceiling. Once we returned to the boat, we sat on the top deck under a large canopy and relaxed as we sailed down the Nile to Edfu. Here and there we saw actual crocodiles slipping into the water. Sometimes we saw water buffalo along the shore and watched feluccas (the traditional Egyptian sail boat) gliding by.

When we reached Edfu, we lined up for the horse drawn carriages to take us to the temple. Edfu Temple is one of the best preserved in Egypt. This is because it ended up buried in silt for over a thousand years. This meant that it still is relatively intact and has its roof and some of its colors. It also hadn’t been vandalized by the Romans. It is the largest temple dedicated to the falcon god, Horus. He was the son of the goddess, Isis, and the god Osiris.

It had been suggested to me that draping myself with one of my gauze scarves like the women in India and the Middle East would work well for keeping me cool as well as keeping the sun off of me. So I tried it. Unfortunately it did not work well for me at all. In fact, the cloth around my neck made me much hotter than when I had on my archeologist hat. By lunchtime, I was somewhat overcome by the heat and wasn’t feeling well at all. So, after a very light lunch (which I mostly drank), I retreated to my air conditioned room for the rest of the afternoon with a very large bottle of cold water (there was a fridge in the room to keep it cold). I had a large picture window in the room from which to watch our boat glide on down the Nile towards the Valley of the Kings.

After leaving Alexandria, with a fresh security guard, our first stop was El Alamein (Al Alamin), which was a World War II battlefield in July 1942 and again in October/November 1942. The Allies managed to push the Axis powers all the way back to Tunisia in a decisive victory. The US was not involved at this point in North Africa, so they were not a part of either one of these battles. We visited both the Military Museum and the Commonwealth Cemetery.

We arrived at our resort in Marsa Matruh about three in the afternoon. Pretty much all of us decided to head down to the beach and sit next to or in the Mediterranean. I had a very large brimmed white straw hat with me to keep me in the shade even in the water. So, with swimsuit, hat and large bath towel, I joined the others under a couple of giant umbrellas next to the water. Once I received the sizeable, lemony drink that I ordered, I wandered into the water and sat down in it with only my head and the hand holding the drink above the gentle waves. I was soon joined by most of the rest of the group. We sat in the Mediterranean, chatted and sipped our drinks. What a pleasant way to spend a couple hours before dinner.

When you think about how long people have lived next to the Mediterranean, it is amazing how clear and beautiful the water is. The following morning, we visited some of the more famous beaches in and around Marsa Matruh. The first beach was Agiba (Ageebah) Beach. It is a beautiful, turquoise color and is only accessible by a path leading down from the clifftop above the beach. Another beach is called Cleopatra’s Bath. It is rumored to be a beach where Cleopatra and Marc Antony came to bathe.

We headed from there to Rommel’s Cave, which was his headquarters prior to El Alamein. The German General, Erwin Rommel, nicknamed “The Desert Fox”, did not return after El Alamein and left all of his belongings behind. He later commanded the German forces that opposed the Allied landing forces that invaded Normandy. About a month after that, he was implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Since he was considered to be a national war hero, he was given the choice of committing suicide (by a cyanide pill) instead of a trial. He was then given a state funeral with the official reason for his death being that he died from injuries incurred when his staff car was strafed in Normandy.

We had another free afternoon, so we bought some food in town to have lunch down by the water and spend another relaxing afternoon in the Mediterranean (I was actually contemplating paddling around instead of just sitting in the water with a drink). While getting ready to go down to the beach, a big storm came up. No rain, just a lot of wind and sand – an authentic Egyptian sand storm. The umbrellas were taken down quickly and the waves became very choppy. A few hardy souls still tried to gather down on the beach, but seven of the group came to my room.

The rooms were all quite large with sofas and tables and chairs. There was a plastic table with four chairs out on the balcony which we brought inside to allow for seating for eight using the two tables. We hoped it would be a short storm, but it ended up going the rest of the afternoon and all night. It was extremely noisy, so none of us got much sleep. We were all pretty bleary-eyed in the morning.

In anticipation of the trip, I had purchased a couple pairs of light-weight, cotton trousers in a khaki color plus several cotton gauze tops in light colors. I had read that most of the mosques and many of the Coptic churches frowned upon people entering wearing “immodest” clothing. So, I kept cleavage exposure to a minimum and kept the trousers legs and the sleeves of the tops long. I was also trying to keep as much of my fair skin as possible from being exposed to the sun.

Then there were the shoes. I kept those light in color too, but still with great tread on the bottom and lots of comfort. Due to having issues with my left foot, I wear a great deal of bracing inside my shoe and often an additional brace on my foot and ankle. I knew I would need to remove my shoes at mosques and possibly other places as well. So I wore the brace on my foot and carried my collapsible cane whenever that was a possibility. I also had a couple of cotton gauze scarves to cover my head. How did I know about all of this? I not only read about it in guide books, but it was in the information that came with my tour documents.

The day after the sand storm, we went to visit the Saint Macarius the Great Coptic monastery in Wadi el Natrum. We were warned the prior afternoon. But several people on the tour did not bring anything other than tank tops and shorts and had nothing for their heads. They were denied entrance to the monastery (at the mosque in Cairo, those who were inappropriately dressed where given long robes with which to cover up, but the monastery didn’t provide anything, they just didn’t let them in). About half of us went in while the rest of the group cooled their heels in a covered area just inside of the grounds.

The monastery had been founded in 360 AD. We visited the tiny original 4^th century church and the 7^th century church. As anticipated, we needed to remove our shoes in both churches. Back when the 7^th century church was being restored in the 1960s, bones which they claim belonged to John the Baptist and Elisha the Prophet were found in a 1^st century crypt beneath one end of the church. They were reinterred in a tomb in that church near the entrance to the crypt. Didn’t get to see the bones, but we saw he tomb. We also saw the entrance to the crypt.

Once we left the monastery, we headed back to Cairo (with another fresh bodyguard) and arrived late in the afternoon. We made a visit to the Khan-el-Khalili bazaar. This maze of shops, stalls and coffeehouses was built in the 14^th century on the site of a prior mausoleum. It seemed to me that a person could get lost in the labyrinth and never be heard from again. I was very careful to go in pretty much a straight line and not wind around too much so I could keep my bearings. It was so overcrowded with things and people that it was very difficult to keep track of other people in the group. Most of us made it back to the tour coach by the right time. There were a couple of stragglers, however, that our Tour Director went on a brief hunt for until we needed to leave. Fortunately we saw them waiting for us in the wrong place before we completely departed the area.

That night we went to a Sound & Light show at the Pyramids. It was basically the history of ancient Egypt and the Pyramids and Sphinx with projections against various walls and lots of different colored lights. It was a very late night as we didn’t get back to the hotel (which was next to the airport) until 10:30pm. I managed a couple hours of sleep before getting up at 1:30am to get ready for the flight to Aswan.