The 2nd 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.
