March 4-5, 2022

March 4-5, 2022

We rose early this morning, had breakfast, and left just after 6am for a three-hour drive to Abu Simbel. Since our international flight home is late tonight, we can’t risk another flight cancellation. The road South skirts wide of Lake Nasser. It begins with a very flat sandy desert that eventually gives way to scattered mounds in the desert. They look volcanic to me. There is no vegetation whatsoever until we get to the area around Abu Simbel. This locale is being heavily irrigated. Egypt is complaining of Ethiopia draining Nile water, but it seems Egypt is doing the same thing trying to turn the desert into cropland.

After three hours we turn toward Lake Nasser and arrive in the town of Abu Simbel, where the Second or Great Cataract of the Nile once was before being submerged. We are just twenty miles north of the border with Sudan. Interestingly the Nubian houses here all have multiple domes on the roof. Apparently, this helps keep the homes cooler in the intense desert heat.

3300 years ago, Ramses the Great built a great temple here to warn Nubia of his power. His temple is the original Mount Rushmore. Ramses' builders carved a facade of four enormous, seated statues of himself into the Nile cliffside. They continued excavating a temple into the mountain. The temple walls relate the story of Ramses’ heroism at the Battle of Kadesh, one he nearly lost in Palestine against the Hittites. The battle was concluded with the world's first written peace treaty.

Next door is carved a smaller facade and temple to his wife Nefertari, whose tomb we visited in the Valley of the Queens. Aimee is happy to be able to pick out her Cartouche because it contains the recognizable fiddle-shaped hieroglyph, Nefer, meaning beautiful. I am going to start calling Aimee, Nefertari, ‘beautiful companion’.

If the scale of the temples wasn’t amazing enough, their relocation was an astounding feat of civil engineering. The building of the high dam at Aswan threatened to submerge Abu Simbel beneath the Nile waters. In the greatest work of UNESCO, this temple and a dozen others (including Philae) were systematically sawn apart and reassembled on higher ground. We saw one such relocated temple a few years ago in the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. In the case of Abu Simbel they had to build a concrete mountain to support this rock temple!

This is a good spot to finish our whirlwind tour of Egypt since it was the Abu Simbel scenes in the movie Death on the Nile that inspired this trip. Now we need to make the long trip back across the length of Egypt. So it is three hours back to Aswan where we catch a ninety-minute flight to Cairo. I was happy to see us pass over the Step Pyramid on our approach. That is where great Egyptian history started and also where we began our tour.

In Cairo we get an evening room at an airport hotel where we can shower. We go out with the group for our last meal of Egyptian food. At 11pm we head to the airport for our night flight to Paris. There we have a long layover that we spend in the Air France lounge. Then it is a super long flight to Los Angeles and our puddle jumper to Tucson. Humorously over the Irish Sea, I see England's version of the new Texas gold. We have Global Entry now that gets quickly through customs; maybe a little too quickly. As we approached, their cameras spotted and recognized our faces in seconds. We barely had to stop. A little too much ‘Big Brother Watching Me’ for my liking!

Jewelry Making in Tomb of Mereruka

This trip to discover ancient Egypt reinforces for me what an amazing and advanced civilization Pharaonic Egypt was. It was vastly ahead of its time. They were so productive to be able to afford leisure time where they could develop a sophisticated culture with a writing system, agriculture, industry, and artistry. This trip only scratched the surface of what ancient Egypt has to offer. Egypt is so much more than the Pyramids.

March 3, 2022

March 3, 2022

Overnight we continued sailing upstream ending in the town of Aswan. Here hard granite extrusions rise to the surface. Granite quarried here was ferried downstream for Egyptian statues and temples. This granite also caused the first of several cataracts on the Nile. These rocky outcroppings in the river impeded water travel and defined the border between Egypt and the tribes of Nubia to the South. The annual rising of the Nile was mysterious and magical to the Egyptians. They thought the Aswan cataract was the source of the flood.

The British built a low dam on the first cataract a hundred years ago. In the 1960’s President Nasser with Russian help built the high dam that formed Lake Nasser. The high dam produces 2100 MW of power, controls the flooding, and provides year-round irrigation for agriculture.

We drove over the low dam and stopped at the high dam. Looking over the edge we got sand blasted by the strong updraft. We then stopped at the Russia-Egypt Friendship Monument memorializing the dam building partnership.

We finished at the Aswan airport to board our flight to Abu Simbel 150 miles to the south on the shore of Lake Nasser. Our flight was delayed by a dust storm, and eventually cancelled. The wind continued to pick up obscuring visibility. We head back to the ship disappointed. It looks like we are going to miss Abu Simbel. Our back up plan of going to the sacred island of Philae was also cancelled because of the sandstorm.

On the way back to the ship we stopped at a papyrus store, where a Nubian girl demonstrated the basics of making paper out of thinly sliced stalks of the papyrus plant. Papyrus gave us the word ‘paper’. Another amazing technology development we owe to Egypt.

After a couple hours resting on the ship, we learn that Philae has reopened. We gather quickly to attend its nightly Sound and Light show. From the Aswan dock we take a little powerboat to this granite island sitting in the water between the two dams. Shortly after disembarking, the show begins. There is some flashing of the lights as we move through the Temple of Isis, but it is mostly a sound show relating the thousands of years of Egyptian history. While I would probably have preferred a day visit, it does provide a way to get in the mood of actual Egyptian religious life.

March 2, 2022

March 2, 2022

Sometime early this morning our ship continued its journey up the river Nile. Midmorning we arrived (along with dozens of other ships) in the town of Edfu. Once ashore we hired a horse cart to drive us the couple miles to the Temple of Edfu. Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC. His general Ptolemy governed Egypt after his death. This began a dynasty of Greek Pharaoh Ptolemys often married to Queen Cleopatras. Caesar married Cleopatra VII. Surprisingly these Greeks adopted Egyptian traditions and religion. They built this temple here in Edfu. Since it is so much newer (only 2200 years old!), it is in very good condition and wasn’t added onto like older ones.

The entire temple complex is surrounded by a mud brick wall. The entrance pylon has two halves symbolizing Upper and Lower Egypt with the sun rising in the center gap. Just inside is a hypostyle courtyard. Past that is the sanctuary surrounded by lots of rooms.

The temple was dedicated to Horus, the falcon god. During the renewal festival his wife Hathor would be transported from her temple at Dendera for the sacred marriage ceremony.

In the Muslim and Ottoman eras, this religion was forgotten, and the desert reclaimed the temples half burying them in sand. Ordinary people occupied the temples leaving a layer of fire soot on the ceiling. They also hacked out the god’s faces as pagan idolatry giving us the term ‘defaced’. The figures near the floor, below the sand, escaped this vandalism.

Throughout the hieroglyphic inscriptions, I can identify lots of the Cartouches with the names, Ptolemy and Cleopatra. These Greek names were part of the key to decipherment. Linguists eventually realized Hieroglyphics mostly represented sounds (vs picture writing). Cleopatra and Ptolemy have several letters in common (especially P, T, O, L) and this proved crucial.

In the back of the temple is a staircase that leads down to the river level. This calibrated staircase was a Nilometer that measured the flood level of the river. This information would be relayed down river to the kings so they could anticipate the coming inundation season.

Back on the ship, we toured the Captain's Bridge before sitting down to lunch. One of the entrees was camel meat. It didn't taste like chicken, but rather a tough cut of beef. We spent the afternoon again on the upper deck watching the Nile riverbank float past.

Late in the day we stopped at Kom Ombo. We got off the ship and walked to the temple. This is another relatively modern temple from the Ptolemaic Period. It is unusual in that it is a double temple with two entrances and two sanctuaries, dedicated to two different gods. And oddly one is Sobek the Crocodile-headed god. Crocodiles surely must have inspired fear in the ancient Egyptians who depended on visiting the Nile River often. I am sure there were more Crocodiles the farther south one went. Crocodiles (and Hippos) were eliminated once the High Dam at Aswan was built. This temple even had an artificial pond on the grounds where the priests raised sacred crocodiles.

Next door we made a quick visit to the Crocodile Museum. Besides having the nicest statues of Sobek, it has a large collection of mummified sacred crocodiles. We then walked back to the ship for dinner.

March 1, 2022

March 1, 2022

This morning we left the ship and drove to nearby Karnak Temple. It is one of the largest religious complexes in the world. It is a sprawling mishmash of pylons and courtyards because each Pharaoh had to show he was a descendant of Amun by modifying and adding on to the site. The first pylon entrance in the West has a line of ram-headed sphinxes. During the Opet Festival the statue of Amun would be transported in his boat out the South pylons down the Avenue of Sphinxes for his sacred marriage in Luxor Temple.

The most famous part of Karnak is the Hypostyle Hall. It contains 134 massive columns. The largest ones are seventy feet tall and ten feet wide, and they are tightly packed in order to support the heavy stone roof. Every surface and every column is carved with figures and hieroglyphics. The huge crowd of tourists took away some of the majesty for me. Tourism is down in Egypt. I can't imagine what it was like pre-pandemic.

The most impressive part of the Hypostyle Hall for me is that workers are removing three thousand years of accumulated dust and soot, revealing that the carved columns were gaily painted. This reminded Aimee that many religious sites (like Amiens Cathedral in France) used to be painted. This temple must have been a colorful site to behold in ancient times.

Once back on the ship, we set sail heading up river. The weather is nice, sunny and getting warmer as we continue our journey south. Aimee and I relax inside a cabana on the ship's open roof deck with cocktails. The tourist vendors are stubbornly persistent in Egypt and they are inventive. They even tie up to our ship to display their wares. If interested, they will toss the items onto deck with payment thrown down.

We watch the scenery of the Nile flow past us. Surprisingly apartment buildings line one bank of the Nile for miles. The habitable part of Egypt is very tiny; maybe a mile of very fertile soil on each bank. Sometimes though the desert mountains come very close to the river bank.

Sugar cane is a major crop of Egypt. Unfortunately burning the fields before harvest is common practice, so the sky is hazy and sometimes downright smoky. It does however make the sunset glow.

When we get to the town of Esna, we encounter one of many Barrage Dams. Like the ones on the Mississippi where I grew up, these are gate dams designed to maintain navigability of the Nile and provide enough head pressure to feed irrigation canals. We watch as our ship passes through the lock. We dock in Esna for the night. I have to laugh as we hear the evening call for prayer of the Muslims. The exhortation is echoing as the call comes from a dozen closely packed, uncoordinated minarets. It must constantly remind the local Christians they are the minority.

At 7:30 pm we had a cocktail hour to introduce the ship's crew. And then it was on to a delicious dinner.

February 28, 2022

February 28, 2022

For breakfast I finally had Falafel, a deep-fried ball of ground chickpeas. It is the one food I remember having on my first visit because I knew it was safe for a westerner to eat. I guess it is more of an Egyptian street food versus a restaurant serving.

We walked out the back door of the hotel past the pool to the Nile Riverfront. There we boarded one of many ferries for a ride across to the west bank. In ancient times, the river was probably also busy with fishing boats, ferries, and cargo vessels.

On the opposite side we boarded a bus to begin our tour of the royal tombs. On the way we made a brief stop to photograph the Colossi of Memnon. These are two enormous seated figures (60 ft high) that once graced the entrance to the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III (Tut's grandfather). A mortuary temple was built to memorialize the king and provide a place for his devotees to worship him. Little of the temple remains. The Colossi garnered this Greek name because they were tourist attractions even in ancient times.

We also pass many other mortuary temples, including the Ramesseum of Ramses II. They were sited just on the edge of the desert with the Nile flood plain. All are in ruins because over time the annual inundation of Nile waters undermined the foundations of the stone structures.

Our first major stop is the Valley of Queens. This was the burial ground of royal relatives of the king. This small area is peppered with dozens of tombs; so many they have to be numbered. The cliffs and mountains resemble those of Tucson minus the cacti and all other vegetation.

We enter number QV52, tomb of Titi, wife of Ramses III. The tomb is a shaft and hallway cut into the earth ending with a burial chamber. The walls are all gaily decorated with colorful drawings and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Unfortunately it is all behind glass to protect it from the grubby hands of the public. Nonetheless it is simply amazing that so much of the decoration is intact with vibrant colors after 3500 years!

We next visit QV55, the tomb of Prince Amun Khopshef. He was the eldest son of Ramses III who died in his teens. It is just as impressive. One niche contains the mummified fetus of another son.

Remarkably, these tombs are not the best. We have to pay a queen’s ransom to visit QV66. This is the tomb of Nefertari, wife of Ramses II. Her name means ‘beautiful companion’. The tomb is spectacular. It is also a more complicated design with a pillared room.

The walls of Nefertari's tomb look freshly painted. What is more amazing is that the walls are not behind glass. I hope my fellow tourists respect this sacred heritage of humanity. It would be a tragedy to lose it after so many years.

There are so many wonderful sites, we have to keep moving. Our next stop is the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. She is probably the most famous female Pharaoh. Her temple is one of the few to survive because it was built spectacularly terraced into the cliff side. The carved relief decorations are not in great shape. Most proclaim her descent from the gods. One story panel relates her naval expedition to some Red Sea nation to get incense trees. Her son felt she had usurped his rightful rule, so when he finally gained the throne he systematically had her image removed from almost every relief. Hatshepsut’s story seems so similar to palace intrigue that plagues royal families today. I guess some things never change.

Our next stop was another of the seemingly required local shopping trips disguised as craft demonstrations. I get tired of these even as many in our group always buy something. This stop was an Alabaster workshop selling hand-made stone vessels.

Our next stop was around the corner in the Valley of the Kings. Despite millennia of peaceful rule, on a few occasions, the Egyptians were racked with anarchy for decades, either because of dynastic problems or the rare foreign invasion. At these times, the valuable grave goods of the royals became targets. This even occurred in the short Arab Spring revolution in 2011. The Egyptian Museum lost major pieces. No wonder the Pharaohs decided to hide their tombs here. As a bonus the mountain they are buried beneath is pyramid shaped.

In the Kings Visitor Center is a model of the King’s Valley. It is very cool because underneath the table are models of tomb shafts extending into the earth. Very cool.

Our first stop is at KV62, the most famous tomb, Tutankhamun. First we get a description of what was found when the tomb was discovered one hundred years ago in 1922. When we enter, though, we have to laugh. It is shockingly small. Only a short hallway and a couple rooms, each of which had been packed with grave goods. Tut only ruled nine years dying when he was nineteen. Workers had little time to carve his final resting place. Long reigning kings had bigger tombs. Surprisingly, Tut's sarcophagus and mummy remain in the tomb.

We then went next-door to KV9. It was the construction of this tomb of Ramses VI (19th dynasty) that concealed Tut's tomb entrance. We had to pay a small premium to enter. It is one of the longest and better decorated. There is a columned room in the middle and it ends in a large chamber with a broken sarcophagus and astronomical ceiling.

We paid another big premium to see KV17, the tomb of Seti I, father of Ramses the Great. It was very nicely decorated and it is Aimee’s favorite. She noticed the raised relief carvings on the wall. This differs from simple painting on flat surfaces and sunken relief where the outlines of figures are carved and then painted. Raised relief involves removing all the stone EXCEPT for the figure. After painting, this causes the figure to pop out like a sculpture. This takes much more time and effort.

The level of detail and decoration in Raised Relief hieroglyphs also helped Egyptologists realize what some of the obscure hieroglyph characters represented. While I love raised relief also, I really think Aimee liked Seti’s tomb because it had a room with a lot of Pharaohs and Gods touching each other's elbows. In Egyptian art that implies X-rated activity!

The general entrance ticket for the Valley of the Kings allows entry to three of the non-premium tombs, so we had to pick which ones we went to.

We first chose KV16, tomb of Ramses I, grandfather of Ramses the Great. It is small but brightly painted. The sarcophagus is dark red quartzite. The next was KV8 tomb of Merenptah, son of Ramses the Great. This one was deeper with lots of stairs. Its hallway was in poor condition but ended well. Aimee noticed lots of figures with their arms tied behind their back. This represented some kind of battle and these were captured prisoners. Our last visit was KV6, tomb of Ramses IX.

Having got our fill of tomb visits, we loaded on the bus and drove to the river. Along the way we passed lots of fertile agricultural fields. It looks like a wide variety of crops are being raised. We see a plot of tomatoes being dried in the field. Another one I can identify is sugarcane. We even see a sugar cane train crossing a canal in front of us.

At the riverfront we boarded a cruise ship that is going to be our home for the next few days. After checking in we had a late lunch. We spent the rest of the day lounging on the upper deck enjoying the warm weather.

February 27, 2022

February 27, 2022

We got up well before dawn at 3 am for our journey to the Cairo airport. Halfway there we stopped at the Unknown Soldier Memorial. It is a modern pyramid dedicated to those killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War with Israel. It also contains the tomb of Anwar Sadat. He is a personal hero for our Egyptian guide. Sadat was gunned down in 1981 across the street during the October 6 parade celebrating the war. He was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood for making a peace treaty with Menachem Begin and Israel.

At the airport, we boarded our Egyptair flight to Luxor 400 miles due south on the Nile River. We arrive too early to check into our hotel so we detour to the Luxor Museum to learn about the local history. The original name of the city Luxor was Waset. When the Greeks took over they named it Thebes. When the Muslims took Egypt, nobody could read hieroglyphics any longer so they thought all the temples were palaces, so they called it ‘al Uqsur’ (the Palaces) which was Anglicized to Luxor. 

During the New Kingdom (around 1500 BC), the Kings (now referred to as Pharaohs) moved their capital here, probably because it was safer from invading armies from the Mediterranean. With the move, the Pharaohs adopted the local god Amun as their chief deity (hence they took names like Tut-Ankh-Amun, living image of Amun) and Amenhotep (beloved of Amun).

The Luxor Museum is not very large, but it has outstanding samples and unlike the Cairo Museum, they are all documented. It has the requisite Egyptian statues, which must have been produced in the thousands because examples are all over the world. We have even run across granite Sphinxes from Egypt along the riverfront of St Petersburg, Russia!

It also has collections of Egyptian weaponry, especially bow and arrow. This was the height of the Egyptian Empire's expansion abroad. Surprisingly it also has architect tools that would be necessary for building tombs and temples. There are two well-preserved mummies of Ahmose I (first New Kingdom Pharaoh) and Ramses I (founder of 19th dynasty).

Afterwards we checked into our hotel room and had a big buffet lunch. Since we got up early today Aimee took a short nap while I checked the news and did chores. Then for some exercise we walked north along the river corniche. The river is lively with boats probably not much unlike ancient times. There are mountains in the distance on the far side of the river. After a mile we reached Luxor Temple. We just take some photos from the outside.

We return to the hotel for a lecture on the archeological status of the area. The New Kingdom Pharaohs were buried in the City of the Dead on the West Bank. Unlike Memphis with its pyramids, here the Kings were buried in hidden tombs cut into the mountain. Our lecturer manages dozens of digs sponsored by countries from all over the world. It seems to be a never-ending task.

We then walk to the riverfront where we load onto two Feluccas for a sunset sail on the Nile. A felucca is a traditional Egyptian lateen-sail wooden boat. We don’t go very far as the air is very calm.

Back ashore we return to Luxor Temple with our Egyptologist for an evening tour. The Entire complex is lit up making it feel magical. Unfortunately, the onslaught of tourists breaks the spell. Karnak Temple, a mile to the north, was the home of the local god Amun. After harvest season an Opet Festival of fertility would be celebrated. During this multi-day holiday the statue of Amun would be transported to Luxor Temple to meet with his goddesses and rejuvenate the world. Our first stop was the Avenue of Sphinxes, the long processional way that Amun would travel to Luxor Temple.

We then approached the facade of the Pylon or entrance gate. Two Obelisks once flanked it; only one remains. The other was moved to the Place de la Concorde in Paris almost two hundred years ago. 

Past the pylon, we enter a courtyard encircled with dozens of columns. Every wall and column surface is richly carved with figures and hieroglyphs. We follow a colonnaded hallway to another courtyard before reaching the Inner Sanctum with dozens of rooms. Every ruler would add on to the temple. Many would assume responsibility by recarving the cartouches with their name. Humorously Alexander the Great even added on when he was crowned King of Egypt. We are able to find his image and cartouche.

After our temple tour we returned for a late dinner at our hotel.