On the move: Egypt

[lillibet]

We left London on Saturday 6 January. Our flight was at four and we had
various delays in getting to Heathrow (our tube station was closed for
repairs, for one thing), so we didn't make it until about 3pm for our 4pm
flight. The airport was relatively calm and uncrowded, for once, so we had
no problems getting to our gate just as they were beginning to board. Our
flight was pretty smooth and the food was up to British Airways' usual
standards. Jason had a tasty chicken tikka masala with rice and naan, while
I went with the braised lamb with potatoes. The movie was _X-Men_, which
we'd seen last year, but enjoyed watching again.

We landed in Cairo around 11pm local time, which is two hours ahead of
England (so seven hours ahead of the US East Coast). We were met at the
gate by Hani, the Cairo representative of Creative Travel, which is the
local affiliate of Ya'lla Tours USA, with which we'd actually booked our
trip. He eased us through Immigration, helped us pick up our bags, and took
us out through Customs (a guy standing in the doorway saying "nothing to
declare?") to the van & driver. It was about an hour's drive from the
airport, north of the city, to the hotel in Giza City, just west of Cairo,
during which Hani went over some of the details of our tour and gave us a
brief introductory lecture on Egypt and Cairo. It's a huge place...17
million in Cairo and another 10 million in Giza City.

Our hotel was the new Sheraton Royal Gardens. Hani checked in for us and
took us up to our room to make sure everything was okay. It was a lovely
room with a big balcony overlooking the central pool court, which also
includes the villa of an Egyptian film star of the 1930's that now houses a
Mexican restaurant. The courtyard makes a lovely view, with the pool
surrounded by rocks and waterfalls. In addition to the Mexican restaurant,
Senor Pico's, there's a Trader Vic's and a Japanese restaurant, Inaka-ya,
all of which are owned by the Trader Vic's chain. There's also a "coffee
shop" and a bakery/cafe, Le Trianon. The coffee shop serves a limited menu
after midnight, so we had sandwiches there and then hit the sack, or rather,
sacks, since they'd given us twin beds.

On Sunday 7 January (coincidentally the date on which the Egyptian
Christians, or Copts, celebrate Christmas), we had breakfast from the buffet
in the coffee shop and met Hani in the lobby. He introduced us to our Cairo
guide, Dalia, a very lovely woman of about my age, who took charge of us for
the rest of the day. Our first stop was a brief one to change money at the
King Mena Hotel (since the one at our hotel wasn't open yet), constructed so
that the Princess of Wales would have a suitable place to stop for lunch
when she went out to see the Pyramids. (When we worked it out later, we
figured that must have been Queen Mary.) From there we drove out for about
an hour into the countryside to Saqqara, along a canal from the Nile. We
saw a lot of livestock along the way: oxen, sheep and chickens as well as
the many, many donkeys which are a major form of transportation, with and
without carts. One of my favorite pictures-I-didn't-get was of someone's
sheep grazing on the thatched roof of their hut. I had noticed it was a
little hazy as we turned onto the Saqqara road and as we progressed, the
haze turned into fog and got thicker and thicker until we couldn't see the
far side of the canal and then we couldn't see the canal. We were starting
to worry that we wouldn't be able to see the pyramid, but by the time we got
there, it had cleared back to a haze. So our pictures may be indistinct,
but we definitely felt we could see it.

I'll try to give very abbreviated notes about the various sites we saw,
focusing mostly on what we particularly appreciated about each. There's a
chronology of the various pharaohs at http://touregypt.net/Kings.htm and
there are lots of other good sites about Egyptian history, if you want to
look things up, or you can feel free to ask me questions, since I've got the
guidebooks right here.

The pyramid at Saqqara is the oldest one, constructed by Imhotep (who was
later deified as the patron of architects and doctors) for Djoser (or
Zoser), a Pharaoh of the 3rd Dynasty, around 2600 BC. It's a step pyramid,
with six huge steps, in the midst of an enormous complex. We were very
impressed with the hall of columns that forms the entrance to the complex.

From there we walked across a large open area, dominated by the pyramid, and
around the side to the Hab-Sed Festival courtyard. We were given various
interpretations of the Hab-Sed Festival from different guides and books, but
all seem to agree that it was a jubilee celebration every thirty years in
which the pharaoh had to perform a rite (some say a race, others killing an
ox, which was an early symbol of the power of the pharaoh) indicating his
fitness to rule. One of the more interesting bits was a wall in one of the
side chapels with inscriptions in hieroglyphics (the writing of the rulers
and nobility), hieratic (the writing of the priests) and demotic (the writing
of the people). There was also a place where there are statues of
four sets of feet. Some scholars say that there were originally full
statues attached to these, others say no, it was always just the feet of the
pharaoh, his chief wife and two daughters, a symbol of their steps into the
afterlife. The inside of the pyramid is considered unstable, so it's
closed, but there's a little cell at the pyramid's base with a statue of the
pharaoh inside and two holes in front of the statue's eyes so that he could
see all the offerings and rituals performed for him after his death. We
walked all the way around the pyramid and looked over the wall to where the
workers were honored by being buried in tombs near the pharaoh.

From Saqqara we proceeded, geographically and chronologically, to Dashour,
where we saw the Red Pyramid of Sneferu (4th Dynasty, ~2575-2550 BC, father
of Cheops). It is possible to go inside this one, but the steps up to the
entrance were daunting, especially with Jason's recently stubbed toe, and we
knew we'd get to visit the inside of one of the pyramids at Giza, so we
passed. This was the first true pyramid.

Next we went to Memphis, the first capital of unified Egypt, founded around
3100 BC by Narmer. Very little is visible of the former capital, but
there's a museum/statuary garden that includes a wonderful colossal statue
of Ramses II (19th Dynasty, ruled for much of the 13th century BC) and the
Alabaster Sphinx.

We stopped briefly at a "carpet school" on the road back to Giza. They
employ children from the age of twelve for four hours a day making cotton,
wool and silk rugs by hand. The other four hours a day the kids are in
school. They had some lovely rugs, especially the silk ones, but they
weren't cheap and we decided to pass. It was amazing to see how quickly
they knot the rugs and to watch them cut away the excess to show the pattern
clearly.

We drove back to Giza City and had lunch at the Caviar House Restaurant,
obviously a standard place for tour groups to stop. We had a choice between
chicken, fish or beef, after a selection of pita bread with meze (small
appetizers) including hummus and baba ganoush, which Dalia was very
impressed that we knew. Jason had the fish, I had the chicken, both of which
came with rice and zucchini. Dalia amused us by pronouncing that "ziccuni."
In general, she had extremely good English, but there were other examples of
vowel imprecision and she had habits of saying "You have to know
something..." or "And why is that? I will tell you. It is because..."
which were a little awkward. We found that her English when just talking
with us was much more natural and easy than when doing her guide spiels.

After lunch we went up to the Giza Plateau. This includes the Great Sphinx,
the Great Pyramid of Cheops (or Khufu, 4th Dynasty), the museum housing his
Solar Boat (found in a pit near the pyramid and used, they think, to
transfer his body along the Nile from Memphis to the pyramid, very similar
to the boats used to transfer statues of the gods from place to place), the
pyramid of Cheops' son, Khafre (there was a rule that the son's pyramid
couldn't be bigger than the father's, so it's smaller, but built higher up
the plateau, so it looks taller), and his son, Menkaure. All of these are
surrounded by much smaller pyramids for their queens and daughters and by
mastaba (bench-shaped) tombs of courtiers and relatives.

We wandered around the front of the Great Pyramid for a bit. It's really
astonishingly huge and ancient...it's a mountain built by human ingenuity
and strength. Standing there before it is unbelievable.

There were tons of vendors around, trying to force stuff on us. I got a
pretty good "no, no, no" going and backed away from them, but when I turned
around, one guy had gotten a kheffiya (head scarf) on Jason and started
filling his hands with pyramid paperweights. I said "no, no, no" and
stuffed the various things back in the vendor's bag, he having turned away
to pick on someone else. We drove around to the Solar Boat exhibit and
toured that, for which we had to put canvas bags over our shoes. Seeing the
original ropes (which had to be replaced when the boat was reconstructed) in
a case was really amazing. They're the same age as the pyramids, but
somehow my brain was more able to grasp their antiquity than that of the
monuments. From there we drove up to a point higher on the plateau that
provides the best view of all three pyramids at once. Jason decided he'd
give the camels a try, so we saw him off and drove down to meet him at the
third pyramid. (I've ridden a camel before and didn't feel the need to
repeat the experience--on the whole, I prefer elephants.) We went inside
Menkaure's pyramid. There wasn't much to see, but it was still very cool.
Getting in there was a trial...the ceiling of the passage is rarely high
enough to stand and gets low enough at some points that you have to really
crouch. The tomb chamber is lined in pink granite from Aswan, as is the
lower section of the pyramid itself. A sarcophagus was found inside the
burial chamber, too big and heavy for thieves to get it out, apparently, but
it sank in the ocean on the way to the British Museum.

We drove around to the base of the plateau and re-entered the complex to
visit the Valley Temple and the Great Sphinx, part of the complex of
Khafre's pyramid. The sphinx is very impressive, especially at sunset, but
it was one of the most crowded points of our whole trip. After finishing up
there, we made a brief stop at the Papyrus Institute.

One of their salespeople gave us a brief demonstration of how papyrus is
made and then we were invited to look around the sales floor. We finally
decided to go ahead and buy one of the small sheets with two cartouches in
which our names were inscribed in hieroglyphics. Then we were dropped off
back at our hotel, where we took a quick dip in the pool (before being
chased out of it and told it had closed at 5pm) and then had a nice nap.

The one drawback about our hotel was that it's a ways out of Cairo-proper
and venturing out alone in search of dinner was a bit daunting. Since we'd
had "Egyptian food" for lunch and had to be up at 4:30am in order to catch
our flight to Luxor, we decided to be lazy and eat in the hotel. After
looking at the various menus, we settled on Trader Vic's. We had a couple
of their signature drinks (a Mai Tai for Jason and a peachy thing for me),
followed by crispy shrimp and beef cho-cho (marinated beef on skewers) that
came with a little sterno hibachi on which to finish them off. Jason chose
Mongolian Lamb and I went with the oven-smoked filet mignon, which was very
tasty and different.

Hani met us in the lobby at 5:00am with breakfast boxes from the hotel. We
hopped in the van and headed out to the airport where we ate our sandwiches,
yogurt and bananas while he checked us in for our flight. The EgyptAir
plane we were on had obviously been last decorated in the 80's, given the
colors, and we were amused to see on the radar weather maps of the world
they were showing on the monitors, that it still says "U.S.S.R." over the
relevant territory. I had a nice nap and we got to Luxor with no problem
and were met by Ahmed, the local representative. He handed us off to
Hannan, our Luxor guide, and she started our tour with the Temple of
Karnak.

One of our guidebooks describes Karnak as "the most complex and impressive
assemblage of Egyptian religious monuments" and so we found it. Basically,
it was the main religious center of Egypt for over two thousand years and
each pharaoh successively added to the complex. It's kind of like visiting
Vatican City two thousand years from now. There were many stunning and
memorable parts of the complex, including the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes,
the only remaining column of Taharqa's kiosk, the temple of Ramses III, the
chapels of Sety II, Queen Hatshepsut's obelisk and sacred lake. And on, and
on, and on. But our favorite place in the complex, and in Egypt, was the
Hypostyle Hall, a forest of 132 columns, 82 feet high and six feet in
diameter, covered in reliefs and hieroglyphs, many of which retain their
original colors. We spent a couple of hours wandering around there. Whenever
we were set loose by Hannan to explore a particular area more
fully, we were plagued by locals beckoning us along and saying "Ramses,
Ramses...you come...Ramses." The last time this happened, it was actually
one of the uniformed guards, and not the traditionally dressed guy standing
next to him as we had come to expect. But we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

It was very interesting to see a roped off site being worked by two young
archaeologists. Hannan said they detected something using instruments and
are excavating in search of what their readings indicated. Here we also saw
for the first time the evidence of deliberate destruction of some of the
reliefs, which we were to see at many temples. It was done by the Coptic
Christians who lived in the temples while hiding from Roman persecution.
Mostly, this consisted of quite literal defacing, just chiseling away the
faces of the Pharaohs and gods; sometimes all exposed skin was erased. That
and the 19th century graffiti were both interesting and sad.

After Karnak, Ahmed and the van picked the three of us up again and took us
to our boat, the M/S Solaris II. He checked in for us and we went to our
room and took a nap. We had asked to be called at noon, but that didn't
happen. Fortunately, we woke on our own at 12:30pm and raced down to get
lunch, meeting our tablemates for the first time. They were a group of
Dubliners: Fergal (barrister), Rona (his wife, a bridge fiend), Paddy
(solicitor), and Patrick (his son, a last minute replacement for Paddy's
wife, who couldn't make it).

Hannan met us in the lobby at one and we set off for the west bank of the
Nile. Under the ancient division of Luxor, the city and the temples of the
gods were on the east bank and the necropolis (city of the dead) and temples
to the pharaohs were on the west bank, to match the rising and setting of
the sun. We made a brief stop to look at a pair of colossal statues
flanking the road. Known as the Colossi of Memnon, they are actually all
that remains of the Temple of Amenhotep III, but the Greeks (who were big
tourists in the area between 330 BC and 200 AD) believed they represented
the fabled King Memnon of Ethiopia and the name has stuck. We had wanted to
buy hats to protect us from getting sunburned, but hadn't really seen any
until we noticed that the stalls across the road had some. Jason got a
cowboy-style one and I got a more rounded one. When we got back in the van,
we realized mine was broken where the rim met the crown. Hannan said "I
will kill him" and we swung back around to the stall and she exchanged a
stream of heated Arabic with him and he traded the first hat for another
similar one and we drove off as she said "I'll kill him later!"

She wasn't the best guide we had, but she was very feisty and interesting.
I commented that she must be happy, because she was always singing under her
breath, and she said no, that she was very nervous, because she was getting
married the next day to a man she doesn't know very well. She met him while
guiding and he worked on one of the tour boats and he pursued her until she
finally gave in, but has only really met him four or five times. For the
first year, she will continue to live in Luxor and he in Aswan, so we all
said that should give them time to ease into the marriage. Both she and
Dalia asked us what Americans eat, which is a very hard question to answer.
I tried to explain that it depends on our family background and what part
of the country we live in and various other things, but finally came up with
pizza as something that pretty much all Americans eat. Hannan was shocked
when we said we'd never had pigeon and said it is her favorite thing and
she eats it every day.

After that quick stop we went on to the Valley of the Queens, where we saw
three tombs: that of Queen Thyti (or Titi, unknown to whom she was married,
but probably 20th Dynasty) and those of two sons of Ramses III, Prince
Khaemwese and Prince Amenhikhopeshef. The latter tomb included not only a
child-sized sarcophagus, but also the mummy of a still-born baby in a glass
case. Hannan told us a story that Amenhikhopeshef's mother was pregnant
when he died and so shocked by his death that she went into labor early and
the baby was entombed with its brother.

Some facts and theories were repeated again and again by different guides,
while other theories and interpretations varied and often contradicted each
other, and our guidebooks were no better. Dalia would sometimes give us two
at once, with the disclaimer "some scholars say..." So there are some
things for which we got up to four different explanations.

From the Valley of the Queens we proceeded to Deir al-Bahri, the site of the
Temple of Hatshepsut (18th Dynasty). It's a lovely temple of columns and
open courts, built into the side of a cliff. She was the regent for
Thutmose III and managed to hold onto power for twenty years, even after he
came of age. He held quite a grudge and systematically defaced many of her
monuments, erasing her cartouches and figures of her, often very exactly so
that one can see her exact location and position, but the details are gone.
She was often portrayed on monuments as a man and also as the son of
Amun-Re, the sun god (or one of them, or one of his names, depending on how
you interpret these things), in order to assert her right and ability to
rule.

After a brief stop at an alabaster factory to see how they make alabaster
souvenirs by hand, we went to the Valley of the Kings where we visited four
tombs: Ramses IV (20th Dynasty), Ramses IX (20th Dynasty), Merneptah (19th
Dynasty), and Tutankhamun (last of the 18th Dynasty). Each was slightly
different, but the first three were very similar, with long sloping passages
down into the limestone of the cliffs and various chambers elaborately decorated
with reliefs and hieroglyphics from the various texts explaining
what happens to the soul in the afterlife. One of the tombs included a
detailed calendar on the ceiling of one chamber. Merneptah's burial chamber
still contains the lid of his sarcophagus and the ticket-taker there
basically pushed us inside and took our picture. King Tut's tomb was quite
different, with a much shorter tunnel and much smaller and plainer chambers,
due to his unexpected death before the tomb begun by him could be finished.
Only the burial chamber itself is decorated, but vividly so and the colors
are very well preserved. It contains the open sarcophagus and the outermost
of the gilt mummy cases, the rest is in the museum in Cairo. I don't think
I'll ever forget that on my 32nd birthday I stood in the burial chamber of
King Tut.

Hannan dropped us back at the boat for a couple of hours and then Ahmed
picked us up and took us back to the Temple of Karnak for their Sound &
Light show, which is considered to be the best one in Egypt. It started at
the entrance and led us through the main axis of the complex, including the
Hypostyle Hall, and then over to a seating area beside the Sacred Lake. It
was very nifty to see the temple at night, but we found the soundtrack a
little ponderous. It was quite cool and the seats were comfortable, so I
had to poke Jason a couple of times to keep him awake. Ahmed was late
picking us up, but did arrive at last.

We'd had a huge day and were very happy to be deposited back on the boat.
It's a fairly new vessel and has a lovely lobby of marble and wood, with a
central staircase. The boats are called "floating hotels" and that's
basically what they are, boxes on floats. Our room was reasonably nice,
with a balcony, but was substantially flawed by the smell from the bathroom
that increased as our voyage continued and was, by the end, extremely acrid
and unpleasant. Our beds were twins again, but they made them up into one
bed. The cleaning crew had lots of fun with our beds (and everyone else's,
apparently). Every time they made them up, it was in a slightly different
configuration. Once they took the extra blanket and folded it into a swan.
Another time they used my sleep shirt as the focus of a design. The zenith
of all this, on the night of the Gallabeyah Party, when everyone was in a
goofy mood, was a dummy made of towels and dressed in our clothes, with
Jason's cowboy hat on top, waiting inside the door for us. The sundeck, on
top of the boat, was lovely. The fore section included a pool (there were
hot tubs on either side, but they weren't working) surrounded by loungers.
There was a bar amidships and then the aft section was covered by awnings
and had tables and chairs. There was another bar, on the lobby level, with
a dance floor, where they played extremely loud music in the evenings. The
dining room, in the hold, was pleasant, with lovely Art Nouveau doors. The
first night they seated us alone, but the next morning we asked the Irish
folks if they'd mind if we joined them and we did so from then on. Another
couple had joined the first four, Sean (CEO of an Irish telecom company) and
his wife, Marie. We very much enjoyed talking with all of them at meals and
hope to see them again when we get to Dublin.

As far as we could tell, we were the only Americans on the boat. In
addition to our tablemates, there was at least one other Irish couple and a
group of English ladies, lots of Brazilians and Germans, Hungarians and
Croatians (we think), and Italians...there were Italians everywhere!

The food on the boat was generally good. Breakfast was always buffet and
included slightly odd French toast, crepes with sweet syrup in them, fruit,
cereal and various croissants and pastries, as well as an omelet station.
Jason discovered the first morning that what looked like yogurt was actually
more like Indian raita, with cucumber in it, but he bravely ate that,
sweetened with fruit syrup, over his cereal most mornings, while I tended
toward the omelets. Lunches and dinners were sometimes served, sometimes
buffets. When served, they included a starter (ones I recall include a filo
pastry, a meat & cheese pie, an onion & ground beef napoleon, pasta with
cheese, and a large parboiled carrot filled with ground beef) and entrée
(grilled chicken, pot roast of sorts, sliced veal in a spicy sauce, etc.).
The buffets usually included a table of appetizers and salads, a table of
entrées and sides, and a table of desserts, which tended toward jellies and
flans. It was all edible, but nothing really struck my fancy.

One of the things we very much enjoyed about the boat was having afternoon
tea on the sundeck. The tea was delicious and the cakes and cookies were
lovely. No cucumber sandwiches, though.

The weather throughout our trip was excellent. Highs tended to be right
around 70F, with bright sun. Like a cool summer day. It was slightly
cooler in Cairo, slightly warmer as we moved south and quite hot out at Abu
Simbel. I mostly wore T-shirts with jeans and my black cardigan. Despite
the "beachy" feeling of all that sand, sandals would be a bad idea and we
wore sneakers and lace-up shoes with soft soles. We were repeatedly amazed
by the variety of clothing people considered appropriate for trekking around
the monuments, including high heels, strappy sandals, lacy and otherwise
revealing tops and skirts of a wide variety of lengths.

We spent the whole day of Tuesday on the boat, mostly sitting on the sundeck
reading and writing postcards and watching the banks drift past. At one
point all the children from one of the small farms we passed came running down
to the shore yelling and waving at us. We all waved back and were very
amused when their donkey joined in the hullabaloo. We paused for a few
minutes at Esna, but not long enough for us to disembark and visit the
temple there. While we stopped, our boat was surrounded by men in colorful
little boats, calling up to us and tossing their wares over our railing to
tempt us. They were extremely persistent, even after the police came along
in their Zodiac and chased them off a couple of times. Neither of us felt
the need for a sequined gallabeyeh (the local version of the caftan). We
pulled away again and went through two locks just downstream from Esna,
which took the rest of the afternoon.

It was good to have a day to relax, but by Wednesday morning we were ready
to go again. In Edfu we were met by another guide, Josama, who took us,
along with the other Irish couple and four English ladies, to the Temple of
Horus, via horse & carriage. It's a much more recent temple than the ones
we'd seen the day before, finished around 60 BC. We especially enjoyed
watching the little birds nesting in the holes in the walls of the mamissi
(a Greek temple designed to enhance the claim of the Ptolemies to be the
rightful rulers) and the extensive reliefs depicting the battle between
Horus (the falcon-headed god) and his evil uncle Seth (as a hippo). The
hieroglyphics here seemed quite different than those in the more ancient
temples and we enjoyed feeling as though we were beginning to recognize
enough of the details to really know what we were seeing.

We cruised on to Kom Ombo, arriving there just after tea, and Josama took us
up the hill to the temple. This temple is quite unusual, because it was
dedicated to both Sobek (the crocodile-headed god of fertility) and Haroeris
(one of the aspects of Horus). The temple is divided in two, with one half
forming a complete temple for each god. Another of the Greco-Roman temples,
it was completed in the first century AD. It was also a center of healing
and includes reliefs of Roman medical instruments and of the Emperor Trajan
kneeling before Imhotep, patron of doctors. In the middle of the temple is
a depiction of the argument between Sobek and Haroeris over control of the
temple, resolved by Ma'at (the goddess of harmony, depicted with a feather
in her hair). There's a chapel to the goddess Hathor, the cow deity of
beauty, which now contains a few of the crocodile mummies unearthed
elsewhere on the site. There are no longer crocodiles on the Nile north of
Aswan, though there are plenty of them in Lake Nasser, trapped there by the
dam. At Kom Ombo there's also a Nilometer, a deep stone-lined well that
would fill up as the Nile rose, determining the taxes for the year. We
arrived at the temple just at sunset, which was lovely, and meant that we
got to see the temple both in daylight and lit for the evening.

Leaving Kom Ombo was a challenge, as we'd gotten parked in by other boats
somehow and spent about an hour manuvering back and forth in a very narrow
spot, trying to work our way out, bumping our way to freedom.

We were docked in Aswan by the time we woke up the next morning. After
breakfast we were met by the local representative, Hamada, who introduced to
our Aswan guide, Fatima. She took us out to the Temple of Philae. We left
the van in the parking lot and were ferried out to the island temple by a
Nubian man and two little boys in a motor launch whose motor kept dying. It
was a lovely day and there were tons of other boats on the water, so we
weren't worried. The Nubians' homes were mostly drowned by Lake Nasser,
when it was created by the Aswan High Dam, and they have resettled in Aswan
and Kom Ombo, for the most part. Fatima told us that there are three major
ethnicities in Aswan: the Nubians (whose name means "from the Gold Lands,"
since "nubt" was the Egyptian word for gold), the Aswanee (who are of
Turkish descent), and the Egyptians from other parts of the country who came
to build the dam and work in the electrical plants, who are known by the
others as "strangers." The Temple of Philae was partly drowned by the
rising waters of the Nile before being moved to another island. There are
still pilings poking out of the water where the temple was originally sited,
so you can see where it was. It's a very lovely place, dedicated to the
goddess Isis, with lots of flowering bushes planted around it, especially
near the Roman gate. It was reassembled from 450,000 pieces, with only one
mistake where they installed a stone the wrong way up near the base of one
of the columns. There is a lot of nineteenth century graffiti (including
Balzac signing in) and many Coptic crosses and destruction from when they
used the temple as a hide-out and church.

Fatima next took us across the old dam, built by the British around the turn
of the century, to see the Aswan High Dam. It's a very impressive piece of
work and it's lovely to stand and gaze out at Lake Nasser. There's a lovely
lotus-shaped monument to the Russians who helped Egypt to build the dam.

We drove back into Aswan and stopped at the granite quarry to see The
Unfinished Obelisk. It cracked and was never detached from the rock. If it
had been finished, it would have been the tallest obelisk in existence.
This quarry provided the rose granite that makes up many of the monuments
throughout Egypt.

Next we went on a felucca ride. The felucca is a lovely little sailing
boat, also mostly run by Nubians (I wondered, but didn't ask, if the Nubians
had been such sailors before their land was drowned.) We had a very
relaxing and beautiful sail around the tip of Elephantine Island and then
around Kitchener Island, which is a botanical garden. From the boat we
could see the 6th Dynasty tombs of the local governors and other VIPs, as
well as the modern villa and tomb of the Aga Khan, who died in 1957. While
we were out on the water we were passed by two motor launches, roped
together, on which some Nubians were having a party that Fatima said was
probably a pre-wedding party. They certainly seemed to be having a good
time. The felucca dropped the three of us off back at our boat, where we
had lunch.

We had nothing scheduled for the afternoon, so we decided to venture out to
the souk (market) on our own. We thought it would be nice to walk and set
out, pursued by this horse & carriage guy who just didn't believe that we
would rather walk and followed us for several blocks, lowering his price as
we went. We finally got rid of him, but were hailed by several other
carriage and taxi drivers, everyone telling us it was way too far for us to
walk. It was actually a nice walk, about a mile or so, along the Corniche,
by the river. We found the market, which stretches through a warren of
sidestreets. It contains stalls and stores that cater to local needs as
well as tourists. So in addition to the ubiquitous textile and souvenir
shops, we also saw many vendors of foods: fruits, vegetables, live chickens,
pigeons, geese, rabbits and impressively large turkeys strutting about. We
looked at some tablecloths, but didn't find one to suit us. We stopped on
our way out at one of the spice merchants and bought incredibly cheap indigo
and saffron.

That night we had a very lovely dinner with our table of folks and stayed
talking with them for about an hour after the meal, before tearing ourselves
away to pack. The next morning Hamada picked us up at nine and took us out
to the airport for our flight to Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is another temple
complex that would have been drowned by the rising waters of Lake Nasser,
but UNESCO sponsored a project to save it by moving it about 200 meters up
and building an artificial cliff to house the two temples as they were
originally sited. The theory was that our tickets included a guided tour
and that there would just be a bunch of guides hanging out by the ticket
booth, but we saw none there and when we walked around to the temples, none
of the guides already talking to groups were speaking English. We had our
guidebooks with us and none of the guides are allowed inside the temples,
anyway, so we just read to each other about the temples and figured out what
we were looking at. It kind of seemed like our final exam on ancient
Egyptian monuments and I was in many ways happier not to have to move at the
pace of a guide. We saw the Temple of Ramses II, which included several
side chapels that were left unfinished when the pharaoh died, one of which
had the sketch on the walls (like the cartoons of the Renaissance painters)
but hadn't been carved. That was amazing to see. The companion Temple of
Nefertari, Ramses' queen, was somewhat smaller and the central statue of
Hathor was in very bad shape. The site was gorgeous, though it was hotter
there than anywhere else, and we were glad to have made the special trip to
see it.

Our flight was delayed by about 45 minutes returning to Aswan. We were very
glad that our connection to Cairo was on the same plane, so we didn't have
to worry about missing it. We made up some time and got to Cairo only about
half an hour late. Hani had warned us that he was taking a tour group to
Sinai and might not be back in time to meet us, but he was there and it was
good to see a familiar face. He took us back to the Sheraton Royal Gardens
and after rejecting the first room they gave us as "not good enough, I think
is not good," got us into another of the rooms like our first, with a
gorgeous balcony and tons of space. We took a nap and had dinner at
Inaka-ya, the Japanese restaurant. We had a couple of nigiri sushi, but
mostly ate tepanyaki, grilled at our table by the first non-Japanese
tepanyaki chef I've ever seen. He wasn't completely skilled and we worried
a little that he was going to stab himself in the hip with his own knife,
but it was fun and the food was quite tasty, especially the shrimp grilled
in garlic butter. The restaurants there were completely empty...we were one
of two couples there and it was clear we were giving purpose to the staff's
lives. Our guidebook said that many Cairene restaurants, even excellent
ones, are often empty like that. Jason had come down with a cold and
finished his book, so I put him to bed early and read the beginning of Jane
Austen's _Persuasion_ to him.

On Saturday morning we had breakfast from the buffet in the lobby. Hani
showed up at nine to hand us back to Dalia and we set off for the Egyptian
Museum. It was quite crowded and there are so many artifacts that if one
spent one minute examining each, it would take nine months to get through
the whole place. Dalia gave us a "greatest hits" tour, including the
treasures of Tutankhamun, which were most impressive, and brought back fond
memories of the traveling exhibit so many years ago. In his burial chamber
they found a huge box of gilt wood, perhaps ten feet on a side. This
contained three more gilt wood boxes, the smallest of which contained his
sarcophagus. Inside the sarcophagus were three nested mummy cases, the
outer two of gilt wood and the innermost of solid gold. Inside this last
was his mummy, its head covered with the gold and lapis lazuli death mask
you've seen on every King Tut pamphlet and book and its fingers protected by
gold sheaths to protect them from disintegration. Inside the mummy's
wrappings were golden amulets to further protect the mummy. All of this
stuff is beautifully made and detailed. We also saw lots of other sarcophagi,
inscriptions, and statues...we found especially interesting the
ones of Akenaton, who apparently suffered from a hormone imbalance causing
him to look quite different from the other pharaohs and was Tut's
predecessor who tried to redirect Egyptian religion from Amun to Aton, a
subtly different take on the sun-god concept. We had decided not to pay the
extra fee to bring a camera in, especially since no flash is allowed, so we
braved the crowd in the tiny gift shop to buy a few postcards.

Many of the places we saw had additional camera fees, to keep down the
amount of flash inflicted on the artifacts, I suppose. At Aswan High Dam,
cameras were allowed, but no video cameras or zoom lenses. At other places
(e.g. King Tut's tomb) no cameras are allowed at all. Our guidebooks had
advised us to bring more film than we thought we might possibly need and we
were glad we did. Jason was shooting with his digital camera, but I used up
nine rolls of film on the trip.

After the museum we went into the Coptic section of town where we saw a fort
rumored to have been originally built during the time of Ramses II, but
definitely dating back at least to the Greco-Roman period. Built between two
of the fort's towers is one of the oldest Coptic churches in Cairo, the seat
of the Coptic patriarchate from the 3rd until the 14th century. Called
El-Mullaqua or St. Mary's Church, it is nicknamed "the most fragile building
in Cairo" and is more or less constantly under renovation and indeed, one of
the aisles of the church was completely closed off by tarps. From there we
went to the Church of Santa Barbara, under which is the cave where Joseph,
Mary and Jesus are supposed to have lived while they were in Egypt eluding
Herod's slaughter of the innocents. We stopped next at the Ben-Ezra
Synagogue, built on the site of the 8th century church of St. Michael, which
was built on the ruins of a synagogue said to have been founded in the 6th
century BC by Jews led back to Egypt by Jeremiah, on the spot where Moses
prayed in the 13th century BC. The recently restored 12th century woodwork
of the interior is particularly impressive. The whole Coptic quarter is
built about ten feet below the level of the streets around it and there's a
huge door of wood, braced with iron, at the entrance, all of which were
measures taken to secure the Copts against Roman persecution.

We went for lunch--stopping first briefly at a jewelry store on the same
block, where we didn't buy anything--and had one of the better buffet meals
of our trip, with really tasty grilled chicken. From there we went up to
The Citadel, built by Salah ad-Din (known to Europeans as Saladdin, nemesis
of Richard Lion-Heart's Crusaders) in 1176. It's a huge fortress/city and
includes the Mohammed Ali Mosque, built by the ruler of Egypt in the
mid-nineteenth century. Also known as the Alabaster Mosque, it is covered
in alabaster for the first twenty feet or so. Inside the mosque (our first
time!) is an open space, covered in handmade rugs from Istanbul, surmounted
by a central dome with four half-domes around it. It's a peaceful place,
but oddly decorated in an attempt to meld Middle Eastern aesthetics with
French rococo style. While inside, Dalia gave us an overview of Islam. One
of the interesting things she said was that she knows that one day she will
take the veil--meaning just the headscarf, not covering the face. I asked
if she has plans for when this day will be and she said no, but that she is
sure that she will reach a point where she feels, as a good Muslim, that it
is the right thing for her to do. She also talked about the Koran's
teachings on polygamy, which she says boils down to "you can do it, for
specific reasons (lack of children, for example), but only if you can be
scrupulously fair to both (each) wife, which--being human--you won't be, so
don't start." Obviously she gets a lot of questions and misconceptions from
Westerners about her religion, but we just found her take on it
interesting. Outside the prayer house is a courtyard with the place where
believers perform their ritual cleansing and a clock (that never worked)
that was a present from Louis Philippe in exchange for the obelisk that
graces La Place de la Concorde in Paris.

After leaving The Citadel, we went to our last stop, the Khan al-Khalili,
the medieval souk in Old Cairo. We found a beautiful burgundy tablecloth in
Egyptian cotton and some other small souvenirs and were very glad that we'd
convinced Dalia to come with us to help us bargain. We got back in the van
and headed for the hotel...this turned out to be our one terrible encounter
with the legendary Cairo traffic...it took us about 1.5 hours, most of which
we spent at a standstill in Giza Square, less than a mile from the Sheraton
Royal Gardens. By the time we did get back to the hotel, we were both
pretty tired and Jason's cold was worse. He napped for a couple of hours
while I had a bath and then we decided we'd just as soon have tepanyaki
again, so we went back to Inaka-ya. After dinner we packed and made it to
sleep before ten. Getting up at 4:30am again was hard, but we dragged
ourselves out, checked out of the hotel and were waiting when Hani arrived
at 5:30am. We ate our breakfast boxes on the way to the airport and Hani
helped us through customs (at which point we discovered that he's exactly
two days younger than Jason) and waved goodbye. We had about an hour to
kill before boarding, so we looked through the duty free shops, changed most
of our money back, and then I read to Jason until it was time to get on the
plane. I slept for the first hour or so of our flight, woke up to have
brunch of salmon in a dill cream sauce, and then read most of the rest of
the history of the Ottoman Empire I'd been inching my way through during the
trip.

We arrived just about on time at Heathrow, got through Immigration quickly,
got our bags, sailed through the deserted Customs station and jumped on the
tube for home. It was so good to get back to our flat! The workmen had
been in and fixed a couple of things and installed the kitchen and lounge
doors. We managed to stay awake all afternoon and ordered a pizza for
dinner, after which we decided bed was a very good idea. Jason has made
steady improvement on his cold, but I was foolish and went out for a lovely
afternoon of shopping on Monday with some friends from Boston in town just
until Monday evening, so when I woke up on Tuesday I was somewhat worse.
But I napped a lot during the day and we managed to get to the grocery store
in the late afternoon to restock and when we got home I was feeling much
better.