Egypt, Part II: Where They Understand the Value of the "-i" Plural

Think about it: sarcophagi, loculi, colossi, camel-i...

When we last saw our erstwhile travelers, I was camel-napped with a head cold and J lost in a cloud of Cuban cigar smoke...

Night 5, Dec 26 (Cont.): In Which I Go Shopping and Further Hate on Egyptian Bathrooms

Not to belabor day 5 or anything, but after Philae, despite my head cold, I made a bold sacrifice for the sake of my husband and went shopping at the Aswan market. Okay, bold sacrifice might be a stretch - but we had an "Egyptian dress" party on the cruise boat the next night, and neither Jon or I had anything remotely "Egyptian" or "dress," so off I went. Here's what I learned: whatever the Egyptians offer you, cut it by 80%, and either be prepared to walk away OR pay whatever the vendor wants.

Also, hot tea with lemon does actually help a sore throat (as Tarek, our cute little tubby tour leader told me every third minute I was sick), and second-hand smoke from sheesha, or a water pipe filled with flavored tobacco, does not.

No, thank you.

This was our first night on the cruise boat, the M/S Nile Treasure, and also the first night my sinuses exploded (prior to this, my cold had been limited to hacking up 30% of my left lung), and, because when it rains it, it 'canes, our toilet stopped working about halfway through the evening. I was about ready to jump off the boat. What would the morning bring?

Day 6, 27-Dec: In Which I Buck Up and Troop, Troop, Troop

That's right. Day 6, and me? Rock star. Nose melting in a river of mucus? No problem. Fever rash popping up on my face on a trip in which we took an average of 4.7 pictures per minute? Outta my way. Internal thermostat swinging between Sahara and Arctic? Break out the Davy Crockett fur, people. I got stuff to DO. Plus, the boat people fixed my bathroom AND left me a wealth of tissue. Heaven, although not as good as the heaven of business class on Swiss Air.

So we had some free time in the morning in Aswan (the link is a personal blog site, but with GREAT photos) prior to the boat leaving for Kom Ombo, and although most normal people with the flu would use that time to rest, I decided my time would be better put to use at the Nubia Museum and Archangel Michael's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral of Aswan... and hey, I was right. As it turns out, checking out 7,000 year old hieroglyphics and 3,000 year old Ballana iron-and-possibly-ruby crowns distracts one from such issues as you know, pneumonia. Fabulous.

That's a 7,000 year old... ox.

The Nubia Museum is a UNESCO-funded museum in a modern building built in part of an Aswan quarry, where all that beautiful sandstone and rose granite of which the temples are built was ripped out of the ground. It was a very informative museum detailing the history of Nubia, which is the southern part of Egypt, now partially in Sudan, flooded by the High Dam, and also possibly the distinguished owner of the "oldest monarchy in history" title. The Nubians have been kings, sailors, farmers, pagans, Christians, Muslims and rulers of ancient Egypt (25th dynasty), as well as camel handlers/nappers, singing felucca boatmen and builders of interesting, brightly-painted mud-brick villages. I could go on, but you'd get bored (what do you mean, too late?) and really, that pretty much sums it up.

After the museum, we walked down to the Coptic Cathedral, built in 1995, which was all white, very beautiful and refreshing because a docent voluntarily showed us around and then refused a tip. Unfortunately, we were rushing back to the boat by that point, so we hurried through the church... and then the boat sailed two hours late. Thanks, Egyptian time.

Ooooh... Shiny.

As for me, I had lunch and then a date with a nap. To give you an idea of how sick I was, I skipped high tea, at which they served cake. That's right; I skipped CAKE. This was all so I could make it to our afternoon/evening stop at the 2nd C BC Ptolemaic Temple of Kom Ombo (and the pharmacy) at the village of Kom Ombo.

What was my favorite thing about Kom Ombo? Other than the walk to the pharmacy? Well, there was the line-jumping incident: we arrived at Kom Ombo at sunset, late, with about 50 other cruise boats and only 45 minutes to see the temple... so our little pudgy panda bear tour leader lead us right up to the head of the line and said, "Crowd in! It's the Egyptian way!" The Americans behind us in line didn't so much agree. Scott, our friendly and good-natured New Zealander pointed out our tour guide told us to line-jump, and when we turned to point him out, lo and behold, Tarek had disappeared. In the states, this would have led to a brawl. In Egypt... well, do as the Romans.

The Hypostyle Hall at Kom Ombo... No reason except it's pretty.

The Temple at Kom Ombo is unusual because it's a double temple, dedicated to Horus (the falcon god), and Sobek, the crocodile god and one of my favorites (I find someone walking around with a crocodile head oddly amusing). The temple is built in two sides that mirror each other, with some beautiful hieroglyphics, including one series representing the Egyptian calendar. I also loved the Nilometer, a well that was used to measure the flood of the Nile by an increase in groundwater. It was a really simple, and yet fabulous, feat of engineering. We admittedly hurried through the temple to make it to the pharmacy, skipping the 30-minute long line to see three mummified crocodiles, but the temple bathed in the sunset was hard to beat.

No crocodiles in sight.

I've mentioned the magic of Egyptian pharmacies, but the one in Kom Ombo was doubly fabulous... partly because I was so in need, and more because of the large, manly German woman who came in the store halfway through my explanation of "wet cough" to the pharmacists, yelling at the local kids trying to sell us leather bracelets and looking for tampons. Note to Germany: yelling at an Egyptian male in German about feminine hygiene products doesn't (a) make them any more comfortable with the subject or (b) make them understand German any better.

Day 7, Dec-28: In Which I Sleep More and Learn Redheads Sow Death and Despair

We woke up on the boat on the 28th in Edfu, our last stop before Luxor (if you're lost on where we are on the Nile, here's a simple map to help you out), where we visited the 3rd C BC Ptolemaic Temple of Edfu, (another) temple dedicated to Horus and (another) super-early wake-up call. The upside? A fantastic series of hieroglyphics depicting the "Festival of Victory," an epic battle between Horus and Set, the god of darkness, which may also be the oldest play in the world. The downside? We had to get up at 6 a.m. to see it. Don't these people know I'm on vacation?

Of all the hieroglyphics we saw, my favorites were at Edfu Temple. Admittedly we were, by Edfu, a little Horus'ed out (they LOVE him, almost as much as RII), but the 'glyphs at Edfu were amazing and incredibly well preserved (the temple itself may be the most well preserved in Egypt). On the walls between the temple and the outer enclosure walls, in the ambulatory, the "Festival of Victory" series depicted an epic battle between Horus and Set, his brother. You see, Set (or Seth) killed Osiris, Horus' dad, in the "Legend of Osiris," and then depending on which version of the tale you believe/read, Horus either avenged his father's death by killing Set or, ahem, unmanning him by removing important parts of his man-bits (luckily, this was not the version we saw on the Edfu walls). Um, yeah.

Anyway, so in the PG-rated hieroglyphics that we saw, Seth was represented as a teeny little hippo so as not to be scary to the Egyptians reading the walls. I love this because (a) it's like a super early version of a movie - a series of stills that you read across the wall (so if you whip your head around really fast it all blurs together, see?) and (b) because I love that a magically shrunken hippo is less frightening than a man minus a few of his bits. Also, Set supposedly had red hair, which made all the Egyptians associate red hair with danger and mayhem. I can identify. Cultural enrichment, indeed.

Set-the-hippo: Teeny, but unfortunately no longer a redhead.

After Edfu, I slept for most of the day, although I did make it up on the very sunny (if mildly windy) sun deck for a break and high tea. No way I was missing cake two days in a row. Around the same time, we passed through the lock at the Esna dam, which was on the whole a quite fabulous experience; beyond the group of Egyptian men in robes who gathered to stare at the late-teen sunbathers on the boat next to us (their sun deck was at street level, and WHERE ARE THE PARENTS? yeesh.), the lock itself is a very cool piece of engineering. After enormous iron gates closed behind us (think the Great Wall of China, only if it were steel, had a big gate, was only 30 meters across and plunked in the Nile. On second thought, don't think Great Wall of China.)... Anyway! so the gates closed and then we stood on the deck while our boat sank something like 14 meters (~45 feet), in an enclosure probably only ten feet wider than the boat itself. That's a whole new brand of claustrophobia.

We're siii-iiiiinking...

What happened next? Well, pretty much... I slept.

Day 8, Dec-29: In Which I Start to Feel Better and Transportation Takes a Turn for the Smelly

Well, not that the camels weren't smelly, but...

So on the 29th we arrived in Luxor, ancient Thebes (of Homer's Illiad "hundred-gate" fame), and had a super busy day rushing around and seeing the various sites. We started our day at the Valley of the Kings, the tombs of the Middle and New Kingdom pharaohs built into a pyramid-shaped mountain, with a young female guide who was easily (if good-humored-ly) annoyed by such things as the group being too quiet, too loud, talking at inappropriate times and having to walk 100 yards to the tombs on a slight uphill grade.

At VotK, we saw three tombs, as well as the outside of many others (including the famous one of Tutankhamen that we declined to go in, because it's (a) pricey and (b) completely undecorated). While they were all equally empty (grave robbers are some dedicated thieves), the decorations inside the tombs were really incredible. My favorite was the tomb of Ramses IV, which was richly painted with items the pharaoh would need in his afterlife (servants, wine, food, etc.), scenes from the Book of the Dead (which sounded much cooler than it actually was) and a burial chamber with the mythology of Nut painted across the ceiling. We couldn't take pictures (although the person who took that one I linked to clearly did), but check out the tomb of RIV at this very cool panoramic site and the entire VotK at the Theban Mapping Project, one of the best websites I've come across.

On the backside of the same mountain, we visited Deir El-Bahri and the Temple of Hatshepsut, one of the few female pharaohs, and unquestionably the most powerful one (yes, even including Cleopatra). Hatshepsut, or "Fancy Pants," as we called her, ruled from 1479 to 1458 B.C. after her husband, Thutmose II, died. She ruled as regent for her stepson (born of a lesser wife), Thutmose III, for, oh, 22 years or so... long after he was old enough to rule himself. So that didn't go over so well, and after her death (possibly of diabetes or liver cancer), he defaced all of her temples and then went to war (successfully) with pretty much everyone. This is all interesting royal gossip background for our less-interesting visit to the three level temple.

The Temple of Fancy Pants was probably my least favorite temple, not least of which because it looked very modern compared to the others. Queen F.P. did leave some beautiful hieroglyphics behind, of her trip to Somalia to bring back incense (and other goods, including, possibly, pygmy's). Take a look for yourself (at the temple, I mean):

Eh.

So after a visit to an alabaster store (most of our tours also included visits to stores in which we were given a discount if we purchased something), our group boarded donkeys for the short countryside trip to our restaurant for lunch. Although I am, indeed, a huge fan of the donkey (and the Equus Asinus family, in general), I sat out the donkey ride on account of my head cold. While Jon disappeared off into a cloud of Cuban cigar smoke (yes, another one), I hung out watching the "Godfather"-esque alabaster shop owner pick out custom fabric from the local galabiyya tailor and explain to me how by ripping off tourists he was actually helping local artisans feed their families. Nice.

I wonder: Who's producing more noxious fumes here?

In the afternoon, we took some seriously underfed horse-drawn carriages (the horses, not the carriages) to one of the largest temple complexes in the world, the Karnak temple complex, a series built over a period of 2,000 years. An avenue of ram-headed sphinxes leads through the outer court of the temple, to the first pylon, or main entrance/gate.

That's a fancy-schmancy gate.

Through the gate is the Precinct of Amun-Ra, or Amun Temple enclosure, which is the main touristy part of Karnak, and which holds the largest hypostyle hall in the world. In a coup of creativity, Jon compared it to a giant cigar box, and no joke; tip it up on it's side and that's what it looks like.

Better-smelling than cigars OR donkeys.

We also saw a series of smaller temples, including a mini Abu Simbel-style temple dedicated to Ramses III (apparently this is a copy of his mortuary temple at Medinat Habu), and the tallest obelisk in Egypt (at ~97 ft), built by and dedicated to Queen F.P., that was once topped with electrum, a silver-gold alloy. Shiny. There was once a second Q.F.P. obelisk, too, but it's broken; part of it now lies in or near the sacred lake. Obelisks from Egypt ended up all over the world (as Jon and I found out in Rome, where the Romans relocated eight of them), but my favorite "stolen" Egyptian obelisk now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. I say stolen because it was traded by one of Mohammed Ali's (the ruler, not the boxer) descendents in the 19th C for a broken clock, and set on the site of the French Revolution guillotine.

Prettier than Place de la Concorde, I can tell you from experience.

At Karnak, I also loved the sacred lake (that looked a bit more cesspool than sacred) that magically refilled via rising groundwater after the annual Nile flood. Handy.

In the evening, while we were waiting for the overnight train to Cairo (the same cold, scary-be-bathroom-ed one from earlier in the tour), Jon visited the Luxor market while I rested. Hey, it was a busy day. I missed, however, a semi-raid in which police gave vendor's runners a heads-up before they went in and arrested any vendor displaying his wares on the sidewalk... causing a flurry of activity that several members of our group mistook for a riot. Honestly, I'm kind of glad I took a nap. I'd had enough excitement for one trip.

Day 9, 30-Dec: In Which I Feel WAY Better and Love Me Some Alexandria

This post has gotten super long, so I'm going to try to blow super fast through the last two days of our trip (since you've probably traded reading for snoozing already). In three breaths or less:

So on the 30th we hopped off the train, showered, hopped a bus to Alex (stopping at a huge rest stop/oasis on the way, really clean, too, and let me get this straight: rest stops in egypt are perfectly clean but trains are disgusting? nice.), picked up our super-awesome female guide and headed to the 15th C Citadel of Qaitbay, a fort on the Mediterranean sitting on the sight of the Pharos Lighthouse, another of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. The lighthouse was destroyed in a 13th C earthquake, but some of the pink granite was used in the citadel construction (which was super cool). The location is also fantastic; the Mediterranean is incredible, and the Alexandria coastline, split into east and west bays by the citadel, is really pretty. To sound unabashedly old-fashioned, the sea air was super therapeutic. See?

One way of curing the common cold.

Okay, breath two (and yes, i can get all that out in one breath. i am from Houston, people.): After the citadel, we headed to the 18th C Mosque of Abu Abbas Al-Mursi that was very pretty but also mildly culturally disturbing for someone who has trouble reconciling women having to cover their heads with, you know, the 21st C. Perhaps the best example of this would be me having to enter through a separate door because men entering behind me might be distracted by following a woman through a door, if you get my picture. Hmmm. I know I'm good looking and all, but c'mon, a little self-control, people? Really?

And in breath three, we left the mosque, drove through Alex (past a Christian cemetary where women were waiting to bury their dead) and hit some very cool Roman catacombs called the Catacombs of Kom Ash-Shuqqafa with an interesting "sitting room" where people hung out while visiting the dead. That had to be a party. We also learned that to load people into the huge, heavy, built-in sarcophagi in the burial chambers, the Egyptian/Romans craftily built a chamber behind the burial chamber and loaded them in from behind. The water table down in the crypt-loading chamber made the whole expierence doubly freaky; we had to walk on narrow planks set up on cement blocks because water was seeping up through the floor. Apparently this happens a lot in Alexandria.

On the way back to Cairo, our nefarious driver promised us a bathroom break and a rest stop and then proceeded to hold us hostage while driving like a maniac for the three hour ride. I guess it's hard to find a rest stop in Egypt... especially when you're driving 195 mph down a packed two lane highway such that anything on the side of the road is rushing by in a neon blur. We caught air on a pothole. Seriously, Egypt: Driver's Ed. LOOK INTO IT.

Day 10, 31-Dec: In Which We See More Churches and I Revel in Five Star Sleepery

So the say-it-all-in-one-breath-sum-up strategy seems to have failed miserably, but since the 31st was the last day of our trip, I don't feel SO bad. Lemme 'splain... No, it is too much. Lemme sum up:

Woke up, checked out, said goodbye to tour group and tubby tour leader (after tipping him, of course), grabbed a 1984 blue Chevrolet Caprice Godfather/ghetto style car and had the driver drop us off at the walled city-within-a-city (Christian) Coptic Cairo. Checked out some churches, including the 9th C Abu Serga (Church of St. Sergius), built over the crypt where the Holy Family hid when they fled to Egypt, and the very pretty 3rd C Hanging Church built over the Wate Gate of Roman Babylon (a fort, not THE Babylon), which is one of the oldest churches in Egypt.

We ate tasty falafel before hopping back into friendly Chevy-driver/history teacher's car for a trip to the 12th C Cairo Citadel, the home of Cairo's rulers for 700 years. Toured the Citadel, which was huge, overlooked the city and was home to the enormous Mosque of Mohammed Ali (which was once, I'm certain, a beautiful alabaster diamond up on the hill over Cairo but now, after years of smog, looks like a wart on the side of a hill), and then the National Military Museum, which used to be Mohammed Ali's (the 19th C ruler of Egypt) harem palace. Jon didn't think it'd be such a bad place to live, seeing as how it was huge and opulent... the, you know, harem part notwithstanding.

That is not a fake backdrop. Really.

After the Citadel, we drove past the enormous Cairo cemetery, the City of the Dead (where impoverished people live in old crypts with the corpses), and Al Azhar park across the street, and then finally made it to our five star, clean-marble-be-bathroomed, white-fluffy-be-pillow-ed, be-stocked-mini-bar-ed, Italian-food-be-eateried hotel, the Concorde El Salam. I could go into more detail, but instead I will just say once I lay down on that super-comfy bed after a warm and cheesey plate of lasagna, I was a-snoozing. Happy, happy day.

Our trip to Egypt took me to some interesting philosophical and cultural places in my brain, but that story is for sure for another day, since it's taken me 7,000+ words just to get to this point. In any case, it was an unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime trip that everyone should experience. Go... just don't take the train.

Smooches. -s