December 29 -- Coptic Cairo (by Lou)

With plans to hit the historic walled Coptic enclave, and on the advice of our hotel desk manager, we ventured out for our first subway ride.  Conveniently located near our pensione, it dropped us off right in front of the Coptic Museum but not before learning a few lessons.  First, you're supposed to insert your ticket into the turnstiles for both entering the system and on leaving.  A family cluster of Hijab wearing women kept poking me in the back to alert me about that, pointing to my stub sticking out of the machine.  Also, gentlemen do not enter ladies cars, as several men pointed out when we stood on the wrong part of the platform.  Other than that we learned once again, that Egyptians are just such thoughtful caring folks.  Turns out that the culture venerates their elders and people kept offering me a seat, senior citizen that I am.  And to our delight, our stop fell exactly on the steps of the Roman towers and the garden entry to the Museum.  Built by Trajan in the first century AD, the towers and wall of the enclave once abutted the Nile, protecting the district, which housed the early Christian community.  Nearby courtyards and gardens framed the Coptic Museum.  Built in 1908, this gorgeous carved ceiling modest sized museum houses a great collection of early Christian art showing the transition from the Ptolemaic to the early Islamic period of Egypt's history.  Displays of stone and wood carvings, monastery murals and textile fragments, were augmented by books and manuscripts, including the oldest book of psalms.  One room housed major source material of gnosticism, the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.  Even more interesting for me was the gallery that clearly displayed the absorption of Greek, Roman, and Pharaonic imaging and mythology into early Christianity.  Crosses incorporating the ancient ankh form were particularly striking, as were pre-Christian depictions of baptism and rebirth.

Beyond the museum and deeper into the walled enclave were a number of early churches including the 9th C Hanging Church so called because it straddles and hangs over the old Roman wall.  This and other churches visited were filled with fabulous icons, each church varying in personality.  Just outside the Roman wall was a 4th C church structure that became the 9th C Ben Ezra Synagogue.  It was believed to be on the spot where Pharaohs daughter found Moses in the reeds of a spring and also where Mary fetched water to wash Jesus.  The oldest Synagogue in the Cairo, its simple exterior belies the rich black and white marble interior.  Alas, no photos allowed so with time short, we reluctantly retraced our steps through the compound.  After the train back, we walked past shops we'd hoped to hit for the last time including a patisserie.   The crowd queuing outside the patisserie suggested it was popular but inside, it was  absolute bedlam.  People were just jammed themselves into the two room shop and you had to go with the flow or else with browsing not an option so, I joined the fray.  Grabbing boxed sweets off the shelves, I spied a counter with pan au chocolat and had a couple bagged for the early morning drive to the airport, then surged toward the checkout before literally being ejected out onto the sidewalk.  Phew!  Asked a fellow if there was some holiday people were frantically buying for and he said no, it's normal activity, Cairienes just love their sweets.  Well, call me crazy, but I just love Cairo!

For our last dinner in Cairo, we decided to head back to the sleepy but iconic Windsor, with its trophies and sad Christmas tree but also, celebrated martinis and the best hummus and other nibbles.  At the front desk with its ancient telephone switchboard and letter slots, we took what is described as Cairo's oldest elevator up to explore what rooms there are like.  An anti chamber with two mother of pearl sideboards on the walls leads to the rooms themselves, large and comfy.  Who knows what next December brings but looking at these rooms, it's easy to dream and imagine coming back because for all the wonderful experiences we've had, we've only just scratched the surface.

December 28 -- Cairo: King Tut and Assorted Shopping (by Roger)

After a lifetime of hoopla and having caught bits and pieces of it at small shows in different places, Lou and I finally got to see the superhero of pharaonic museum displays: the King Tut collection.  It is not overrated.

We saw the tomb itself in the Valley of the Kings and found it underwhelming.  It was small, and the main room had little decoration.  Pharaohs generally started work on their tombs from the time they ascended the throne, but Tutankhamen apparently died shortly after he became king, and the 18-year-old had apparently not done much to prepare for his afterlife.  His reign was so short, in fact, that his tomb was mostly forgotten, and when Ramses VI was later excavating his tomb, his workmen dumped the debris from that excavation over the entrance to Tut’s tomb.  On the up side, that debris hid the young pharaoh’s tomb, which is the main reason it remained undisturbed for so long.

But a young pharaoh is still a pharaoh, and the Tut artifacts that we saw at the Egyptian Museum showed the power and respect that post commanded despite the person in it.   My favorite piece (by no means unique to me): the throne.  And my favorite part of the throne is the back panel that shows the queen anointing the pharaoh’s shoulder with an ointment.  Seeing the ointment took me back to Temple of Horus at Edfu, where we’d seen a room covered in recipes for scented unguents, but the real appeal hear was the style of the art.  The face and limbs of the royal couple are elongated and stylized, lacking the crisp abbreviation of form in most Egyptian art, and the two of them have a languid posture rather than the stiffness we’d seen in most art.  Also, instead of the usual assortment of gods validating the pharaoh’s rule, the panel portrays only Atun, a giant sun in the background with rays that end in hands.  It’s an unusual way to portray an Egyptian pharaoh.

I was drawn to this piece because it so clearly shows the unique historical moment that Tut lived in.  Tut was a member of the 18th dynasty, one that became something of a black sheep in Egyptian history.  Tut’s father, Akhenaten, had banned the worship of the traditional gods in favor of worshipping the father of all of them – the sun, Atun.  In practical terms, this meant disruption for the giant temples throughout the empire that were run by an entire class of citizens, the priests.  And this religious revolution was accompanied by an artistic one with the characteristics that I saw right there on Tut’s throne.

Isis Protecting Canopic Jars

But Akhenaten’s revolution didn’t last, and in Tut’s short reign, worship of the pantheon of gods was restored.  It’s not clear if Tut initiated this reversion himself or was just the figurehead for a quiet revolt by the priest class, but the style of most of the art from his tomb reflects the return to traditional worship and to an artistic style more in the line of Egyptian history.  For example, a large, gold gilt sledge features four goddesses with arms stretched out to protect the precious contents inside, four canopic jars with the organs of the pharaoh.  It wasn’t hard to recognize the figure of Isis here, as we’d seen her represented many times.  Even the style of the canopic jars themselves is a return to traditional art representation.

After spending the morning well into the afternoon with Tut, we left the museum to find the bookstore of the American University in Cairo.  They publish tremendous books, and we’d read they had a coffee shop.  The book part was right – we stocked up – but the coffee shop part wasn’t.  So we headed back toward the hotel, stopping in one of the tree-lined side streets for a huge al fresco snack that included a troop of Abyssian cats and Turkish coffee from the back of the grocery next door to the terrace we ate on.  Stops on the way home included a place to buy sheets (Egyptian cotton!), underwear (Egyptian cotton!) and belts.  And I got a sweater.

We were both worn out when we got back to the hotel, so we stayed in during the evening.  Except that Lou graciously offered to go out to our favorite fast food falafel place and bring some of that yumminess back to the room.  With French fries.

Canopic Jars from Tut's Tomb

December 27 -- Cairo: Saqqara, the Great Pyramid, Giza (by Lou)

It was a deliberate decision to wait to see the great pyramids until the end of the monument phase of our tour and today was that day.  With its ancient stepped pyramid, Saqqara was our early morning destination.  The drive along canals past towns and villages already busy for the day was fun.  Arriving before the site gates opened, our driver pulled up to a roadside stand and bought us falafel and pita, a yummy breakfast treat.  Saqqara itself is the largest archaeological site in Egypt, 7 sq km of desert necropolis in active use for over 3500 years before its final decline in 700 AD. With 114 pyramids discovered in Egypt so far, 11 major pyramids are in Saqqara alone.  The stepped pyramid of Zoser is what we came to see, built 4700 years ago, the oldest stone monument in the world.  Limited time and a sandstorm to boot made it logical to start with the little gem of a museum dedicated to the architect Imhotep who served Pharaoh Zoser.  Imhotep is credited with the transition of ancient architecture, from the use of ephemeral materials to stone.  Faience tiles from the interior walls of the stepped pyramid, as well as small treasures found there rounded off compelling displays of architectural transitional techniques.    Illustrating the movement from wood to stone building materials were exhibits showing how columns and lintels and more were carved to suggest traditional wood forms through both shape and paint.  Outside, we walked through the bundle columns lining the hypostyle hall toward the great south court and the Pyramid itself.  Currently being worked on, it is still a dramatic sight in spite of the scaffolding and for sure, the sand storm added atmosphere.  Along the way to other structures, we noted the design transitions learned at the museum.

Saqqara is just far enough from Cairo and the Nile valley to be desert, and the dunes were throwing sand big time.  Even after entering some tombs, sand would fall on us through cracks, but not in the Serapeum caves.  Dedicated to the sacred Apis bull, a son of Rameses II ordered these tunnel tombs to be excavated as well as the carving of huge granite sarcophagi weighing 70 tons each, to hold the mummified remains.  These immortal deity bulls were known as Osiris Apis, later shortened to Serapis hence the site being called Serapeum.  The tunnel we were in was 1000' long and winding past deep pit niches holding granite caskets the size of trucks, their  polished and etched granite contrasted with the rough carved cave.  Returning above ground, we leaned into the wind and struck out for the Mestaba of Ti and the tomb of Mereruka, both private tombs of high ranking citizens in the time of the Old kingdom.  Both tombs are famous for their relief images detailing daily life in the time of the Old kingdom from hunting to hairdressing.  Scenes of boatbuilding, fishing, preparing food and much more were accompanied , so we've read, by hieroglyphic dialogue: Hurry up, the herdsman's coming, or my favorite: Pay up, it's cheap!  No photographing of these interior scenes was allowed but the guards suggested that for a little baksheesh, they'd turn a blind eye: pay up, its cheap!  We've also learned how to turn off that camera shutter click that IPhones make.  Alas, we couldn't turn a blind eye to the time so we jumped in the car and headed back to Cairo and the highlight moment we'd been waiting for, the great pyramids of Giza.

Just as in Luxor with Karnak, it's a bit shocking how close these respective cities have encroached on such remarkable monuments but once you enter the site, the city evaporates as your eyes struggle to grasp the enormity of these pyramids let alone the notion that you are beholding the last remaining of the 8 wonders of the world.  Situated high on a rise of bedrock, the way up to the pyramids is circuitous, around ruins and gullies and dunes.  One gully contains the iconic guardian sphinx, a David Roberts painting in the flesh.  Above its shoulders and off in the distance we saw tiny figures riding horseback or on camels trudging across the dunes while the pyramids remained huge.  Horse drawn carriages on the winding way up the rise shrunk to specks before disappearing around the back of the pyramids.  The closer we got, the further it seemed we had to go, but make it we did only to discover that its enormity is impossible to take in let alone photograph.  On that score though, we had the advantage of the sandstorm that followed us from Saqqara.  The uphill approach to the pyramids takes ones breath away both visually and literally so we often stopped to appreciate the view, the sky continually roiling with black clouds moving behind the pyramids while rays of sunlight broke through the foreground to brilliantly light the massive structures.  Whirlwind columns of sand swirled up and about making for the most dramatic of vistas.  For the whole of journey up and down the Nile we've had picture perfect weather, day after day of brilliant sunrises to dazzling sunsets.  Today was our first storm with all of a dozen raindrops and clouds that threatened more but delivered only glorious backdrops to these amazing monuments.  Walking around the periphery, we discovered deep pits where full sized funerary boats were buried to transport the Pharaohs soul into the afterlife.  Discovered in 1954, one of the five 4500 year old cedar barges found was restored and displayed in a wonderful wood, glass and concrete museum to house it, sited over its original burial pit.  Like the stepped pyramid we saw this morning, each represents the oldest of its kind in the world; staggering to see, staggering to imagine.

December 26 -- Cairo: A Day Off (by Roger)

We took another nice day off the tourist trail today to enjoy being in this wonderful city.  Well, mostly wonderful.  I’m having the slightest bit of trouble coming to terms with the no-heating/50-degree days here.  The only vaguely heavy clothing I brought is the red sweatshirt which figures so prominently in most of the pictures I’m in, though I’ve managed to convince my Mainer traveling companion to loan me one of the heavy shirts he packed.  I suspect he was tired of hearing me whine.

We spent the morning in the room, reading, writing and listening to the city.  John Cage would love this place.  Every driver seems to have his own little horn melody and the overall effect is of a joyous cacophony, only augmented at 5 am and 5 pm when the main calls to prayer produce yet a second, overlapping cacophony.  And for all that, the soundtrack of the city doesn’t sound like noise.  We’ve tried, but we haven’t been able to record it right yet.

We finally got out of the room and started picking up a few things for Stateside.  New belts and window shopping took us one of our favorite little side streets, a lively alley full of cafes and small restaurants.  And a barber shop, which we both needed to visit at this point in the trip.  A couple of haircuts later, we stopped into a place whose menu we couldn’t read; got a “meat-with-cheese,” as a friendly guy translated for us; and then dropped off our purchases at the hotel before diving back into the old market south of us.

More bustle and cacophony, this time supplemented with vendors shouting their bargains.  First, we stopped into a tea-and-nut shop to pick up dried hibiscus flowers.  Egyptians use these to make a fragrant, lightly-sweetened tea that we’ve been served when we arrive at hotels and other places.  Drinking it here the first time, I had a Proustian tea-and-madeleines moment that took me back to Mali, so I wanted to pick some up.

With me focused on finding our favorite brass worker here, we went ever deeper into Khan al-Khalili, passing some enormous Hello Kitty stickers I wish I’d bought one of and multitudes of cloth salesmen.  Lou was in shop-til-you-drop mode, and we rooted around in nearly every dusty little shop we passed.  And we kept unearthing unique treasures; ask me about my new door knocker later.   We finally had to pass on the pair of 36” long cast iron architectural medallions, one of Alexander and the other of some goddess.  They weighed just under 45 lbs each, which meant we could’ve checked each in a suitcase if we had found suitcases big enough, but we have a few books to bring back, too, so we were worried about the weight.  My only regret of the trip so far.  And we’ve already had to buy new suitcases anyway.

I finally found my brass-smith and, as I feared, he needed more time to make my censor than we had left in Cairo.  So I left Lou poking around ewers and brass pots in yet another dusty shop to go get a bowl of lentil soup and a cup of coffee.  We finally met back up, pulled all our purchases together and headed back to the hotel though the legion of people, parcels and cars.  And Lou got us take-out for dinner to conclude another wonderful day in this wonderful city.

December 25 -- Cairo for Christmas...and Lou's Birthday (by Lou)

So, what does one do on Christmas Day in Cairo, let alone on his birthday?  Why, go to the souk of course.  Roger was hoping to have a reticulated brass sensor made by the brass merchant we met on our first day in Cairo.  On the way to the souk, we found a really nice essential oil shop.  Was this really an essential need on our part?  Apparently yes, as we left with some files of lovely scents whose names we couldn't decipher from their Arabic labels but hey, it's the aromatherapy that matters right?  Once in the souk, we found the brass shop shuttered so we consoled ourselves at a shop across the way by buying lamps and ewers from a shop run by one family for 450 years. It consisted of a warren of rooms with a vast array of lamps hanging from the ceilings of each room, compartmentalized by displays of alabaster and brass items, basalt vases and leather stools, crocodile skins and antique leopard skin rugs.  A wild and wonderful place it was with antique display cases full of fun trinkets.  Roger jovially but unrelentingly bargained with the owner.  I'd wished I'd recorded the process but after prolonged banter between the two involving first born sons, a deal was made.  Hauling our generously bubble wrapped treasures outside, the merchant jovially asked if we had any grandchildren to barter with, before giving us gifts of camel Christmas tree ornaments, and a fez each to celebrate the holiday.  A taxi whisked us back to the hotel where we unburdened and headed off to our next stop: Egyptian Museum.

I've loved the Egyptian Museum for as long as I can remember and to be in it is a dream come true.  We only made it through the ground floor middle and new period displays two weeks ago, so we thought a shot at the upstairs was in order but alas, by the time we got inside, there was less than 2 hours till closing time.  Where did all the time go?  Why, shopping of course.  Let's check out this bookstore, let's look at those sheets and towels after all, they're Egyptian Cotten dontchaknow.  While trying to explain in English the various size sheets we were looking for, and getting unintelligible Arabic responses, a group gathered and helped translate and we ended up buying a set of sheets each.  Hopefully, Rogers king size set will actually be just that and good luck to me too but hey, hope springs eternal.  Our pile of sheets and towels was put aside so we could hit the museum unencumbered.

The Egyptian Museum handles vast crowds on a daily basis.  Located next to Tehrir Square, where there are no traffic lights, one bobs and weaves through oncoming traffic to reach the museum gate and somehow, we avoid every car that seems determined to hit us.  But traffic is not our only impediment to Museum going.  We can't quite manage to keep our cameras at bay.  There is so much to see in Cairo and to our eyes, it's all gorgeous.  But make it to the museum we did and we're blown away by beautiful ancient carved and painted figures and furniture, jewelry and amulets, headpieces and sarcophagi.  Room after glorious room, vitrine after glorious vitrine, all filled with treasures.  Our trip to the Met two months ago was a great starter for this trip but, as great as the Met is, there's no place like Cairo's Egyptian Museum for the most dynamic and comprehensive collection of ancient objets.  We're looking forward to at least one more visit while we're here.

Dinner at the colonial era Windsor topped off the day, and on the way there we enjoyed the fun and often bazaar holiday window decorations for the upcoming Coptic Christmas.  As persecuted a minority Egypt's Christians might be, Cairo's merchant tradition means no stones lay unturned on the way to making a buck so, lots of stores made a Christmas effort.  And for me, it was a treat to hear Christmas music on the holiday itself, not 3 months beforehand.  Roger treated me to a lovely birthday dinner at the Windsor because it serves the nearest thing to a martini that a Muslim country can offer, and for the truly wonderful Arabic taste treats that come out of its kitchen.  Oh, and did I mention the bottle of Omar Sharif red we tried from the hotels extensive wine list, one of the lists 3 offerings.  Quite tasty actually, and from Egyptian vineyards no less.  So, is this any way to celebrate ones Christmas/birthday?  Sure worked for us!  Merry Christmas!!

December 24 -- Luxor: Last Visit to Karnak; Return to Cairo (by Roger)

With plans to head back to Cairo today and having felt rushed through Karnak Temple on our last visit, Lou and I got up early yet again to have a couple more hours to spend there.  Our plans went smoothly, as they always seem to here, and our hotel clerk found us a taxi there and back.

Karnak is, well, Karnak.  It’s impressive, historic, gargantuan.  One of the most important New Kingdom sites, Karnak was added to by pharaoh after pharaoh, so you enter though a late Ptolemaic pylon and walk back into time to the earliest part of the New Kingdom and even a bit further.  This was my third or fourth time through this temple and it never fails to impress me, though after what we learned at Abydos, I now understand what happened here better.  Two family stories stand out to me.  The first is the supposed rivalry between Thutmose III and his aunt, Queen/Pharaoh Hatshepsut.  Thutmose III took the throne when he was young, and Hatshepsut ruled as his regent for some twenty years, an unusual reign for a woman in pharaonic times.  But many if not most of Hatshepsut’s cartouches have been erased on monuments and generally replaced by the those of Thutmose III.  This happened throughout Karnak, with the exception of an obelisk that was partly buried and thus retained Hatshepsut’s name.  The prominent obelisks at Karnak are Hatshepsut’s despite their cartouches signifying Thutmose III.

There’s a similar story in my favorite part of this and most temples, the Hypostyle Hall.  Seti I did most of the work here and had his incredibly-skilled artisans do plaster figural work on the pillars.  His similar work at Abydos is some of the most delicate we’ve seen in Egypt, so I can only imagine how glorious this must have looked.  It’s a hugely impressive structure, even with the roof missing and many of the pillars in bad condition, so it’s mindboggling to imagine this structure covered with the colorful, detailed work of Abydos!  But Ramses II, Seti I’s son another of my favorite builders, finished the hall and, to his undying discredit in my view, had the pillars scrapped and engraved directly with his own images.  Ramses II obviously had great ability with inspirational architecture, but the work of his artists lacks the grace of those of his father’s.  So the Hypostyle Hall here is awe-inspiring, but the imagery isn’t transcendent like that in Abydos.

There are many other features to appreciate here -- other pylon gates, statues, colonnades and shrines, not to mention the mile-and-a-half long, sphinx-lined avenue that leads from Karnak to Luxor temple.  And since we were there just after 7 am, we had the complex mostly to ourselves but for a fox that watched us from a millennia-old walkway through the center of the complex.  However, we had a plane to catch, so we went back to the hotel for breakfast and then headed out for the airport.

It was an uneventful flight from the pharaonic back to Cairo but for an engaging Brazilian couple from Sao Paulo whose company we enjoyed.  And we got a taxi from the airport into town and back to our pensione.   Happily, the traffic was awful at that time and our driver took surface streets rather than the big tunnel to get into Old Cairo, which meant we passed the Al-Azahar, Khan el-Khalili and some familiar medieval landmarks along the way.  Lou and I both had a sense of coming home after our travel in the south of the country; Cairo is so vibrant and lively that it’s hard not to love the place.

Our hotel was warm and welcoming as always, and we spent a while unpacking before we headed out again to do some shopping and find dinner.  As has happened repeatedly here, we fantasized our ideal – a down-at-the-heels vintage place with a comfortably outdated bar that was close to us -- and we found it two blocks away, in this case the Windsor Hotel.  The Barrel Bar here is a former officers’ club that’s been pouring since the British were in Egypt and that survived the arson that burned out much of the area in the 50s.  It’s still pouring, and we had a dry martini (minus vermouth, which they were out of) and a great set of finger food that included hummus, babaganoush, stuffed grape leaves and falafel that was pan-fried rather than deep-.  Then we wandered around the great nightlife of our neighborhood before heading back to the hotel.

December 23 -- Temples at Abydos and Dendera (by Lou)

Built by Seti I and his son, Rameses II over 3000 yrs ago, the Temple of Seti I at Abydos was built over a much earlier temple from predynastic times.  Concerned with re-establishing the traditional gods after Akhenaten established monotheism, Seti I built an exquisite Temple housing chapels for the major gods.  Osiris himself was believed buried here and as a result, Abydos became the center of the major cult that grew up around him.  Egyptians would try to visit here at least once in their lifetime.  The severe exterior is akin to the Memorial Temple of Hatshepsut in the valley of the kings but inside, the dramatic interior columns and wall relief carvings are among the best and richest the ancients produced.  Their detail and color are astounding and rather than attempting to read the mythology, I found myself focused on details of the art, as you'll see in the following photos.

 

The round trip drive alone to Abydos and Dendara from Luxor took over 6 hours and it was an opportunity to see a bit of Egypt bypassed by our various flights.  Stark desert dominated our morning drive and, lush farm fields and trees in groves along the canals, framed the way back.  Farm fields are small, divided among families, short berm walls allow each section to be watered independently.  We saw one man in traditional garb working his rototiller, while another hauled his produce on a donkey cart.  Donkeys, cows, and shepherded goats shared the roads with scooters and motorcycles, putt-putts and cars, vans and busses.  Asking our driver to stop for a coke, he said he'd find a supermarket and by gum he did, at a store that measured all of 300 sq ft called 'super market.'  There are many such stores so named but unaffiliated.  We saw little towns with narrow winding dirt streets, and one urban area with elevated highways.  In between, we saw one large line of connected irrigation pipes on wheels suggesting possible industrial farming but Egypt is ancient and complicated.  Land rights are especially complicated and every now and then the government uses a heavy hand to enforce new decrees, such as when we saw new housing construction bulldozed because it was illegally built on once cultivated farm land.  The colonial era brought its version of foreign land rights to complicate things further.  Meanwhile, dams have stopped the flooding that for eons fertilized the arable land.  Ethiopia is now building a dam that could restrict the Niles flow into Egypt altogether.  Unfortunately, the government seems not to be in a position to be assertive internationally focusing instead on internal issues of the last few troubled years.  Meanwhile the population keeps growing and can only feed itself through imports as arable land is so limited.  The country produces very little for export and relies heavily on tourism.  Safety and security are attended to very well but tourism is down at this time.  But the monuments are eternal and compelling, as we found once again in Dendara.

The outer hypostyle hall of the Temple of Hathor at Dendara, built by the Roman emperor Tiberius, demonstrates how even under Roman rule, Egyptian traditions were kept intact.  This same technique was employed by Alexander the Great to rule after conquest.  The Roman outer hall utilized 24 enormous columns adorned with Hathors head.  The Ptolemaic or Greek inner hypostyle court also features columns with Hathors image.  These more public spaces lead toward a hall of offerings behind which is the sanctuary, reserved for priests, and usually of much more simple design but here, the detail is refined and exquisite throughout.  Particularly exciting is that much of the original color remains as do many more rooms often in ruin elsewhere.  This temple is remarkable for being the most intact including stairways and the roof,  East and west processional staircases to and from the roof are highly decorated and on the roof itself is a chamber with a ceiling zodiac.  The Dendara complex is much more than the Temple of Hathor.  It's extensive outer walls protected other temples, a sacred lake, a sanatorium, a later basilica and other ruins.  The Temple of Hathor however, so complete and intact, allowed a fuller image of all the previously visited Temples we've encountered.

  

December 22 -- Luxor: Balloon and Winter Palace (by Roger)

[We have photos for this post, but our internet connection is so unstable that Blogspot times out before we can upload them.  We're trying!]

Another day, another sunrise.  I’ve seen more sunrises in three weeks in Eqypt than I’ve seen in the last five years combined.  Although it varies from cool to cold here, the people still operate on the patterns of hot weather since it’s apparently hot here for most of the year.  Which means that things start abnormally early (for me).

But I was a trooper and ready to head out the door at 5 am this morning.  Again.  We were met in the hotel lobby, hustled off to line of vans where passengers were mixed and matched, loaded on to boats to cross the river, treated to warm tea and date rolls, and then ferried across the Nile to the west bank again.  For a hot air balloon trip over the pharaonic ruins at dawn.

There were easily a couple hundred riders gathered on the broad stretch of desert our van stopped in, and we got out of our van and watched the various crews inflate the balloons and load the passengers.  It was soon our turn, and suddenly we were in the basket and drifting off into the air silently, except for occasional roars of flame from the gas burner that kept the air in our balloon warm.  What an exhilarating experience!  We floated between the Nile and Valley of the Kings, saw Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple in the distance, and drifted directly over the Medinat Habu, the memorial temple of Ramses III, and the Ramesseum, Ramses II’s memorial temple.  The Captain of our balloon knew what he was doing, and he was careful to rotate the balloon at important sites so all 24 of us could get a good view from all our respective places in the balloon basket.  He also lulled us into thinking we were landing just shy of a monastery before gunning up the heat and lifting us both above and away from the monks.  We eventually noticed a couple of white pick-ups  racing toward us across the desert as well as a bunch of kids on donkeys, and we landed gracefully on the desert almost before we knew it.  It was a fabulous hour.

We were back at the hotel in time for breakfast and spent the day reading, napping and writing since this is, after all, a vacation.  We finally rallied just before sunset and, since our hotel didn’t serve alcohol, set out in search of a martini in Luxor.  The Winter Palace Hotel seemed like a place to start because it’s been on the Luxor tourist scene since its lavish opening in 1907.  But just before we got there, we stumbled on a great bookshop right beside the hotel that had once been a photographer’s studio.  We went in to browse books and look at period postcards and original negative prints of Egyptian ruins that the former owner and photographer had made.  One book talked about the history of 19th century travel in Egypt and made so many references to things we’d seen and done that we bought two copies of it.

Then it was martini time and past, so we tried to look respectable and headed to the Winter Palace.  What a gorgeous place with open Victorian spaces and decor……and an enormous Venetian glass chandelier in the lobby.  One look at us, and the front desk waived the hotel bar minimum with some comment like it clearly not being necessary in our case.  Out we went into the beautiful garden and sat down in the terrace bar for the best martini we’d found in Egypt.

And that was the day.

December 21 -- Luxor: West Bank: Day 2 (by Lou)

[We have photos for this post, but our internet connection is so unstable that Blogspot times out before we can upload them.  We're trying!]

Driving from Luxor's West Bank through the craggy, parched landscape of the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, their tombs scattered through the cliffs, and through the Valley of the Nobles or even the Rameseum on the plain, it all seems laid out rather scatter-shot.  Standing on the huge expanse of the great court of the memorial temple of Hatshepsut, however, I now get it.  With its three levels cut into the side of the mountain which stands high over the temple then dips flanking it like arms, the vista from the massive great court or middle or upper terrace encompasses all the valley from the Rameseum on the left of the Medinat Habu, the memorial temple of Rameses III on the right.  Straight down the middle following the imposing line of processional ramps into the far distance off to the east lies Karnak on the other side of the Nile.  Directly behind the temple on the opposite side of the mountain lies the Valley of the Kings.  Depending on the sun's angle, the limestone cliffs might be a yellow tan, then a pale rose.  The setting is dry and hot, and absolutely gorgeous.  The scale of nearly all of the temples we've seen is impressive but the memorial temple of Hatshepsut is unique.  Its massive geometrical layout looks modern from afar.  Wherever you stand, the vista is very Riefenstahl.  Up close, most of the decorations of Hatshepsut or any of the hieroglyphs of her name were destroyed by her step son-successor.  Many wonderful fragments remain however, my favorite showing Somali landscapes and ships with uniformed sailors.

The Tomb of Nefertari was important to us as it was the closest we would come to Rameses II tomb, and Rameses II was the ruler we chose to follow having the longest rein and being a most prolific builder.  Alas, his tomb was heavily damaged by a freak flash flood and was closed for restoration.  By a twist of fate, the tomb of his wife Nefertari was just recently opened after years of restoration.  Considered the finest and most colorful tomb, and demanding the highest price of admission until very recently, we took advantage of the dramatic drop in fee and descended  down the tunnel, its deep blue ceiling holding a myriad of stars.  These were the finest painted chambers we'd seen yet, every inch of wall and ceiling decorated if not with the gods or Nefertari herself, then with script from the Book of the Dead.  No photos are allowed in any of the tombs, especially here where the time limit for viewing was 10 minutes.  The guards face lit up when he saw me from yesterday's Tut tomb where he encouraged my taking a picture in a discreet corner for a wee tip.  Seeing cash coming his way, he offered me a chance to snap a few shots in this tomb of tombs but alas, I was camera-less.  His face turned sad, but then he lit up again: you stay 20 minutes!

The Valley of the Workers was high on my list as I knew so little of ancient daily proletariat life so to speak and besides, this valley lead to the small but beautiful Temple of Hathor, an important god to Nefertari.  Seventy mud brick homes have been revealed in this valley with roadways to the worksites.  They were tightly clustered together by a warren of walkways, below cliffs holding many of their own burial chambers which we stuffed ourselves into in order to explore.  Much smaller than the tombs in which they plied their crafts for a living, these tombs were highly decorated but in a less formal way.  Their paintings focused less on the images of the gods and rituals but more on daily family life.  The colors employed were more of earth tones than the richer golds and blues of the royal tombs but they held a sweetness and more colloquial character that was endearing.  This workforce was made up of skilled artists and craftsmen, whose sons carried on in their fathers footsteps.  The work week was 10 days on and two off.  The entire west bank was reserved as a necropolis, so there were no towns or villages allowed, just this one small community.  On the way to work they passed a sweet little temple dedicated to Hathor, goddess similar to Athena and Maat, Goddess of Truth.

"Rameseum" was the name given by the scholar who deciphered hieroglyphs.  Rameses II built this massive temple to preserve his memory and in spite of being in ruin, by golly, it works.  Many huge reliefs of his exploits remain, but it's the massive sculptures that make his temple unique.  Alas, they fell during an earthquake, the ruins inspiration for Shelley to write his famous poem Ozymandias.

The Howard Carter House was our last stop in the hot, dry valley before heading back to the bustle and lushness of east Nile bank Luxor.  Consisting of a perfect rectangle of English colonial oasis a la 1900 with a back yard essentially full of New Kingdom treasure tombs waiting to be discovered, this compound served as the archaeologist's home at the time of his discovery of the treasure-loaded King Tut tomb.  Alas, the treasures within the Carter home don't quite measure up to Tut's, but the overall effect of the home, with its vintage furnishings and photography studio does evoke that freewheeling era.  I'm afraid I can't say it enough: what a great day!

December 20 -- Luxor: West Bank: Day 1 (by Roger)

[We have photos for this post, but our internet connection is so unstable that Blogspot times out before we can upload them.  We're trying!]

We woke up at 4:45 am to a text from the States, but we had to be up at 5 am anyway for our expulsion from our Garden of Eden.  It was our last day as passengers on the SS Sudan, and we were to spend it on the west bank of the Nile visiting tombs and temples.

The desert is always an environment of extremes, but the contrasts of hot and cold were especially apparent this morning.  We were bundled up in everything we had for our 6:30 am motorboat across the Nile from our boat to the landing on the west bank.  There, our guide brought up a car and we headed though the formalities of getting into the Valley of the Kings.

The west bank is more complicated than I realized.  There’s a Valley of the Kings with the pharoahs’ tombs; a Valley of the Queens for tombs of the queens of the pharaohs and their children; a Valley of the Nobles for other court members; a good number of temples; and even the Deir al-Medina, a tomb-workers’ village.  Apparently, no one really lived on the west bank except the priests who served in the temples and the workers involved in building tombs and temples for the pharaohs.

Tomb-building was big for the pharaohs.  In fact, one of their principle occupations was to prepare a tomb to ensure a comfortable afterlife, so the New Kingdom pharaohs began preparing their tombs as soon as they assumed power and had hugely ornate tombs excavated.  Unlike the Old Kingdom tombs we saw in Aswan, which served as temples as well as tombs, these here in Luxor were only for burial, and the pharaohs’ goal was to create a construction that could be hidden but still guarantee their comfort in the afterlife.  The pyramids of the Old Kingdom (Saqqara, Giza) drew too much attention, so the New Kingdom rulers chose the base of a mountain shaped like a pyramid to tunnel tombs into, using the excavated material to cover the tombs and camouflage them.

We visited so many sites today that I’m just putting them as a list.  I’ve lifted all the tomb photos from the internet since photography is forbidden inside, though that didn’t stop Lou and his flow of Egyptian pounds from getting a few.

Valley of the Kings
Rameses IV – The first tomb we looked at.  At 3000 years old and damaged, it’s still a beautiful tomb with walls covered in text from various sacred texts; it apparently has the only full text of the Book of Nut, who is stretched across the ceiling of the main tomb chamber.  There’s yellow and blue everywhere, but the ceilings are especially affective with their rows of sketched stars.

Rameses IX – Gorgeous tomb with long corridors and pillars covered with hieroglyphs; there’s a reason this is one of the most popular to see.  We both especially liked the ceiling of the main chamber, which has Nut stretched across it.  The sun makes its daylight trip outside her but goes into her body at sunset for her to give birth to the next sunrise.  The spirit of the pharaoh goes with the sun and has duties to do each hour of the night, hence the Book of Nut.  This tomb is covered with the texts of several sacred books.  And I liked the two priests decorating columns as we entered – they each wear leopard skin and have a shock of hair on the side.  This is one of the nicest tombs.

Tomb of Tutankhamen – So it’s not a dog, but Tut’s tomb isn’t anywhere as wonderful as its contents were.  Tut only reigned for 10-11 years and died young, so he didn’t get much done on his tomb.  A guide told us his successor had rather hastily finished it.  Tut’s tomb is right beside that of Rameses VI, and as workers on the latter dumped the debris from that excavation, they covered the entrance to Tut’s, which kept it hidden hidden over the millennia.  Tut’s mummy is still here as is one of the heavy gold masks.

Rameses V and VI – Since building was expensive, long and complicated, some pharaohs simply took advantage of their predecessors’ work.  Rameses VI was one of these, taking over Rameses V’s tomb and extending it for himself.  As pharaohs had a lot of things to in the afterlife could end up with an unhappy one if they made a mistake, their tombs are covered in the texts of their sacred books which describe what to do when.  The text-orientation is especially obvious in yellow and blue riot of the tomb of Ramese VI.  Like several of the others we saw, it’s beautiful.

The Tomb of Tausert and Sethnakht – This is another appropriated tomb with a complicated story behind it.  First, Seti II died.  Then his successor died and Seti II’s wife, Tausert, became pharaoh (one of the rare female pharaohs).  She started a tomb for her and her husband in the Valley of Kings (no Valley of the Queens for her!), but she died a couple of years later.  Her successor, Sethnakht, appropriated her work, chiseled away many of her cartouches, and added a chamber to it for himself.  However, he left her chamber and, in classic (s)he who laughs last fashion, the gorgeous winged Ra emerging at daybreak in her chamber is the most striking work in the tomb. [ADD PICTURE]

This was a lot of tomb-crawling for a morning, and we were ready for break as we headed out of the Valley of the Kings.  We paused at the visitor center to watch some archival footage of Howard Carter’s team removing some of the items from Tut’s tomb that had been donated by the MET….and then discovered that we’d only begun our morning’s tour.

Valley or the Queens (and children)
Our next stop was the Valley of the Queens.  The star stop here is Nefertari’s tomb, but with that cost so high, did three other stops.

Tomb of Amunherkhepshef – Some of the children of pharaohs had their own tombs, too, but since they never assumed the position of pharaoh, they were entombed in this valley.  Amunherkhepshef was a teenaged son of Ramses III, and I found his tomb to be poignant.  In it, we see clear reliefs of his father Ramses III holding his son’s hand and introducing the boy to different gods.  A couple from Shanghai who were with us, however, thought it a good example of early networking. [ADD PICTURE of Ram and kid]

Tomb of Titi – This is a small tomb whose reliefs are damaged.  It’s not clear who she was married to, but some think she was the wife of Ramses III and mother of Amunherkhepshef and Khaemwaset.

Tomb of Khaemwaset – Khaemwaset was another young son of Ramses III.  These reliefs were in great condition and similar in subject to those in Amunherkhepshef’s tomb.  As we climbed up out of the tomb through its various corridors and chambers, the blue ceilings and their painted stars were striking.

For a day that had started out flat-out cold, we were losing layers of clothing fast as the heat built in this dry, desolate area.  And white.  The landscape was a glaring white that reflected the sun and made it even hotter.

Tombs of the Nobles
If you wanted a tomb for the afterlife but weren’t in the pharaoh’s family, you’d build yours in this area.  The “nobles” of the title were courtiers or, more frequently, civil servants who served the pharaoh.  These tombs are especially interesting because they don’t dwell so much on religious text but show us more of the daily life of people.

Tomb of Ramose – Although damaged quite a bit, Ramose’s tomb is fascinating because he served as governor during a revolutionary time and the art of his tomb reflects the revolution.  He began his term under Amenhotep III, and much of Ramose’s tomb is done in the standard, New Kingdom, Luxor style of idealization.  However, Ramose also served as governor under the next pharaoh, Akhenaton, who tried to move Egypt to worship only the sun god, Ra.  Of course Akhenaton failed, but the elongated figures and emphasis on the rays of the sun in parts of Ramose’s tomb point to his service in that era.

Tomb of Userhet – Userhet’s tomb has lots of scenes from daily life like hunting and getting a haircut in paintings that are in a great condition of preservation.  It was a pleasure to finally see here what normal people did in ancient Egypt.  Userhet was a scribe for Amenhotep II, which means this was life in 1400 BC.

Tomb of Khaemet – This guy is called a scribe, but the reliefs in his tomb imply something like chief accountant.  There are charming scenes from daily life here, accompanied by scribes writing it all down.  The scribes, too, record a funeral procession since verifying it in writing was important.

We were already fairly worn out by the time we got to the Valley of the Queens, so we were truly tired by this point.  Then came the Temple of Ramses III (aka. Medinat Habu), which was rejuvenating in several ways.  For one, it’s hard to be puny in the presence of such magnificent architecture and art.  This Ramses, like his predecessor Ramses II, knew how to commission architecture that inspired.  Not only was the scale incredible, but the message in the images made you want to follow him as a leader.  These New Kingdom rulers knew how to wield soft power.  And in addition to the effect of the place on us, we could finally take pictures again, which pulled us out of the passivity of being only a viewer and let us interact with the great environment more.

There were many highlights here.  There were the images we’d seen before of the king offering to slay his captives as an offering to Amun-Ra, and the range of the captives based on their dress was surprising.  We also noticed an overt ferocity that hadn’t been obvious in some of the other Ramses temples we’d seen.  One gruesome relief had the hands of enemies being piled and tabulated for the pharaoh, and an even more gruesome one had the enemies’ penises being heaped and counted.  Battle scenes showed chaos under the pharaoh’s onslaught, and lines of captives marched with either wrists or elbows tied together.  All of this in humble service to the gods of Egypt.  And oddly affective, in all honesty.

By the time we’d finished our visit to this giant complex, we were genuinely exhausted, yet one more west bank site remained.  Fortunately, you could get a good look at the Colossi of Memnon from the parking lot, though we rallied enough to get out of the car to take a photo.  These two giant statues, in a state of ruin, are of Amenhotep III, although Greeks and Romans thought they were of an African king named Memnon.  The name doesn’t matter; they were stately and inspiring sitting on their west bank plain.

The rest of our day was tourism chores.  We were greeted with a final round of hibiscus tea upon our return to the ship, and moist towels to clean off with.  Then we said goodbye to our cruise buddies and were shuttled off to our new hotel.  Our new hotel, the Nefertiti, was a step down from the high life we’d been living, but the people were great.  We had a big lunch and then made tour arrangements for the rest of our time here in Luxor.  And we slept like mummies in Amonhotep II's deep, dark tomb.

December 19 -- Esna Lock, Luxor: Karnak and Luxor Temple (by Lou)

[We have photos for this post, but our internet connection is so unstable that Blogspot times out before we can upload them.  We're trying!]

Barely underway from Esna, the Sudan slowed to a near halt as it entered a lock in anticipation of being lowered 21 feet to continue on our way.  Seeing opportunity, a fisherman passed us rowing his dory, making him first into the lock.  We stood on the bow and watched the crew toss and secure lines while fishermen waved from quayside.  Down and out the other end we went once the lock gate opened and resuming our glide down the river, we watched fishing boats, sailboats, villages and towns slip gracefully by for long lazy hours.  Late afternoon on the sundeck, we noted an end to the string of sleepy villages and verdant palm shored islands.  With a population of 250,000, Luxor (ancient Thebes) loomed, a metropolis that has grown up around the mammoth temple complexes of Karnak and Luxor.  Leaving the boat for the corniche, I was afraid that the hustle-bustle of the city would diminish the Temple experience but that fear was quickly put to rest.  If anything was going to feel overwhelming, it was these temple complexes.  We were both awestruck.

Books on Karnak feature photos of the huge columns in the temple of Amun Ra, whose enormous hypostyle hall contains 134 colossal columns carved and decorated with remnants of original paint in the image of papyrus.  It is reached by walking down an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, the processional approach to the unfinished yet massive first pylon and that causes me to pause because of two points: everything is on a massive scale, and everything has been built and rebuilt over 1500 years.  We see original mud brick ramps for the assembly of massive walls.  We see obelisks, standing, fallen, and one on original blocks waiting to be moved.  We see temples in their original form, or taken apart and rebuilt or sacked and left in ruin.  The further in we go, the older the temples are and on the way we see a ceremonial sacred lake.  Reaching the quiet of the easternmost Temple of Rameses II gives us a chance to ponder in the ancient Middle Kingdom temple while looking at the section made into a crude Christian chapel, representing an amazing chunk of history.  Whether in very good condition or in ruin, whether original or rebuilt, this two-kilometer-square complex is jaw-dropping and way too big to absorb in one brief tour, which brings up another point; we had a tour guide.  Voyageurs du Monde provided us with Eid, an English-speaking tour guide.  Earlier excursions leading up to Luxor made it clear that for all his knowledge, his tour style was something of a forced march, so we went our own way to photograph in peace during those forays, reading the history while cruising.  But thinking tactically here, we stuck to him like glue, gleaning and photographing what we could while knowing in advance, we'd come back.  Dare say, it was a challenge what with the magnificence before us.  We continued into the evening past sunset but most of the monuments were lit, and as individual columns were for the most part monumental, they too were individually lit.  In the light of day or the black of night, this place is awe inspiring.  The worst thing about it is trying to describe it without using words like "awesome," "massive," and "colossal," but everything about Karnak is beyond measure.

December 18 -- Kom Ombo and Edfu Temples (by Roger)

December 17 -- SS. Sudan (by Lou) and Philae Temple (by Roger)

While our travel focus is on ancient civilization and we've done so on the cheap so to speak, the next few days will continue that search in the historic grand tour manor.  We prepared to embark for the SS Sudan but first, a wee bit of breakfast seemed in order while still ensconced at the Old Cataract.  Alas, there was nothing wee about the breakfast buffet.  According to the maitre'd, we were standing in the room he called 'starters' while the other room held 'breakfast'.  One chap's job was to squeeze the five juices offered, another was to create omelettes or crapes.  Others continually refreshed 18 different baskets of bread, 14 different bowls of fresh fruit.  Tiered displays of yogurts, cheeses, olives, pickles and greens for mezze plates competed with bowl after bowl of Egyptian goodies such as Oriental Fateer, Poulady Salad, Belehlah, Shakskoka, and our favorite, Om Ali were further accompanied by bowls of cooked beans or bean sprouts in brine, dried plums and apricots, halva, on and on, more than I can remember.  Honeys, jams, and preserves were prepared in house and even something as simple as butter was offered in the form of florets.  The abundance was one thing but what really made the difference was the superb quality and depth of taste.  Of all the luxurious features the grand Old Cataract Hotel had to offer, it was the food that made it worth the 5 stars it proclaims.  Roger then headed off to the gym for a workout where he met a member of the Aga Khan family whose shrine is visible from the Cataract on the western shore of the Nile.  Retreating to the hotels library, he settled into a chesterfield settee under a giant Venetian chandelier to read our vintage guide bleu tour book and write.  After weeks of erratic showers, I was determined to partake of a good soak in our rooms marble bathtub, or was it a lap pool so big it was.  Refreshed and ready to meet a staff member from Voyageurs du Monde , we were taken to the quay along the corniche, stepped onto the gangway and were transported once again to a past century.  On the broad deck of the SS Sudan we were greeted  by uniformed staff offering warmed towels and chilled hibiscus tea, before a tour of the ship and settling into our stateroom on the upper deck.  Each of the cabins are named after historic figures in Egyptian history.  Ours is Herodotus.

Built in 1886 for King Fouad, the 70-metre-long SS Sudan is a doubleside paddlewheel steam ship.  She has 23 staterooms, 2 suites, a main salon with bar, library, piano, comfy leather club chairs and lots of windows to watch the Nile from.  Public rooms and state rooms are clad in dark wood raised panels; cabin exteriors and louvered doors in teak.  Brightwork abounds, polished and shining.  All the furnishings antique, right down to the wall-mounted crank telephones.  French cuisine is served in the dining salon.  An espresso bar is centered on the top deck surrounded by enough chaises and wicker deck chairs to seat a small army but there are just six of us passengers, outnumbered three-fold by staff and crew.  We've a tour guide to the monuments along our route.  We've a steward, Said, who bends over backwards to oblige, going out of his way by showing us the engine room for starters.  The dining room staff amid-deck, engineers below deck, wait staff on top deck, and captain in his pilot house are all friendly and welcoming.  Oh, me oui, let's not forget chef whom we met outside the galley standing tall under his toque.  He produced our lovely steak au poire.  Ah, such is roughing it in the desert.

Like so much of this trip, being aboard the Sudan is a dream come true, stuff only realized through books or movies.  Agatha Christie wrote Death on the Nile and both Old Cataract Hotel and SS Sudan were featured in the 1978 movie of the same name.  Amidship on the lower deck, an opening the size of a garage door exposes the engine, propulsion pistons shining with freshly applied oil turn slow and precise.  Windows into the paddlewheel house allow a view of the churning wheels that allow us to gently glide along the Nile.  There is virtually no vibration; she literally glides along.  It's heavenly.  While we journey from upper Egypt in our chaise on the upper deck, we're simultaneously transported to another time.  Roger just recorded on his iPhone a sound video of the engine room at work.  Imagine, here we are on a 19th century means of transport using 21st century technology.  Miracles abound!  (by Lou)

After lunch, we joined the other two English-speaking people from our boat and headed for a visit to the temple at Philae.  A car took us to a boat ramp while our guide gave us a painfully detailed, dynasty-based summary of Egyptian history, and then we got onto a motor launch to go over to the island.

The temple complex at Philae is impressive from the water with its huge pylons jutting up from the grasses of the island, and it’s no less impressive once you land and walk into it.  For all its imposing mass, this temple is very late; in fact, the overwhelming bulk of it is after the Egyptian pharaonic era.  This big complex is largely from the Ptolemaic, or Greek period, as they call it here.  I learned the term Hellenistic for the time.  It’s the years after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt as well as the better part of the known Western world and thus set off the exchange of ideas across the vast space.  For Egypt, that meant that the Hellenistic Greek Ptolemies became the rulers of Egypt.

Both of the things I especially like about that period are obvious at Philae.  First, orthodoxy pretty much broke down and religion fragmented into a collection of cults.  Suddenly Isis, a goddess who’d been around since the Old Kingdom, became tremendously popular, and her cult spread throughout the Alexandrian world.  The big temple here at Philae is dedicated to her.  Another interesting element of the times is the syncretism that accompanied the exchange of ideas that Alexander facilitated.  Isis, Egyptian god of love, merged with Aphrodite and Ra with Zeus, and the deities also picked up local characteristics.  Beyond that, there was also significant cultural syncretism.  The Ptolemies were Greek and spoke Greek, but they ruled an Egyptian population.  One of their strategies for holding power was to adapt to the local culture, so in places like Philae, Ptolemaic kings are portrayed as pharaohs, surrounded by hieroglyphics that include their own cartouches; they’re shown honoring Egyptian gods, too.   You’d hardly think that the pharaohs making offerings to Isis throughout this temple were Greek.
I think this mixing of cultures is fascinating.

Even two millennia after the Old Kingdom temples we saw on the west bank here, the structure of the main complex at Philae resembles that of those temples.  The Ptolemies added the giant pylon gateways to the design, but there’s still an impressive, columned hall at the front of the actual temple that leads to a series of diminishing chambers into the main shrine.  And at Philae, in addition to the Hellenistic shrine, there’s a fun temple from the era that’s dedicated to Hathor.  This playful structure includes carvings of figures playing a variety of musical instruments like the tambor and harp, one of which has the god Bes playing it.  The chapel was first erected by one of the Ptolemies but was then added to by the rulers who succeeded the Greeks, the Romans.

After the Greeks, the Romans did considerable work at Philae, one of which is the attractive Kiosk of Trajan.  This is a delicate, pillared little structure sometimes referred to as Pharoah’s Bed although the pharaohs had been gone for centuries when the Romans built it.

The last people to leave their mark on Philae were Christians.  Egypt was one of the earliest churches established, which makes the Egyptian Coptic church one of the oldest.  In fact, the Coptic language is the one that’s closest to the ancient Egyptian.  During the latter Roman Empire, Christians began converting the Hellenistic shrines to churches, and in the 4th century, Christian Roman emperors began the repression of pagan rites as part of their internal power struggles in Rome and Constantinople.  In Egypt, one result of the political war was that Christians started trying to cleanse their churches by defacing the Hellenic imagery that adorned the shrines cum churches.  The clear majority of the carvings we saw at Philae had been defaced, but even this deliberate repression couldn’t remove all the polytheistic exuberance there.

Philae was a great visit and a great introduction to the churn of latter Egyptian history.  And we returned to our boat for a fine French dinner.  (by Roger)

December 16 -- Aswan: The Cataract Hotel (by Lou)

 Started our morning by missing the early plane back to Aswan, but the buoyant EgyptAir chap got us on the next plane and by noon we found ourselves walking through the front door of the Old Cataract Hotel followed by a coterie of uniformed porters.  Wait staff offered refreshing chilled hibiscus tea in one of the Victorian stencil-decorated anterooms off of the main lobby, while other staff checked us in.   Whisked to the lift and directed to our enormous room with balcony, we freshened up in the multi-chambered marble washroom ( I am SO going to luxuriate in that enormous tub) before taking to the terrace restaurant for lunch a la Egyptien.  High above the First Cataract of the Nile, we dined on babaganoush salad followed by vegetable curry in coconut milk, washed down by a Stella.........okay two Stellas but hey, it's Egyptian!  Built in 1898, the Old Cataract is the grand dame of the Nile, a last vestige of the traditional grand tour.  Especially through the 18th & 19th centuries, a gentleman's education wasn't complete without experiencing the world through travel.  Judging from the extensive graffiti carved on and around the colossi of Rameses II from the time of its rediscovery, buried in the desert sands for 1000 years, Egypt's amazing temples were a big draw.  (See Amelia B Edwards 1891: A Thousand Miles Up The Nile, for a most engaging picture of life on that portion of the grand tour.  Her book and others on Egypt are with us and are well worth their weight in our backpacks for their character and insight.)

I've alluded in earlier blog entries to Rogers thoughtful planning, and that's where the connection to the old grand tour comes in.  Egypt is a once in a lifetime trip for me, and I can't imagine its true essence emerging from racing all over the countryside.  Roger's approach has been to link the significant but disparate parts through the expediency of air travel and linger at each stop to learn and absorb, very similar to previous century grand tour travel.  To further the grand tour effect, we'll use the venerable Old Cataract Hotel as a debarking point to the next phase of our travels, cruising the Nile from the Temple of Philae here in Aswan to the Temple of Karnak in Luxor, aboard the 19th C paddlewheel steamer SS Sudan.  (See 1978 film: Death on the Nile, where both hotel and ship are featured).

Entr'acte

It's been one hell of a trip so far to this, the midway point in our journey.  Cairo's Islamic architecture and iconic Egyptian Museum; Aswan's Tombs of the Nobles and the swirled granite of the cataracts; Abu Simbel's Colossi and Nubian culture just to name a few highlights.  The Egyptian people have been gracious and engaging.  We've taken a zillion photo's and have a million more images in our heads we wish we had taken like the tractor trailer driver and his friend eating breakfast beside his truck and heartily inviting us to join them.  Our delight when our host shared all his Nubian music with us, 2 memory sticks worth!  Stunning sunlight that makes us rethink anew everything we'd just seen and, dazzling sunsets over the desert.  Surprises and delights galore.

Our Ipads and phone cameras, laptop and handheld cameras make great recording tools but alas, they are helpless against spotty wireless or for that matter, limited opportunities for recharging. Hence the haphazard blog entries, and it may get worse before it gets better what with our coming cruise down the Nile.  We'll do the best we can.  Meanwhile, below are an odd selection of photo's which might amuse.

  

December 15 -- Abu Simbel: Temple of Nefertiti (by Roger)

Another relaxing day in our little Abu Simbel.  It was much easier to get up at 5 am today than yesterday, though I still can’t get used to the cold and the wind.  We huddled around a little wood table in the dark dining area for 20 minutes, our hands cupped around our steamy Nescafe, before we set out for the temple complex again.  This time we went on foot since it’s just a 25-minute walk.

The aim was to get there at sunrise to see Ra appear over the Nile (now Lake Nasser) and illuminate the front of Ramses’ temple like we did the day before, but we had lingered a bit much over the warm caffeine and Ra was already there when we arrived.  But just barely.  And anyway, it was just Ra and us at the whole site, which was simply awe-inspiring.

It doesn’t seem to matter how many times we see the front of the Ramses temple, each time is like the first because of its huge scale.  So again, we lingered in front of the four Ramses figures, heads craned back looking at the bottom of the pharaoh’s beard.  And we wandered around yet again in the mighty first chamber of the temple, lined with statues of the pharaoh and inscriptions of his military victories and his offerings to gods.

Then we walked over to our real destination of the morning, the Temple of Nefertiti (or Hathor).  The scale of this temple is much smaller than that of the Rameses temple, and it has a different focus.  While the Great Temple is quite military, with Ramses killing captives before Ra and ultimately being himself portrayed as a god, we see much more of his queen Nefertiti here, from the figures in the front of the temple to the bas reliefs inside.  The temple is dedicated to Hathor, whose figure fronts the square columns in the first chamber.  Goddess of love, fecundity, motherhood and beauty, Hathor calls for smaller-scaled worship, and there is an intimacy in this temple that contrasts with the projection of power that feels to be the purpose of the Ramses temple.  Ramses is Ra in his temple, but Nefertiti is Hathor in hers.  And although the Nefertiti/Hathor temple is smaller than the Great Temple, it’s interesting that Nefertiti is not the typical diminutive pharaoh’s queen here – on the front of the temple, she stands equal to the pharaoh himself rather than half his height.  In this temple, family, love, art and beauty stand equal to might.

By the time we finally pulled ourselves away from this temple, the site was being overrun with buses of tourists, mostly from China, and we had to share our wonder.  The Chinese are clearly the most common tourists we’re seeing here in Egypt, but we don’t have much occasion to talk with them since language is a problem.  And we don’t see Chinese independent travelers, either; they stay with their groups.  But it’s gratifying to see that at least some people are coming here.  Egypt seems very under-visited to us.

Leaving the temple, we ran into a young woman from Houston traveling on her own, and we talked with her a bit about her experiences here and in Israel and Jordan.  Maggie was a strikingly blonde American woman, but she said she’d had no problems whatsoever traveling through the area, which I was glad to hear.  She eventually headed off to her train to Cairo, and we headed back to the hotel.

After the visit to the temple, our big tasks were staying warm and eating Nubian cuisine.  We relaxed, read, wrote, ate, took a walk and shivered in various comfortable spaces in our hotel in preparation for the next day’s return to Aswan.