After our visit to Bosnia, we left for the next leg of our journey to Egypt. We had an early start in Sarajevo (4:00 am) to get our early flight to Vienna. Then it was a layover for 3 hours before our flight to Cairo. Looking out the window as we approached Cairo we were amazed at the size of the city. It stretched as far as we could see and it looked to be all relatively new high rise buildings. The greater Cairo/Giza area has boomed and is now home for some 24 million people.
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| Cairo from the air |
Our travels in Egypt were all provided by a single company (Audley Travel) and we were met at the airport by one of their representatives, Ibrahim, who guided us through the process of getting the visa and entering the country (not that it would have been very difficult to do that by ourselves). We were then driven into the city and our hotel, the Steigenburger, near Tahrir Square. The traffic was pretty heavy, as was the use of the horn, and lane discipline didn’t seem to exist but, despite everything, it all kept moving.
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| Khan El-Khalili Market |
After a brief 15 minute clean up in the hotel room we were off on our first tour of the city, to the Khan El-Khalili Market. This Souk is a hodgepodge of narrow lanes and alleys where you can find all manner of goods. It was very busy, with both locals and tourists. Of course, the tourists were being pestered to buy from the many tourist shops selling all manner of cheap Egyptian tchotchkes. We were definitely in the land of the negotiated sale. If they ask X for something, offer them 30% of X and then you can settle for 50% of X. We do not need anything so the trick there is not to look them in the eye and just keep walking.
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| Mosque - Khan El-Khalili Market |
We wandered around following our guide, Tarek Sarhan. He seemed to know where he was going and he took us to various points to see shops, mosques, old city gates and the like.
Our tour also included a meal, so we were ushered into a restaurant, the Khan El-Khalili Restaurant for a multi-course meal that was way too much for us - bread and dips for a starter, lentil soup, meats, and a sweet cake for dessert.
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| Bread delivery Khan El-Khalili |
Moving on through the crowd we were passed by an intrepid and skilled bicyclist riding with trays of bread on his head through the busy streets. What skill.
After the tour, we were relieved to get back to our hotel for a well earned rest on what had been a very long day.
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| The Nile and Zamalek Island |
The next morning I was up early to explore the area around the hotel. I walked around Tahrir Square and over the Kasr El Nile bridge, allegedly the oldest bridge in Africa, to Zamalek, the island in the middle of the Nile. It was a beautiful day but before 8:00 am it was already getting hot.
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| Saad Zaghloul Statue |
At the end of the bridge on Zamalek island, is the statue of Saad Zaghloul. Saad was a leader of the movement for Egyptian independence from the British after World War I.
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| The Grand Egyptian Museum |
After breakfast, we were off to visit the pyramids in Giza and the new Grand Egyptian Museum. We had our same guide as the night before, Tarek. It was a 20-30 minute drive out to Giza and the museum. We entered the museum first. Never mind the contents of the museum, the museum building is quite wonderful. The huge main entrance hall has a translucent roof and facade and inside in the middle sits a huge statue of Ramesses II. You then go up a long escalator to the top of the exhibition halls and then work your way down to the entrance hall again. From the top level to the bottom it is arranged in three tiers - Society, Kingship and Beliefs. There is also a whole separate section that contains the Tutankhamen collection.
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| Statue of Ramesses II, Grand Museum of Egypt |
The museum contains over 100,000 artifacts so it is impossible to see it all in half a day. Our guide did a great job of guiding us through the different galleries showing us certain things and skipping others so that we got a good overall idea of Egyptian history whilst getting out of the museum in the time available to us. You could spend a week in the museum and still struggle to take it all in.
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| Tutankhamen’s Sarcophagus |
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| Tutankhamen’s Face Mask |
Of course the most interesting thing in the museum was the section showing the items from Tutankhamen’s tomb. Such a magnificent group of items. Some 4 or 5 golden boxes or crates that sit inside each other like Matrushka Dolls. Then the sarcophagi, so beautifully decorated with gold and jewels. The most spectacular piece was the golden face mask. It was so popular that you had to get in line to spend a minute in front of it.
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| Sun Boat, Grand Cairo Museum |
We left the main museum and then went to a separate building where there is an exhibit of a boat, a Sun Boat, that was found buried next to the great pyramid. It is around 140 ft long and it was believed to have been buried as a vessel to carry the soul of the Pharaoh through the afterlife. An impressive piece of wooden construction and remarkably well preserved.
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| Cheop’s Pyramid, Giza |
We next drove over to the nearby site of the pyramids. They are so immense and how they were constructed so long ago is hard to imagine. What an amazing culture they had to be able to perform such tasks. It is not just the fact that so many large blocks of stone were moved around and placed with such precision, but the associated organization of many thousands of workers. Each of these workers needed housing and feeding so that they could carry out their labour.
I had visited the site in 1973 and it was much different then. Much quieter, particularly just after the Yom Kippur War with Israel, and there was much less control in place. I remember climbing to the top of the smaller of the three pyramids. That is certainly not allowed anymore?
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| The Sphinx |
From the pyramids we went to look at the Sphinx. This site was quite busy and crowded. We quickly walked around taking pictures as it was getting near the end of the day.
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| The Pyramids at Giza |
In the evening we walked a short way from the hotel to a nice rooftop restaurant, Majeez. Relatively fancy but not too expensive and quite good.
The next morning we were up at 4:30 for our 5:00 am ride to the airport where we caught our flight to Aswan and on to Abu Simbel. It is hard work being a tourist.
The flight to Aswan took about 1.5 hours and it was completely full. We stayed on the plane while most passengers got off and a few more got on, then we were off to Abu Simbel, a half an hour away to the south.
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| The main temple at Abu Simbel |
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| Interior carvings at Abu Simbel main temple |
The second and slightly smaller temple at Abu Simbel shows 6 statues of Rameses II and his wife Nefetari. These statues are a mere 30 ft tall. The interior rooms are similar to the main temple with columns and carvings on the walls.
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| The second temple at Abu Simbel |
This temple was famously moved from its original location to escape being submerged by the rising waters of Lake Nasser after the High Dam at Aswan was built. That feat took place in the 1960’s and was a triumph of engineering sponsored by UNESCO. A new hill was built above the old site and the temple and its statues were cut into blocks and moved one by one to the new site.
It was a relatively short trip of a couple of hours at Abu Simbel and we were then back to the airport for the flight back to Aswan.
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| The Nile at Aswan, from Elephantine Island |
In Aswan we were picked up for the transfer to our hotel, the Movenpick. The Movenpick is a large hotel on an island in the Nile, Elephantine Island. The hotel has two parts and old one and a new one. The new one is really nice. We were in the old one where the plumbing was a bit shaky.
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| Philae Temple from the Nile |
Somehow we now had a lot of free time. We did not have any planned activity until 5:00 pm the next day so we decided to visit another site just south of the first Aswan Dam, the Temple of Philae. This required a driver to take us to the dock for the Philae boats and then a boat to take us out to the temple. This was all quite easy and relatively cheap - the driver waited at the boat dock for us to return and the boat waited in Philae to take us back to the car.
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| Philae Temple |
The Temple of Philae is situated on an island between the old Aswan Dam (the British Dam) and the Aswan High Dam (the Russian Dam) and it is another site where the temple has been moved up to higher ground. After construction of the first Aswan Dam in 1902, the Temple of Philae was partially submerged, in the 1970’s UNESCO moved the temple to a new higher location for its preservation. Another major engineering project.
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| The Colonade at Philae |
The Temple of Philae is dedicated to Egypt’s most important goddess - Isis. It has some impressive colonnades leading up to huge pylons (solid tower like structures). All the walls and the columns are covered in carvings. These structures date from around 280 BC, in the reign of Ptolemy II and the Roman Emperor Diocletian.
On our way back into Aswan, we decided to stop off at the Nubian Museum. This is a museum dedicated to the history of the Nubian people that inhabit southern Egypt and northern Sudan and who once were quite a powerful civilization, even ruling over Egypt for part of its history. The Nubian people, slightly darker skinned than their Egyptian neighbors, were significantly affected by the creation of the Aswan High Dam and Lake Nasser. Many of their villages were submerged and they were relocated to areas adjacent to the Lake.
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| Felucca on Nile from Elephantine Island, Aswan |
We walked back on what was a very hot afternoon to our hotel where we found respite from the heat in the air conditioned comfort of our room.
In the late afternoon we had a tour of the old part of Aswan and its market. Our guide Mohammed Arabi was a pleasant old guy and he was quite the botanist and naturalist. He loved to point out to us the various plants and birds. His business card identified him as “the bird man of Aswan”.
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| Aswan Market |
In the market we were taken by some seedy looking fish stalls, some sad looking livestock stalls with chickens, geese, pigeons and rabbits all awaiting their demise and some more agreeable vegetable and fruit stalls. It wasn’t the most inspiring tour but at least we got a taste of present day Aswan.
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| Aswan Market |
The next morning, after breakfast, we took a walk around the hotel grounds on Elephantine Island. They had a quite beautiful garden with lawns, trees and flowers and even an extensive vegetable garden. Our Nile Cruise boat was ready for boarding so we checked out of the hotel and left Elephantine Island for the mainland. We then had a short drive up the quay to our boat - the Soleil. The Soleil was a nice looking boat, a bit smarter than most of the boats on the river. We had a nice room with a full length window looking out on the river. It appears the boats are designed to give all cabins a view of the river.
We had lunch on the boat and I had the pigeon - they eat a lot of pigeon in Egypt. It was a bit tough - not a favorite. Then quite unexpectedly we were approached by someone who was looking for us. We were not aware of it but we had another tour and he was our tour guide. The tour was to Philae Temple so we got to see the temple a second time, this time with a guide.
After Philae we had a boat trip up the Nile to the Nubian Village of Naha Sugayl Gharb. The boat trip was most interesting - winding between the many small islands in the Nile below the Old Dam through often quite narrow channels and with some minor rapids.
The Nubian people are known for painting their homes in bright colors. A sharp contrast to the sand colored housing in the rest of Egypt. This Nubian village primarily derives its income from tourism so they have really gone to town on their colorful buildings to make it attractive to we tourists.
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| Naha Sugayl Gharb, Nubian Village |
We disembarked from our boat at the south end of the village and walked through the village to the north end where we caught the boat back to Aswan. Everything in the village was either a coffee shop, a restaurant, a gift shop or a hotel. The entire economy of the village is tourism.
For our trip back downstream to Aswan we climbed up onto the roof of the boat. This made for an interesting night time trip between the many islands back into Aswan and our larger Nile cruise boat.
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| Our Nile Cruise Boat - the Soleil |
Our first night on the boat was spent dealing with air conditioning issues and lighting. The AC was noisy and kept cutting in and out every few seconds - you had to have it on or off, there was no happy medium in between. Then there was a lighting strip around the windows that was always on. Annoyingly that was by design.
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| Kom Ombo Temple |
During the night we had sailed down river from Aswan to Kom Ombo, another temple site and we were moored there. After breakfast, we disembarked and toured Kom Ombo temple. This site is a more recent site than Philae and had more skilled relief carvings. The temple was dedicated to the alligator god Sobic. One of the unique things about this site was that it had wall carvings showing medical tools. Our guide was very proud of the fact that those early Egyptians were quite skilled at doing surgery.
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| Mummified Alligators in Kom Ombo |
Kom Ombo being dedicated to the alligator god Sobic also has an Alligator Museum. A collection of mummified alligators. It wasn’t just humans they mummified.
As we left the alligator museum, we felt a few drops of rain. It never rains in this part of the world but there it was a few drops. Not enough to cover the pavement.
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| Temple of Edfu |
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| Carvings in the Temple of Edfu |
Back on the boat we sailed further downstream to our next temple site, Edfu. We were driven the short distance from the dock to the temple. There were two large pylons and many large columns. For the first time we saw a bit of color in the ornamentation.
We continued sailing north. Just beyond Edfu there was a road bridge over the river. The clearance between the top deck of the boat and the bridge was so small that they had to collapse all the canopies and umbrellas on the top deck. I had to duck down as we passed under to avoid being hit in the head.
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| The locks at Esna |
We had dinner as we sailed north to Luxor. Just as we were about to retire for the evening we reached the Esna locks. We went up on the top deck to watch the boat negotiate the lock and drop the 25-30 ft down to the lower level.
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| Balloons over the West Bank of the Nile in Luxor |
By morning we were tied up at the dock in Luxor. As we were having breakfast, balloons were rising from the West Bank of the Nile (a popular thing for tourists to do). They looked quite beautiful against the sand colored mountains.
We had a tour of the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. There is a new bridge across the Nile so we could drive from our dock on the east bank. The Valleys are on the West Bank and the Valley of the Kings was our first stop. We arrived there before 9:00 and it was already very busy. There were many large buses disgorging large numbers of people.
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| Valley of the Kings (people edited out) |
The valley is quite a barren valley with no buildings or structures other than those erected to manage the site - ticket office, toilets, gift shop, etc.
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| Tomb of Rameses IX |
We visited four tombs in the Valley of the Kings - King Tutankhamen, Ramesses III, Ramesses IX, and another whose name I can’t remember now. Each tomb has an entry tunnel or passageway going into the hillside. The passage then leads to a burial chamber and to other ante-chambers (presumably for belongings needed in the afterlife). The walls and ceilings of all the tombs we visited were covered in drawings and hieroglyphics often in quite bright colors considering their age. The walls were all protected from the crush of people filing into the tombs by Perspex sheets.
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| King Tutankhamen’s Mummy |
King Tut’s tomb was similarly beautifully decorated but of course none of the riches that were found in the tomb remain. They are all in Cairo in the Grand Egyptian Museum. What is in the tomb however is King Tut’s mummy. They unpackaged his body from the multiple cases and sarcophagi and then returned it to his tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
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| Interior of Ramesses III |
The wall paintings are quite wonderful - such color, such beauty, such stories that they tell. I couldn’t say what they all meant but I simply was amazed at the scope of the work and its quality after all this time.
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| The crowds filing into the Tombs |
The tombs were quite crowded, often with a single file of people going in and a single file coming out. No guides were allowed in the tombs as they don’t want some loquacious guide lecturing his group and holding up movement through the tomb. The tombs were humid too and it was often quite refreshing to get out into the heat and fresher air of the valley away from the hotter and quite claustrophobic tomb.
We left the Valley of the Kings and stopped by a tourist craft shop where they are making alabaster vases and bowls. The tours always throw these things into the itinerary. I don’t really need any of this stuff so it is, for me, a waste of time. But people do buy this stuff.
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| Temple of Hatshepsut |
We next drove to the Temple of Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut was the most important female pharaoh ruling Egypt from in the 1400 BC. Her temple is majestic - three broad levels of colonnades emerging at the bottom of the cliffs. It is a wonder to behold.
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| Statues of Osiris, Temple of Hatshepsut |
On the upper level is a series of statues of Hatshepsut as Osiris (god of the afterlife) that are nearly intact and are most impressive. As usual the interiors and the columns are covered in carvings and reliefs. What a splendid civilization this once was.
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| Tomb of Amen Khopshef, Valley of the Queens |
The next stop was the Valley of the Queens where we visited three tombs - Kha M Waset (son of Ramesses III), Queen Titi (wife of Ramesses III), Amen Khopshef (another son of Ramesses III). The crown jewel of the Valley of the Queens, the tomb of Nefetari unfortunately was closed.
Again in these tombs there were more beautiful colorful wall reliefs and paintings but by now we were becoming overloaded by such things. We did a quite hasty look at the interiors and then it was back on the bus.
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| The Colossi of Memnon |
On the way back to Luxor and our boat, we did a drive by of the Colossi of Memnon. Impressive as well but we were late and we were a little tired so we just did a drive by.
After lunch and a brief rest we were off again. This time to see the magnificent Temple of Karnak on the east side of the Nile, just north of Luxor.
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| Avenue of the Ram Headed Sphinxes |
Karnak Temple is a huge complex where some 30 pharaohs left their mark. We entered the complex from the east along the avenue of the ram-headed sphinxes. Then there is a huge pylon gateway that takes you into the main complex. Another pylon, the second pylon leads you towards a hall just full of massive columns - a veritable forest of columns - so impressive.
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| Karnak Temple |
There is so much to be amazed at in the Karnak complex and now writing this it is difficult to identify one pylon, or one group of columns or one obelisk from the other. We have many pictures, too many pictures and they are all amazing.
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| Luxor Temple |
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| Luxor Temple |
After our fill of Karnak we drove back to Luxor and the Luxor Temple. It was getting towards the end of the day and everyone was arriving there to take advantage of the sunset at the temple. It was completely overwhelmed with tourists. Outside the temple there is a giant obelisk and two giant statues of Ramesses II. Inside the complex there are more giant columns, all ornamented with reliefs and carvings.
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| The Audley Tour people |
We wandered around the temple area for a while until sunset and then our little group posed for one final photo. Then it was back to the boat.
With more temples and tombs and names and dates that we could ever hope to remember we were back for our final dinner on the boat. We bid farewell to our fellow travelers, Joelane from Nashville, Soren and Cecilia from St Petersburg, the girls from Audley Travel. For us, it was an early start the next day for our 06:20 am flight from Luxor to Cairo.
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| Empain Palace, Heliopolis |
In Cairo we were again met by our earlier guides Ibrahim and Tarek. We were then taken to the Baron Empain Palace in Heliopolis, a northern suburb of Cairo. The palace was built in 1904 by Eduardo Empain, a Belgian industrialist, who came to Egypt to manage his company’s construction of a railway. He then got the idea of creating the new neighborhood of Heliopolis as a “city of luxury and leisure” and he built himself a fine home inspired by the architecture of Hindu temples - very exotic. What ambition and imagination (and money) Monsieur Empain must have had to create such a beautiful building in 1900’s Cairo.
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| Many other fine homes in Heliopolis |
We drove around the Heliopolis district for a while admiring many other fine buildings from the same turn of the century period. There was certainly some wealth in Heliopolis back then and likely still is today.
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| Gardens of the Mohammed Ali Palace |
Our next stop was the Mohammed Ali Palace on Rhoda Island in the Nile. This complex surrounded by beautiful gardens was the residence of Mohammed Ali Tewfik the Crown Prince of Egypt and Prince Regent of Egypt during the first half of the 20th century.
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| Mohammed Ali Residence |
The Throne Room was lined with portraits of various members of the Royal Family with a throne at one end of the long room. The residence rooms were most elaborate with fine tile work and carved wood features.
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| A rather sad looking camel |
There was a small museum of hunting and taxidermy, in the same palace complex of buildings. It was interesting but sad. It showed what animals were once in Egypt but are not any longer (like lions) but I have never seen such a ragged and frayed array of aging stuffed animals before. Maybe once they were fine specimens, but not today.
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| The Egyptian Museum in Cairo |
We then had a free afternoon and evening in Cairo so we decided to go to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. This was near Tahrir Square and our hotel. It was the main museum of Egyptian antiquities until the Grand Cairo Museum in Giza opened last year.
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| Mummies galore in the Egyptian Museum Cairo |
Nowadays the museum is quite neglected. There are many, many artifacts in the museum but it is all very old now and the presentation cases are showing their age. By one count there are some 170,000 items in the museum making it the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities. I got exhausted just walking through the many rooms filled with old display cases with mummies. Much of the tourist attention has shifted to the modern Grand Museum in Giza so not so many people visit anymore. Nevertheless they still have an amazing collection of antiquities. The richness of the Egyptian past is sometimes difficult to comprehend.
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| Tahrir Square, Cairo |
In the evening we walked around Tahrir Square and over the bridge to Zamalek Island. We ended up at the Kempinski Hotel where we dined on the rooftop. All very nice until it got too windy and cold towards the end of the meal.
The next morning, our last in Egypt, we packed and checked out of the hotel and then joined our guide, Tarek, for the last piece of our Cairo tour. Our first stop was Al Azar Park in the north of Cairo. It and the adjacent old buildings and mosques in the old Islamic district have received significant funding from the Aga Khan Foundation. We watched a short presentation on the wonderful things the Foundation has done before we entered.
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| Khayrbak Mosque Complex |
All of us then got into a golf cart and toured the various historical sites within the complex. First was the Khayrbak Mosque complex. This was built in the 1500’s by Prince Khayer Bek. He was known in Egypt as the “traitor” for cooperating with the Ottomans in Syria. For his cooperation the Ottomans appointed him to governor of Egypt. The complex comprises a mosque, a madrasa, a minaret and a mausoleum.
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| The Aqsunqur Mosque - Blue Mosque |
The Aqsunqur Mosque or Blue Mosque was particularly impressive with its beautiful blue tiles.
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| Repurposed Stones in a later Mosque |
Interestingly there were a couple of stones incorporated in the buildings that had been repurposed from some older antiquity. Hieroglyphic carvings were clearly visible on these older stones.
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| Peeling potatoes in old Islamic Cairo |
We visited several sites in this old Islamic neighborhood. Electric carts were the mode of transportation for tourists. The distances were fairly long and the streets were very narrow, so quietly zipping along in a small cart was perfect. It also allowed us a great view of the neighborhoods we were passing through - old and dilapidated but teeming with human life.
Al Dayoura Orthodox Church
We left the Al Adar area and made our way to the old Coptic Christian area of Cairo. Here there was the large Al Dayoura Orthodox Church unfortunately it was closed when we were there.
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| The Hanging Church, built over a Roman Building |
We did go inside the Hanging Church. So-called because it was built on top Roman ruins and there openings in the floor of the church where you can look down into the Roman ruins.
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| The alleged ground where Jesus and his family walked |
The Church of St George claims to have been built over the place where Jesus and his family slept and walked. There are glass covered pieces of the floor labeled “this is where Jesus walked”.
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| Interior Ben Ezra Synagogue |
We even visited a synagogue, the Ben Ezra Synagogue. This synagogue is the oldest synagogue in Egypt having been converted from an existing church back in the 9th century. Inside the synagogue is an attic room with no doors, it is a geniza. Judaism does not allow the destruction of any text bearing god’s name so the geniza is where such documents are placed until they can be buried. Most synagogues have such a repository. The unusual thing about this Cairo one was the way any textual document with Hebrew writing was considered worthy of depositing in the geniza, not just Torah scrolls as is usually the case. When the geniza was “discovered” by a Cambridge academic in the 1800’s the collection of old papers revealed a lot about medieval life in Cairo. All the documents were transported back to Cambridge for study and they still reside there today.
Our guide indicated that there was information in the Ben Ezra geniza that would destabilize the Middle East and it was being kept secret in Cambridge. I can find no support for this in later research but who knows?
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| Coffin of Nedjemankh, National Museum of Egyptian Civilization |
Finally for our last stop with our guide, we visited the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. This relatively new museum highlights the achievements of Egyptian civilization. There were many fine things in this relatively small museum and I found it to be a nice summary of what we had seen in our journey through Egypt from ancient to modern.
In the basement of the museum there is a collection of some 20 mummies of Egyptian royalty. They are all looking a bit desiccated and shriveled but it is an interesting display. Most of the mummies came from the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.
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| Tarek Sarhan, our guide |
We were then driven back to our hotel and we bid farewell to our guide Tarek. He was certainly very educated and an excellent guide to Egyptian history and to Cairo. Of course there was the usual anxiety about how much to tip both Tarek and the driver. Tipping is always an issue for me - too much, too little, what is the right amount?
We had an afternoon late lunch at the cafe La Poire near our hotel. A great sandwich and, as far as I can tell, the best coffee in Cairo.
We then walked over to Zamalek once more and visited the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art. A nice collection of 20th century art showing that even Egypt they were following the same path through Impressionism to Cubism to Surrealism to Abstract art just as they were in the rest of Europe.
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| The Museum of Modern Egyptian Art |
The art gallery closed as we were in it and I found myself on the upper floor when the lights were turned off. Outside in what was a lovely evening we walked around the nearby Opera House complex before returning back to our hotel.
That was the end of our Egypt journey so we picked up our bags and went to the airport for our early morning (2:00 am) flight to Addis Ababa and on to Cape Town.
