The Land of the Pharaohs

I: Al-Qāhira (Cairo) and environs

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:41:49 -0800

a: The Mena House Oberoi.

We arrived in Cairo from New York in the early afternoon and were shuttled to the Mena House Oberoi, just a 10 minute walk to the closest of the three pyramids at Giza Pyramids. The hotel has been there for some time, and dignitaries and crowned heads have spent the night there, with a view of the pyramids right from the windows of their sitting rooms. The hotel has been remodeled and upgraded. There are now nice gardens where before there was not much, because the annual flooding of the Nile used to inundate the grounds around the buildings. Suites have been named after the crowned heads who have stayed there. Lodgings are, by our standards, quite reasonably priced. The top King Gustav V suite goes for around $800/night rack rate; the price is negotiable.

Left: The Mena House Oberoi, with the lighted-up Great Pyramid in the background.

The local currency is the Egyptian pound.1 When we were there, we could get 6.2 pounds per dollar, which translates to about $0.16/pound. There are 100 piastres in a pound and if there are coins for the smaller denominations, I haven’t seen them. The ten and fifty piastre notes, as well as the 1 pound note become, as you can imagine, awfully scruffy and smelly pretty fast. And yet you need a supply of these 50 piastre or one pound notes, because in the bathrooms, even in expensive hotels or restaurants, the attendants expect a tip every time you use the facilities. The only clean place you can go for free is your own bathroom in the hotel or in the cruise boat on the Nile.
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right: tourist map of Egypt.

To get your bearings straight there is a map on the right. The Nile flows from the high ground in the south to the flatlands in the north and empties into the Mediterranean Sea. The big dam on the Nile River is at Aswan on the lower part of the drawing. South of it is Lake Nasser, formed because of the dam. You see that the temples Philae and Abu Simbel are above the dam and they would therefore be submerged by the rising waters. The south is also called Upper Egypt; the North is called Lower Egypt. The Suez Canal is on the top slightly to the right, going from the Gulf of Suez to the Mediterranean Sea.

We arrived in Cairo from New York, where we visited the three pyramids in Giza and sundry other points of interest. The second leg was the night train from Cairo going south to Aswan, where the first cataracts of the Nile are found. From there we took a river cruise to Luxor, stopping at Kom Ombo and Edfu on our way north. In Luxor is where Thebes, the ancient capital of Egypt, was located, so the area is rich in ruins and ancient artifacts. From there we flew back to Cairo, and then from Cairo to Jordan.

b: The three pyramids in Giza.

There are three huge pyramids in Giza. The dominant one is the Great Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu), 146 meters high, with a base of 250 meters. It was built between 2560 – 2535 BC. Next to it is the Chephren pyramid, also known as the pyramid of Khafre, only slightly smaller, with a height of 143 meters and a base of 143 meters. That one is of more recent vintage, built in 2525 - 2500 BC. A little bit further away is the smaller pyramid of Mycerinus, also known as the pyramid of Menkaura, with a height of only 66.5 meters, which is still huge, but rather small in relation to the two other giants. A surprising observations is that the angle of these pyramids with the horizon is 52 deg 50 min, which is also the angle of a sandpile formed when fine sand comes down a funnel in an hourglass. These pyramids were all constructed during the fourth dynasty (2575 - 2465 BC), an amazing short span of only 110 years.

The Great Pyramid is so huge, it is difficult to comprehend the scale involved. There were some 2,500,000 blocks of stone, which had to be moved and placed, each weighing 1.7 to 17 tons. This pyramid, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, took about 20 years to complete. This corresponds to moving and placing an average of 12 of these huge blocks each day, an amazing accomplishment. Napoleon Bonaparte remarked that, if the pyramids were dismantled, there would be enough stones to form a wall three meters high and a third of a meter thick, to surround all of France.

It is surprising to view these pyramids at close range. From a distance they look like a huge sandhill, poured on the surface of the landscape from a giant funnel in the sky. Many think the surface of the pyramid is smooth. This was the case soon after construction when the structure was cased over with smooth layer of polished limestone.

left The Great Pyramid at closer range.

But the softer material had disappeared over the centuries, leaving unadorned massive boulders behind. Closer by, one realizes the size of the stones used. They are huge, ranging from 2 to 20 tons each. The biggest stone is adjacent to the burial chamber and said to weigh as much as 50 tons. How they managed to move them up hundreds of feet above ground zero is still debated with fervor by engineers, tour guides, and by writers of pulp fiction. The stones were said to have been put together with joints only 1/50th of an inch thick and, in the case of the Great Pyramid, placed in alignment with the cardinal compass points with a maximum error of just over 5 minutes; which is 1/12th of a degree. The ratio of perimeter to height equals 2π with an accuracy of 0.05%.

There is considerable engineering involved to ensure that the weights are well distributed, so that the pyramid will not settle or buckle over the centuries. At no point in the foundation is the pressure more than 12 tons/sq meter. And this includes the passageways and the chambers in the structure. There are three known chambers in the pyramid; one cut in the bedrock, and higher up the Queen’s and the King’s chambers.

The King’s chamber is where the mummy of the deceased pharaoh would rest for eternity until the call for resurrection would come or until a grave robber or modern explorer would arrive to desecrate the tomb, whichever comes first. The entrance to the main passageway to this inner sanctum was about halfway up the slope, which is pretty high. But the Egyptian Department of Antiquities thought it was too risky to climb up that high, so a new shaft was constructed to allow access from a slightly lower level.

Entry to the inner sanctum of the Great Pyramid was limited to a few hundred persons per day, and an additional entry fee of 100 LE (100 Egyptian pounds, which is equivalent to about $16) was required. For that ticket you are allowed to walk through very narrow passageways, with high ceilings in some places, with low ceilings in others. It felt very constricted, especially walking up the fairly steep incline. The King’s chamber itself was in the very middle of the structure, 100 m down from the top, and 100 m up from ground level. It was a room about 5.2 by 10.5 meters, with 6 meters high wall. Very simple. No adornments or inscriptions on the walls trumpeting the dead ruler’s achievements. The pyramid itself was sufficient proof of the might of the pharaoh. There was a simple stone sarcophagus at the far end of the chamber.

right: entrance to the walkway to the inner chamber. Now you can see how big the stones are, as compared with the tourists climbing the structure.

Standing in the middle of the room meant standing in the middle of the Universe, where one can expect lots of Khi and inner strength. This is useful to combat stock market downturns, obstreperous travel companions, and unsanctioned carnal desires. I did not receive the impression it worked for me. Well, what do you expect for sixteen bucks.

Some years back a trench was dug parallel and close to the base of the pyramid and they found the parts of this huge royal barque. This was the vessel used to transport the deceased pharaoh from the land of the living, on the East Bank of the Nile, where the temples are for the living, across the Nile to the West Bank, where the structures are for the Dead. The barque has been restored using the original sycamore wood found in the trench; only the ropes were replaced. The completed vessel is now displayed in a separate building close to the Pyramids. It is a magnificent vessel about 150 feet long and about 20 feet wide in the middle.

left: The Royal Barque used to transport the deceased Pharaoh over the Nile.

Recently, a second sealed boat pit was discovered nearby. It has been deliberately left unopened in the hope that in the future, more modern excavation techniques can be used to allow more information to be retrieved.

The temples of Luxor, Karnak, Kom Mombo, and Philae, are all on the East Bank. These temples signify life. The pyramids, the Valley of the Kings, and also the mausoleum of the Aga Khan are located on the West Bank. The West is where the sun sets and signifies death.

right: The Sphinx.

And then there is of course the Sphinx, the huge stone carving of a winged lion with originally the face of Chephren on it, until it was damaged by some idiots in artillery practice.

c: The Zoser pyramid in Saqqara

The Great Pyramid was not the first pyramid built. The ancient Egyptians had a few hundred years of experience before they started on this huge one.

So where were the earlier pyramids. There were quite a number. The one we visited was the one everybody goes to, which was the Zoser step pyramid in Saqqara, which dates back to around 2600 BC. Saqqara is a huge, ancient burial ground, the necropolis adjacent to the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis.

left: The Zoser pyramid

The Zoser is, what they call, a step pyramid, and you can clearly see the six levels or steps on top of each other, each level starting a bit smaller than the top of the level lower. After standing for almost 5000 years the structure is still in good shape because the stones were placed in an interlocking pattern on the top of each other.

The top level, level 6, was for the king. Level 5 was for the queen and the family. Level 4 is for the king’s closest advisors and their families. Level 3 is for the ministers. You and I would be lucky to get even in Level 1. These were the earliest pyramids built and it was obvious that they were still in the learning process, when this edifice was constructed.

Close to this pyramid is the burial complex of Ptah-hotep, a high ranking official from the same period, the late 25th century BC, as well as that of his son, Akhti-Hotep. Their burial chambers were nicely decorated with drawings of daily life with supporting documentation in hieroglyphics.

right: Entrance to tomb of Ptah-hotep. The air-conditioning vents are of a little bit more recent vintage.

There is a building, which is a necropolis, nearby. Interestingly, the columns there were not made in one piece, but were constructed from interlocking sections, each just a few feet high, with the keys in the adjacent wall. With this process, it is easier to build columns in those early days.

left: These 5000-year old columns are made by stacking interlocking segments above each other.

In the picture of the Saqqara pyramid, you see many school children visiting the site. These are the very well-behaved upper-class children going to the expensive foreign-language school.

And everywhere around these pyramids you see the camel handlers offering you a ride on their animals to take pictures for a fee. The requested fee is not much, but it can sometime increase rapidly once you are on the camel and you wish to come down.

d: The Citadel of Salah ad-Din (Saladin)

The citadel is a spectacular hilltop medieval fortress built on a hill above Cairo at the end of the 12th century by the great Caliph Salah ad-Din, known to the west for his martial prowess as Saladin. The fortress walls would repulse any attack by the Crusaders, who would be coming from the North. The crusaders never managed to conquer Egypt. There are three minor fortresses linked to each other to form the “Walls of Egypt”. The citadel and the walls were built using the stones from the pyramids.

right: A tower in the citadel of Salah- ad-Din.

Above the citadel is the beautiful mosque of Muhamad Ali Pasha, also known as the Alabaster Mosque. This mosque is visible from everywhere in Cairo. Most of the alabaster, a material softer and more translucent than marble, comes from Luxor. It was constructed between 1830 and 1848, and it is a larger copy of the El Ahmadi mosque in Istanbul. It has a central dome, which is 52’ in diameter, and which is surrounded by eight smaller domes. The domes are made of wood, and then covered with lead foil. In the mosque is also buried Muhamad Ali Pasha, in a vault which looks like a French wedding cake.

left: The forecourt of the Alabaster Mosque.

The forecourt to the mosque is 50 by 50 meters, surrounded by graceful galleries with single-arched riwaqs or naves, rising on columns and covered with domes. In the middle of the courtyard is an octagonal ablution fountain shielded by a domed canopy resting on 8 pillars. In one corner of the courtyard is a pavilion with an elaborate French clock, which King Louis Philippe of France had presented to Muhammad Ali. In return, the pasha presented the king with the obelisk from Luxor, which is now standing in the Place de La Concorde in Paris. After thousands of years, the obelisk still stands there proudly; the clock, on the other hand, never worked properly.

e: The Cairo Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

This museum, also commonly known as the Egyptian Museum, has an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts, most of which are in storage, and only a small fraction being on display. The entrance is located on Meret Basha, about a quarter mile away from Tahrir Square, the well-known meeting place for the street protests in 2011, which toppled Hosni Mubarak.

Ramses II is indubitably the greatest pharaoh of Egyptian antiquity. But there is surprisingly little on display about him, considering his importance in Egypt’s history. When we were there, there was a lot on the pharaohs Ekhnaton and Hatzeput. The items are not as well displayed as, e.g., in the Met in New York, because they do lack the funds for a good presentation. Or maybe because they have just so much excellent stuff lying around all over the place or in storage somewhere.

I mentioned earlier the many accomplishment performed during the 4th dynasty. (2575 - 2465 BC). Two of the pieces exhibited are:

right: painted clay figures of Rahotep and his wife Nofret of the 4th dynasty.

below: Smooth granite sculpture of (left to right) Hathor, goddess of love, music, beauty and fertility, the pharaoh Menkaura, and the personification of the province of Hu.

Considering the rich and long heritage of Egypt, there is actually not that much in the Museum. Of course a lot has been “transferred” to the British Museum and other musea around the world.

The Egyptian museum did have a lot on Ekhnaton on display, the interesting pharaoh who looks very much like a woman. His face is smooth with wide sensuous lips. There was even a carved torso of him, in a very tight-fitting dress. He has very wide hips and there is no bulge at the junction of his legs.

On the other hand, he has a beautiful wife, the famous Queen Nefertiti, and there are carvings of the two of them with their two daughters. Well, maybe he had a sex change operation later in life. The more scientific proposition was that his androgynous features were to promote him as a god, “the father and mother of creation”. Well, somebody probably wanted to write a PhD thesis on that.

Then there is Queen Hatshepshut, the daughter of Tuthmosis I, who reigned for 18 years as a man, after she got rid of her husband-brother Tuthmosis III. She encouraged commerce with the neighboring states and made Egypt rich. She suddenly disappeared at the end of her reign, probably the victim of foul play.

Although king Tutankhamun (1361 - 1352 BC) was not a powerful historical figure, the top floor of the museum was almost completely devoted to him, because of the huge amount of intact treasures found in his tomb in 1922. That was undoubtedly one of the greatest finds in archeology. Parts of this collection have been displayed in other countries, including the US, but those were just very small parts of the Tutankhamun inventory. Even then, huge numbers of visitors have viewed these exhibitions. In comparison, the collection in this museum is truly astounding in size and scope.

right: the golden funerary mask of Tutankhamun. inlaid with lapis lazuli, cornelian, quartz, turquoise, and colored glass

There are the three coffins; one of solid gold with the king in the form of the god Osiris, his gold funerary mask, other countless gold artifacts, the jewelry in gold and decorated with lapis lazuli and other semi-precious stones. But there are also state and household items and implements, jars of unguents, chairs and parasols against the sun. His state chariot was there. His funerary bed was there. His golden throne was there. A life-size statue was there, as well as lots of smaller statues of him, many of them in solid gold. The material displayed, including clothing, showed that they had all been extremely well preserved in the dry desert heat.

left: canopic jars. The two cartouches on the bottom of the inscriptions are the names of Tutankhamun

This canopic chest was carved from a single block of semi-translucent calcite. In this chest are three alabaster canopic jars used to store the liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines of the deceased and removed during the mummification process. The fourth jar is missing in this picture. Each lid shows the visage of Tutankhamun with the uraeus on the forehead. The uraeus is a symbol of kingship in Egypt and is represented by a cobra in an upright position. The two cartouches (circled oval hieroglyphs) show the names of Tutankhamun; the left before and the right after he became pharaoh.

But what is especially impressive is the amount of stuff that was crammed in his relatively small tomb. If you see what is displayed and you go to the Valley of the Kings to look at his tomb, you cannot imagine how it can all fit it there. The guy who organized that was a genius.

There was also on display a smooth material in the form of a sheath, which the guide told us was a condom. Maybe he made that up; Ramses II surely didn’t use one; he was said to have sired more than 100 offspring; many of them from his own daughters, whom he impregnated when they became old enough to bear children themselves. Then again, I suppose condoms would be useful to those of his wives when entertaining clandestine lovers.

f: Life outside the pyramids

We visited the Sakkara carpet school, where kids not looking much older than ten were taught how to weave. Presumably this was to teach them a skill they could use in their adult life; for the school it was an opportunity to use child labor at minimal cost. Well, they need cheap labor to manufacture their products to sell to tourists like us. No wonder that apprenticeship takes years and years. Visitors are welcome. They can see the kids work and buy the carpets they make.

Right: Children working inside the Saqqara carpet school.

And outside the school was the traveling greengrocer with his donkey-drawn cart selling his produce.

left: The traveling greengrocer outside the Sakkara Carpet School

g: Security

Tourism is a major industry in Egypt and there was a considerable drop in visitors right after the shootings in the Valley of the Kings and after 9/11. So there is security everywhere to ensure that no visitor is harmed. There are members of the “Antiquity and Tourist Police” everywhere to protect the tourist. They have special badges.

American, British and Israeli tour groups get special treatment. They usually have a guard assigned to them when they travel. He sits with you in the bus and he is usually a good-looking guy. There is also often a police car, sometimes with lights flashing and sirens blaring. A terrorist wishing to shoot their RPG’s at tourists from these three selected countries will have no trouble finding out where the target is. They overdo this security, we think. When we went ballooning in Luxor, I joked to our guide that I did not see a police balloon rising up in the sky with us to give us protection.

I think they also overdo coddling the tourist. On several occasions when we went to museums, we bypassed the regular queue of visitors to get in without waiting. This is not fair, and the locals just smile as you would do if you saw a two-year old kid do something naughty, but I don’t think it helps to create good international relationships. And cutting ahead only saves maybe 10 minutes at the most. Some of these people have come from long distances to visit their museums; they can be assumed to be well-educated. How many people do you know, who visit their own museums, unless it is to accompany an out-of-town visitor they need to impress?

II: Hieroglyphics 101 and Ancient Gods

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:13:50 -0800

1: Hieroglyphics

Hieroglyphics are sprinkled liberally over the ancient monuments, artworks, and artifacts in Egypt. You find them also copied, sometimes incorrectly, on lots of tourist items for sale. But does the average Egyptian know anything about hieroglyphics. No. Can the average guide read the hieroglyphics. No again. Wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to decipher some of the hieroglyphic texts if you visit Egypt. Most certainly. Well, I will be covering some aspects of hieroglyphics, and if you know these, you’ll know more than the guides and you will immensely enjoy your trip more.

Deciphering hieroglyphics has not been easy and lots of savants have for years futilely tried to break the code. Progress started with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, created around 205 BC under the reign of Ptolemy V, dug up by the French Army under Napoleon in 1798, captured by the British from the French in 1801, and finally deciphered by the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion in 1822. It now resides in the British Museum as one of the most viewed artifacts in its collection. The stone shows a text in classical Greek, the similar text in demotic, (which is the every day writing of the people) and, most importantly the same text in ancient hieroglyphics.

In hieroglyphics, there are some 700 signs, but only 50 or so are used frequently. If they are in a vertical column, they are obviously read from top to bottom. In a horizontal line they are usually read from right to left, as Arabic is now written and read. But sometimes hieroglyphics is also written from left to right if it is esthetically more pleasing. It is actually very easy to see. You read in the direction opposite to the direction the pictures in the hieroglyphics are drawn. If the characters looking like birds or sitting persons look to the right; then you read from right to left, and vv.

On walls or on sarcophagi, e.g., , where there is a vertical separation line, you may see the text go from left to right on the right side, and the same text going right to left on the left side. Look at the silver sheet from Tutankamun’s chest shown above. About 1/3 from the left is a barely visible line. To the left the figures look to the right, so you should read from the right to the left; to the right of the line, the figures look to the left, so you should read from the left to the right. I suspect that the line corresponds to the 90 degree corner of the chest, and that this plate was hammered flat to remove the kink. So you read away from the corner.

Esthetics are important, so the letters may not be shown in consecutive order. How do you read them? Not that easy. With 700 signs, the characters do not always signify a tone, such as in the alphabet. Our alphabet only has 26 letters, and you don’t need much more to cover all the tones in your spoken language. On the other hand, if the sign is a pictogram, such as in Chinese, then 700 is too little. You need several thousand to cover everything you want to say.

It appears that some of the hieroglyphics are actually pictograms; they describe a word or concept. The flower hieroglyph (see left bottom on cartouche of Tutankhamun or in the top of the left cartouche of Ramses II below) stands for the papyrus plant; it can also stand for thousand, it can also stand for a certain sound; it is also the heraldic symbol for Upper Egypt. A semicircle with the flat side on the bottom stands for bread. It can also mean “lord of”. It can also mean the transliteration of the letter t. This flower with two or more semicircles next to each other means thousands of loaves of bread. This you see a lot in tombs showing offerings for the departed.

left: The Hieroglyphic “alphabet”. There are 24 consonants. An arabic text is also provided for your convenience. Note that the symbols are facing left, for reading from left to right. There are no vowels.

So here is the important point. The hieroglyphics shown here are the 24 consonants. For instance, a wavy line stands for water; it can also stand for the letter n, it can also stand for the preposition to or for. A straight horizontal line with two small lines perpendicular in the middle stands for a door bolt or the tone of z or sh. A picture of a hand can stand for a hand or for the letter d, depending on the context. There are no vowels in this “alphabet”.

Almost every hieroglyphic character in the names of the ancients stands for a “letter” in their “alphabet”. The tourist industry has seen the commercial potential of all this. So now you are able to show your name in hieroglyphics. They have embroidered names on T-shirts; golden and silver pendants with names engraved on them, the inscribed chamber pot you were going to give to dear aunt Martha, and a host of other things.

But there are no vowels. Having no vowels makes it hard, but if you know a language you can easily guess the vowels, e.g., you would easily understand the following: 2nd flr aprtmt , 4 lge rms, exclnt lcn nr ctr, prkg, hdwd flrs, ldry. However, five thousand years from now, it would be difficult for a person not knowing the language to pronounce the words correctly. Heck, even now there is not always consensus.

And what about the vowels? Well, for that they have found some characters where the tone is rather similar to the vowels we have. And voila, everybody is happy, and now you can write your name in hieroglyphics with vowels also. Note that these are not used in the ancient hieroglyphic texts, only on modern tourist items.

So, walking through the monuments it is nice to be able to decipher some of the writings. One thing you very often see are the cartouches, which are hieroglyphic characters enclosed in an oval like what is shown on the right. The oval ring around a name means it belongs to a king, queen, or god.

a: Tutankhamun

If you have not been to Egypt, then the name of the most familiar pharaoh is Tutankhamun. As a pharaoh he was just a minor figure in the history of Egypt, (1341 - 1323 BC); he was only 18 when he died. But in 1922 his nearly intact tomb was discovered, containing a huge quantity of treasures. And because many of these artifacts have been displayed all over the world, people are familiar with his name.

right: Cartouches of Tutankhamun

The cartouches seen bearing his name is shown here. The one on the left is the one before he became pharaoh; the one on the right is after he became pharaoh. Look at the cartouche on the left.

You read from right to left. Start with the middle portion. The semicircle with the flat bottom in the middle of the picture here can stand for a loaf of bread, but here it stands for the transliteration of t; the quail chick is w, so the combination of these three character reads twt. See the picture of the “alphabet” above. To the left of it is the ankh sign, a circle above a cross, symbol of life. Reading from left to right you get twt-ankh.

The top portion consists of a reed leaf, for i or y; to the left of it is a game board, with the pieces on it on the top, but which is here used as a transliteration of m; and the wavy line below it is water, or n. The combination of this three stands for imn, or the god Amun, at some times the most important deity in the Egyptian universe. Since the god had precedence, his name is on the top. The cartouche hence reads hence twt-ankh-imn, or Tutankhamun as we know it.

The three symbols in the bottom are often, but not always, added to his name. There is a shepherd’s crook, symbol for ruler; the column in the middle is the symbol for Heliopolis, a city near Cairo, and the heraldic plant in bloom to the left stands for Upper Egypt. Heliopolis of Upper Egypt is another term for Thebes, the ancient capital of Egypt. So what you see is Tutankhamun, Ruler of Thebes. Thebes was the capital of Egypt during the period of the Middle and New Kingdoms, when the ancient Egyptian civilization was at its height.

On the chiseled silver sheet, at the top at the barely visible dividing line there are snakes opposing each other. The snake sign means: “Words spoken by”, and below the snakes are the symbols for amn (the reed and the rod) and -ré, symbolized by the sitting god. So this means: Thus said Amun-Ré ...... The first symbols on the right are that of the goddess Nephthys, sister to Isis and Osiris. The first symbols on the left are that of Isis, wife of Osiris.

b: Ramses II

The two cartouches you see most often see on the monuments are of Ramses II, he being the big builder in ancient history. He was the greatest pharaoh in ancient Egypt and lived long enough to build numerous memorials to himself, liberally emblazoned with his name. On older monuments his cohorts even chiseled his name over the names of many older pharaohs.

left: Detail from the Abydos King List, showing the names of Ramses II.

Of the two cartouches you see the right one stands for Ramses II before he became pharaoh; the left cartouche shows his name after he became a pharaoh.

In the cartouche on the right note that the top three symbols stand for the god Amun, similar to that seen in Tutankhamun’s cartouche shown earlier. Below them is a rectangular box, a picture of a canal, but in this case stands for the word mr and also for the verb “love”.

Below these symbols is a sitting man, a god. With the sun disk above him he is the ideogram of the god Ré, the sun god2. Next to him is the plant with the three hanging stalks; this stands for the word ms; the staff to the left stands for the letter s. So the bottom part is mr-ms-s, which is “Ramses” because in ancient hieroglyphics there are no vowels.

We really do not know how his name was pronounced in his time, and he would most probably not recognize the name Ramses, if somebody shouted it to him. For all I know he could have responded to Umromasosa. But at a certain time an Egyptologist suggested the name Ramses and the name stuck. The whole cartouche stands for “Rmss (son of Re) beloved of Amun.” This cartouche shows his nomen, or his name before he became king.

Just like the popes of today, the person assumes another name after he is elevated to his office. The left cartouche is the one you see most; it is of his praenomen, the name after he was elevated to pharaoh.

In the top is a disk, symbol of the sun god Ré. Below it is a jackal-headed staff, which is the word wsr. To its left is the Goddess Ma’at, the goddess of justice, recognizable by the feather above her head. She is holding the Ankh sign in her hand, which is the symbol for life. The Ankh sign is the circle, sometimes elongated, attached above a cross. Below that is an axe on wood, which stands for the word stp and below that is the wavy sign for water, or the letter n, so the cartouche reads: Usermaatre-setepenre, the official name of Ramses II after he became king. There is an agreement that you usually use the e in the first go-around since nobody knows what the correct vowels are.

From this word is derived the name Ozymandias, the name you may recall from Shelley’s poem,

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,
look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.!”

Look again at the two cartouches from the Abydos King List shown above; on the top of the left cartouche are two half circles with the flat side up signifying “lord of”, a bee (signifying Upper Egypt) with the half circle below it, flat side up, and the papyrus stalk (signifying Lower Egypt) with the half circle below it, meaning lord of Lower and Upper Egypt. Above the right cartouche is a duck with the sun above it, meaning, son of Ré. So the picture shows: lord of the two lands, Ramses II, son of Ré, beloved of Amun.

The cartouches on the pillar in the Hypostyle Hall in Karnak as shown on the right is from a later date. The cartouche on the right is similar to the one on the left in the Abydos King list, but there are differences between the left cartouche on the pillar and the right cartouche on the List.

right: Cartouches bearing the names of Rames II everywhere on the huge pillars in the Hypostyle Hall in Karnak

Here you see a sitting man with the sun disk on his head. He is the sun god Ré, holding the Ankh staff. Opposite him is Maat, holding the jackal-headed staff. On the bottom there are now two staffs, each signifying an s. The symbols for Amun are not there anymore. The new cartouche is an indication of the decline of the power of Amun in relation to Ré.

c: Funerary Scene from the Book of the Dead.

This is a modernized copy of a drawing found in the compilation of funerary texts, also called the Book of the Dead. This drawing is often copied on papyrus and sold to commoners to be placed in their tombs. You can purchase this drawing in many tourist shops in Egypt. It describes the journey of the soul of a deceased person in the netherworld. The background material was papyrus, ostensibly made according to the ancient recipes. I am using this drawing to discuss some of the more important deities in the ancient Egyptian pantheon.

The top left panel shows the deceased on the left, pleading his case before a panel of 14 gods who will vote on his fate. The first one on the left is Horus, the falcon-headed god with the sun disk on his head and the son of Isis and Osiris. Osiris and Isis are the great-grandchildren of the Ré, the God of the Sun. The second figure is that of Isis, sister and wife of Osiris, because she wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, and Isis often sits in as a judge of the dead. The third is Ma’at, goddess of law, order, justice, and truth. She is recognized by the feather in her hair and the symbol of Ankh in her hand. This feather is also used in the Scales of Justice to weigh the hearts of the deceased against. Ma’at is also included in the name of the great Pharaoh Ramses II. She is also the wife of Thoth. The sixth one could have been Hapy, one of the four sons of Horus, who is usually portrayed as a mummy with the head of a baboon. His job is to protect the lungs of the deceased; he is also the Guardian of the North. The seven judges on the left voted for eternal life by holding up the “Ankh”-key, the key of life. The other seven voted for eternal damnation by just sitting there.

Because of the tie, the soul of the deceased (the person at the extreme left on the lower level) is led by the jackal-headed god Anubis into Judgement. This is shown in the lower left panel. Anubis was the original God of the Dead, until Osiris took over that position. His job was then changed to the god of mummification (to ensure that mummification is performed correctly) and to be the guide for the dead in their travel though the underworld. Anubis is also the son of Nephthys; his father is Osiris. One story is that Nephthys succeeded in making Osiris drunk and the resultant union brought forth Anubis. Nephthys was a sister of both Isis and Osiris.
The middle panel shows, in the Hall of the Two Truths, the deceased and Anubis in front of the Scales of Justice, where his heart (on the left scale) is weighed against Ma’at’s feather on the right scale. If the heart is heavy with sin and impurity, the scale will tip to the left, the person is damned and his soul will be devoured by Ammit, the demon with the head of a crocodile, the torso of a leopard, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus. Ammit is waiting right there. But this man’s heart is pure and lighter than a feather, so he is awarded eternal life.
Going to the right he is led by Thoth on his left and the falcon-headed god Horus on his right to the throne-room of Osiris. Horus, also known as the God of Protection, is the son of Isis and Osiris. The kings of Egypt associated themselves with him, and he is therefore one of their most important gods. He is often shown with the sun disk on his head. It is good to be under the protection of Horus. On the left of the deceased is Thoth, the ibis-headed god from Hermopolis. He is the scribe of the gods. He is the inventor of writing and the great god of all knowledge. One of his jobs is to record the confessions and affirmations of the dead in his scrolls, as well as who went into Paradise and who was eaten by Ammit.
The deceased is now led into the throne room of Osiris, the God of the Underworld. Throughout the height of Egyptian civilization, he was the primary deity, second only to his father, Ré, the god of the Sun. Osiris is shown here in his chamber in the Underworld, in the garb of a mummy, being praised by the souls who have successfully passed the tests. He wears the Atef crown and he holds in his hands the crook and the whip, emblematic of authority and dominion. In front of him is a lotus and two papyrus stalks. The lotus is the heraldic symbol of Lower Egypt, and the papyrus stalk is the heraldic symbol of Upper Egypt. On the lotus are the four gods of the cardinal points, who are also the sons of Horus, i.e., Mesthá, with the head of a man, Hăpi, with the head of an ape, Tuamăutef, with the head of a jackal, and Qebhsennuf, with the head of a hawk. Behind Osiris are his two sisters, powerful gods in their own right. The one in the back is Isis, recognized by the hieroglyphic symbol of a throne above her head. The one in front is Nephthys, the goddess who guards coffins and canopic jars. In the top left of his throne room there is a falcon, a heraldic symbol of royalty. The three gods welcome the deceased into the underworld.

d: The Goddess Hathor.

The goddess Hathor has been associated with a large number of neat thing and is highly revered. She is the goddess of love, music, beauty, and dance. The ancient Greeks identified her with Aphrodite and the ancient Romans considered her the equivalent of Venus. She is also the celestial nurse taking care of women, fertility, children and childbirth.

In the afterlife, she is called the Mistress of the West, welcoming the dead into their afterlife and giving sustenance to the deceased to give them strength for their mummification, their journey to the judgement hall and then during the weighing of their soul. In the picture shown above she is wearing a menat necklace, a symbol of rebirth.

Hathor is commonly depicted as a beautiful young woman with the horns of a cow on her head. Between the horns is wedged the sun disc, from which a Uraeus3 hangs. You will see her image everywhere in the ancient world. She is a good god to have as your friend in Facebook.

III: Aswan

Thu, 5 Jan 2012 20:13:04 -0800

a: Getting to Aswan.

So we took the night train to Aswan. The 1st class compartments were small but everything was there; seats, two folding beds, folding trays for eating, a small sink, overhead storage. The beds were about 6’ long, so if you are tall, you are out of luck and you end up in the morning looking like a pretzel. In addition, the train really shook very hard, so you needed to have acrobats as parents to ensure you can handle your bathroom chores well. In one particular cabin the upper fold-out bed folded out by itself at random intervals, which was not conducive to jumpy nerves. A porter serves you food in your compartment and takes down your bed in the evening and pushes it back up in the morning.

left: The night train from Cairo to Aswan.

Our porter was superefficient and tended to barge in the room almost immediately after he knocks. We were warned by our guide to lock our doors when we were indisposed. But he did manage to get into an unlocked compartment where one woman from our group was in partial dishabille and he promptly kissed her on her bare shoulders. Gallant, what?

The food was like what the airlines used to serve in economy, a bit worse, but not as bad as the train food we had on the train from Sydney to Melbourne. There the food came in pouches with the manufacturing and pull dates stamped on it, one year after the manufacturing date. They stick the pouch in boiling water, take out the pouch, cut it open, and serve it to you. Ours still had a few months to go before the pull date.

b: Aswan

Aswan is a modern city and tourist center close to the Aswan Dam. Here are the first cataracts in the Nile. The city is the jumping place to visit Abu Simbel and board the boat to sail down the Nile. In Aswan we stayed in the Aswan Oberoi, which by consensus was the ugliest 5-star hotel in the whole area. It is located on gorgeous Elephantine Island right in the middle of the Nile and you need a ferry to get there. It is really not too hard to get a 5-star rating in Egypt. In Luxor there were some twenty-five 5-star hotels, which is actually more than the number of 4-star hotels in the area. The air-conditioning in the Aswan Oberoi was not yet operational because according to the calendar it wasn’t spring yet and they did not believe that the temperature can be warmer than “normal” for that time of the year. Sound like some apartment complexes in New York.

The quality of a tour in a foreign country is obviously dependent on the tour guide. Ours worked real hard for us and also knew quite a bit about Egypt. But he also had the unfortunate tendency of wanting to maintain the impression of knowing everything related to Egypt. So he never acknowledged he did not know the answer, and he’d rather say something he created on the spur of the moment, with an admirable assuredness born of long practice. This quite common.

I usually make lots of notes and now that I have been able to verify them against published literature, I see all these discrepancies. Which most probably only a few of the tourists noticed, or cared. After all, you can still enjoy the magnificent temples and monuments, and it would make no difference whether the guide said it was built by Amenhotep II or by Dick Cheney.

As far as the tourists go it really does not matter. You can ask anyone after a presentation what the tour guide said, and the answer you get is probably completely garbled. The homework the average tourist performs before the trip is usually only what clothing to wear, what other people in the group will be wearing, and what souvenirs are good to buy.

c: The Aswan Dam

To control the water level in the Nile, there is actually the old Aswan dam, also known as the Low Dam, built by the British at the turn of the 20th century. The important dam is the High Dam, built between 1960 and 1976, about 7 km above the old dam. The new dam is 3.8 km wide at its crest, about 1 km wide at the base, and it is 111 meters tall. The reservoir created above the dam is Lake Nasser, named after the Egyptian leader who shepherded this project through, playing the US against the Soviet Union for assistance and funding.

right:. Lake Nasser from the Aswan Dam.

The Aswan Dam is the most important project in Egypt in the last century. It increased arable land by 30 %, and it controlled the flow of the water in the Nile. Annual flooding of the banks does not occur anymore. The Nile is the aorta of Egypt and the Egyptians are extremely afraid of terrorists attacking the dam. If the dam is breached, the released waters would engulf even Alexandria on the coast in a few hours. There is tight security and no airplane is allowed in the air space above the dam.

Because of these dams, the river depth below the dams is now well controlled and some 250+ cruise boats ply the river, mostly between Luxor and Aswan. All of these boats have multiple decks and some boats have sumptuous amenities comparable or better than many 5-star hotels. Some of these vessels can carry hundred of passengers in style on 5 or more decks. The downside is that many priceless relics of antiquity are now below water. But international cooperative efforts have saved many of these for posterity, the most well-known ones the Temple at Abu Simbel and the Temple of Philae.

d: The Aswan Botanical Gardens

On this tour we would sample different types of transportations. We used minibuses in the cities, the sleeper train from Cairo to Aswan, a plane flight from Aswan to Abu Simbel and back, calèches, and various boats on the Nile, from graceful sailing feluccas to functional motorboats and luxury cruise boats.

We boarded a graceful felucca, a sailboat which has been used on the Nile since antiquity. These boats can carry around ten passengers, with a crew of two or three. River transport is dominated by motorboats and ferries, but feluccas are still very popular with tourists, because of the quiet and the calm.

Our first stop was a small island next to Elephantine Island. This is Kitchener’s Island because the gardens there were started by Lord Kitchener. It was a very pleasant area, with many subtropical, exotic, and rare plants. The botanical garden, with many shady trees, is a popular picnic place for families.

Back into the felucca again to sail through the cataracts. It was a wonderful sail, with only the wind to push us through the waters. Some of the rocks we passed had huge cartouches of some of the departed pharaohs chiseled in them, including those of Tuthmoses III and Amenophis III.

With no motors it was quiet and smooth sailing. But there was a drawback; we got too far away and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. The captain had to call for a motor boat to come and pull us back in the the right direction. There was a police motorboat shadowing us from a distance, but he stayed away.

e: The Monastery of St. Simeon (Deir Anba Sim’an)

In our itinerary was also a trip to the abandoned Monastery of St. Simeon, which is commonly only reached by camel. I suppose you could use a car to get there over the desert sand, but that wasn’t as romantic. And the camel drivers need to make a living.

left: Our camels getting ready for the trip. My camel is the one in front, marked Ferrari (OK misspelled) No. 104.

It took us about a half an hour to ride the camel from the moorings on the West bank on the Nile to the Monastery, about a mile away. Which was an interesting experience. There were lots of smiles and picture taking in the beginning but after a while certain parts of your lower anatomy begin to complain due to the unusual stresses applied.

We remembered the people we met in Morocco the year before, who traveled several days with camels and camped in between. Now I understand why they said they chose to walk part of the way, even though it was hard to walk on sand.

right: Inside the ruins of the monastery of St. Simeon.

The structure was presumably built on the remains of a temple dedicated to Isis, built in the 3rd century BC, but in later centuries Christians created this monastery cum fortress. Additional buildings were constructed dating back to the 7th century AD. It was once one of the largest Coptic monasteries in Egypt. The monastery was rebuilt in the 10th century, but destroyed in the 1173 by Salah al-Din (Saladin) who didn’t want the structures to be used for marauding Christian forces.

The name St. Simeon was coined by archeologists and travelers, but earlier Arabic and Coptic texts refer to the place as that of Anba Hatre. According to folklore, Anba Hatre married at the age of 18, but just after the wedding his entourage encountered a funeral procession. This struck him deeply, so he decided to retire in the desert, become an ascetic and preserve his chastity. I wonder whether he consulted his bride on his decision.

left: More ruins in the monastery of St. Simeon.

We then mounted our camels again, this time with much less enthusiasm and off we went again; this time to a Nubian village to be the guests of a Nubian family for some talk and light refreshments. The Nubian women took this opportunity to draw henna paintings on the back of your hands or on your face (or any other part of your body), charging us 20 egyptian pounds (about 3 US$) for each job.. The painting sill stays on your body for about three weeks before it fades away; faster if you wash it often.

f: Abu Simbel

Abu Simbel should have been the real high point of the trip, but it was rather disappointing because we were allocated only a few hours there. Unfortunately, it was at the same time as a zillion other tourists came pouring out of planes and buses and on to the temple. Our guide had to fight through a throng of people just to get the entrance tickets. The temple was packed, but as we left an hour later, it was starting to empty. Why all the tourist planes and buses would all come within a span of some 2 hours is incomprehensible. It is so easy to stagger the crowd and everybody would enjoy the place more. We only managed to spend about half an hour in the very crowded major temple of Ramses II and had to leave to catch our plane before we could even enter the temple of Nefertari. And when we were outside the temple grounds in the bus parking lot, we were told the plane was delayed an hour and a half. The guide, being very paranoid of losing us in the mass of people, did not want to go back.

right: One of the 4 statues of Ramses II in front of his temple at Abu Simbel. Compare the size of the statue against the person below

But Abu Simbel was of course impressive. Here was this gigantic site, and people had actually moved it some 60 meters up and 200 meters back, piece by piece, to keep the temples above the rising water of the Nile. It was a marvel of modern technology to have accomplished this feat.

And inside the temple were the marvelous drawings and hieroglyphs. The one drawing most often copied is that of the victorious Ramses II over the Hittites.

left: Ramses II chasing down the Hittites.

When we were in Hittite country in nowadays Turkey, we were admiring the drawings of Hittites vanquishing the Egyptians. History is a malleable commodity. In the last major battle between these two countries, the Hittites smashed the Egyptian troops who, however, managed to escape because of the firm leadership of Ramses II. The Egyptians therefore called this a victory; so did the Hittites.

right: Facade of the entrance to the Temple of Nefertari

Nefertari was the chief wife of Ramses II. Even though this was her temple, the figures here are of Ramses II. He is the boss, after all. His cartouches are shown in the middle, not that of Nefertari. Note that the left cartouche is facing left, and the right cartouche is facing right. This is for esthetics.

g: The Nubian Museum

In Aswan there is the Nubian museum, which traces the history of the Nubian region, or upper Egypt, back 3-4000 years. Nubia is in Upper Egypt, which is hence south of the delta, which is Lower Egypt. This is sometimes confusing because Lower Egypt is North, and the river Nile flows from south to north. The heraldic flower of Lower Egypt is the lotus, because it resembles the delta. A bee is sometimes also used to denote Lower Egypt. The heraldic flower of Upper Egypt is the papyrus. The Pharaoh wears the red crown of Lower Egypt or the white crown of Upper Egypt and sometimes an unwieldy contraption called the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.

The inhabitants of Nubia are darker in color than those in Lower Egypt and over the centuries Nubia has been off and on independent of Lower Egypt or it was part of Egypt as Upper Egypt. Nubia was desirable because there are gold mines, even in antiquity, just 100 miles or so south of Aswan. And the Pharaohs wanted the gold.

In the time of Aida, Nubia may have already been partly occupied by the Egyptians, and the remnants of the Nubians would have been gathered more to the Southern regions of the Nile. Even now you can see the darker skinned Nubians in Aswan as somewhat different than the Egyptian in Cairo. The Nubians have their own villages, often painted blue to contrast with the yellow of the desert, and they are the camel drivers and farmers in the region.

But I can see even now, that in the time of Aida, the Nubians must have hated the Egyptians with a passion. In Verdi’s Aida, Radames had come back triumphantly from a war with Ethiopia. But Ethiopia is much further south and there is no real reason to go that far south. The Assyrians did come from there when they overran Egypt, but I don’t believe the Egyptians went on a conquest in that direction. In Elton John’s Aida, he talks about Nubia, and that is more reasonable because of the gold mines in the area. And in Nubia there are also the cataracts in the Nile, which I believe is referred to obliquely in the operas.

h: Philae.

Left: The Temple of Philae

Philae, rescued from the rising waters of the Nile, was started by Nectanebo II, the last important pharaoh of an independent Egypt (360-343 BC). In later years the Roman Emperor Trajan added a building with lovely pillars next to it.

The complex was already partially submerged during the annual flooding of the river after the first dam was built, but after the new Aswan dam was completed it was almost completely submerged all the time.

Right: Drawing on the back of the entrance pylon of the Temple of Philae.

In the middle, the falcon-headed god Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, also known as the God of Protection, receives tribute from the pharaoh Ptolemy XII Auletes on the right. Horus is wearing the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The left figure is that of the goddess Hathor, wearing the headdress of the sun disk and cows horn. She is a very popular deity and she personifies love, beauty, music, motherhood, and joy. In her left hand she would be carrying an Ankh symbol. Ancient Greeks identified her as Aphrodite; ancient Romans saw her as Venus.

A coffer dam was built around it and the temple was hauled out, stone by stone, and reassembled on a higher island, Agilkia. To make it even more authentic, this island was then remodeled in the shape of the original Philae. You need to go by boat to get to Philae.

Philae was dedicated to the goddess Isis, the sister-wife of Osiris, and the mother of Horus. It is a really lovely temple and it easy to imagine the days when ladies of the British Upper Crust came here to have their portraits painted with the ruins of the temple as background.

left. Some of the beautifully wrought capitals of the columns in the hypostyle court of the temple of Philae. Each capital is different than the one next to it.

The hypostyle court of the temple is wide, flanked by 48 columns on each side, with floral designs on the top of the columns.

Many of the engravings have regretfully been destroyed by Christians, who believed they were heathen texts; but at least many of the hieroglyphic scripts were spared because they didn’t know what they stood for. On the right of the temple of Philae is Trajan’s kiosk, a 14 Corinthian column structure built by the Roman emperor. What is unusual is that the top of the columns were different from each other, depicting flowers, fruits, etc.

right: Trajan’s Kiosk.

Quite a number of temples have actually been saved in an international effort and Egypt gave, in gratitude, four temples to the contributing countries. The Temple of Dendur they gave to the USA; we saw it in the Met in New York. The Temple of Taffeh is in Leyden in the Netherlands, the Debod Temple is in Madrid, and the Nubian Temple of El-Lessya was cut out from its rock foundation and reassembled in the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy.

And in the evening we went back to the island to watch a “Son et Lumière” show of the history of Isis and the temple of Philae. It was an enchanting evening. In the dark nobody fell in the waters as the tourists jostled at the quay to get into their boats to get back to shore. It would have served them right.

IV: Sailing down the Nile

Tue, 3 Jan 2012 23:44:04 -0800

a: The Ninfea Due

Sailing down the Nile, or sailing up the Nile, is nowadays usually part of the tour package to Egypt. We were loaded in the Ninfea Due a three-decker, designed for 30-40 passengers only, but with a pretty large crew, since labor was inexpensive. The vessel was 60 meters long, had a beam of 9.8 meters and a fairly shallow draft of only 1.3 meters. The ship was rated a four-star establishment and we were served copious breakfasts and 6-course lunches and dinners daily. Although alcohol is frowned upon for the local Muslim population, foreigners can buy local wines to go with their meals, especially on these luxury ships. The wines are quite good and they cost very little. The Egyptian Government has not learned about the joys yet of taxing alcoholic drinks for more state income.

left: The Ninfea Due

The river is wide but fairly shallow, only 12 to 16 feet in depth. The boats pass each other on the left and on the right, whatever suits their fancy. Because of the large number of boats and the limited moorings at the places of interest, the boats are moored parallel against each other. If you are furthest away, you have to walk through several other boats before getting on shore. I have seen as many as seven boats next to each other on one mooring. You can have your window open when the boat is sailing to enjoy the view. But when you are moored you may soon find a Leviathan moored next to you cutting off any privacy and sunlight to your cabin.

right: Along the banks of the Nile

Along the Nile are many strips of fertile land. Sometimes there are hills parallel to the river. In the area of the Valley of the Kings the hills become mountains. Beyond that is desert, just yellow desert.

From the river you can occasionally see the desert. You can see the mountain ranges where Aida’s father escaped to get to the desert and then go further south. There are also fertile valleys with date trees, sugar cane, corn and other vegetables and mud-colored ruins among the rocks. Brown is the prevalent color.

b: Kom Ombo

left: Kom Ombo lighted up at dusk.

We arrived at the partially reconstructed ruins at Kom Ombo at around 4 p.m. Many farmers who have been displaced by the rising waters because of the Aswan dam have been moved to this area.

But before we reached the temple we had to walk for a few hundred yards past a long row of hawkers and stands selling a huge array of colorful Egyptian garb.

Right: Colorful local garbs for sale at Kom Ombo.
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The temple is unusual because it is a double temple. It was built during the Ptolemaic dynasty. (118 BC - 286 AD).

To go back a bit into history, Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC. After his death in 323 his successors ruled Egypt as the Ptolemaic dynasty, which was the last dynasty of independent Egypt, before it fell to the Romans. The Ptolemies were Greek, but they presented themselves as Egyptians, imitating the traditions of the earlier pharaohs.

After you enter the open court in front of the temple ringed with columns, there are two entrances next to each other in the pylon, the wall separating the court from the next area. You then enter the Hypostyle area. In the opposite wall of the Hypostyle are again two openings next to each other, both leading to the rectangular vestibule area. In the opposite pylon are again two doors, both leading to the Inner Sanctum area. In the pylon at the opposite end are two chambers next to each other. One is dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek, the god of fertility and cocreator of the world. The altar in the other chamber is dedicated to the falcon-visaged god Horus.

left: A lovely column with colored engravings in Kom Ombo. The two cartouches are of a Ptolemaic pharaoh, but you can see above them the symbols showing “Lord of lower and upper Egypt” and “son of the god Ré”.

Crocodiles are obviously held in high esteem here. Captive crocodiles have been kept on the temple grounds and there were a number of mummified crocodiles on display.

An when we came back to our cabin on the Ninfea Due, our cabin steward had rolled several of the new towels in the shape of a crocodile. Very creative.

right: A crocodile waiting for us on our bed.

Many engravings on the wall show the triumph of the pharaoh over his enemies. There are lions being fed the chopped hands of prisoners. Captured enemies, hands bound, in a row.

On the grounds was also a Nilometer, which was a well with steps around the inside perimeter. The well is connected through an underground channel to the Nile, so the level of the river is the same as in the well. By using markings on the wall, the water levels can be recorded for planning purposes.

Left: Nilometer

In the old days, the level was also used to determine the tax rate of the farmers. How higher the water level, how more water there was. Hence, more crops can be expected and higher taxes were justified.

c: The temple of Horus in Edfu

Some 40 miles north (remember, we are sailing down the Nile river, which means we are going north) we arrived in Edfu, where we were able to view the great temple of Horus, the falcon-headed god, on the west bank of the Nile. From where we landed, colorful caleches took us to the site of the temple.

right: Colorful caleches to get around

Built from blocks of sandstone, the temple is very well preserved. It was built between 237 and 57 BC during the reign of the Ptolemies. There are engravings everywhere, even on the ceilings. Engravings can be made to have the figures stick out. This takes more work and is seen in the more protected areas of the temple. Outside, the engravings are carved in the rock. Many of these engravings were damaged by the Christians, who in their religious fervor were intent on erasing every engraving suggesting bare breasts.

left: The huge entrance pylon to the temple of Horus in Edu.

The main entrance pylon to the temple is more than 100 feet high. In the middle of the picture is Horus, wearing the double crown of Egypt. On the right is the Pharaoh Ptolemeus XII in the process of slaying his enemies. He holds a fighting net in his left hand.

The temple of Horus in Edfu also has many engravings depicting the triumph of Horus over Seth. Going back somewhat, Osiris, the main god, was acclaimed as a wise and noble king. Seth, his brother, was jealous and killed Osiris. He then cut the body in 24 pieces and buried the remains all over the world. That is where Osiris entered the underworld, where he is often depicted as a mummy.

Isis went everywhere and asked everyone and finally managed to assemble the parts together again. Then the god Amun Ré breathed life back into Osiris. Horus was born of Isis and Osiris during this period. When he grew up, he went after Seth and finally killed him in battle. It was the triumph of good over evil.

right: Inside a hallway in the temple of Horus in Edfu. Look how wonderful and graceful the capitals (top of the columns) are.

V: Luxor

Sun, 1 Jan 2012 00:15:47 -0800

a: To Thebes.

Thebes is the ancient capital of Egypt. You may remember that many of the cartouches of Tutankhamun show him to be the ruler of Thebes. The area of the ancient city is located inside the modern city of Luxor.

Our vessel left Edfu and docked at Esna in the late afternoon. The town of Esna looked impoverished; there was an internet cafe and not much else. The shops were closed for prayers. Later in the afternoon we went back to buy costumes for our costume party on the ship in the evening. One of our fellow travelers purchased a gebellayah for $20, after the merchant started with $120.

The next day we left early to get to the locks, where the water drop was around 7 meters, maybe more. In the afternoon we arrived in Luxor, our final destination with the cruise ship. We were immediately put in a bus and driven to the Luxor Museum. Yes, there was no rest for the wicked.

b: The Luxor Museum

The museum is located on Luxor’s main drag on the Corniche road parallel to the Nile. This is one of the more affluent neighborhoods of the city. The museum does not have many pieces, but they do have some exceptional statues. They have a good collection of stuff from around 1400-1500 BC, and also some of the recent 900 years.

An interesting collection we saw was some rattan furniture

left: Rattan baskets and furniture recovered from a tomb in Thebes dated to 1300 - 1400 BC. These 3300-3400 year old items look like stuff you could buy today at Cost Plus.

c: The Luxor Temple

The Luxor Temple, an ancient Egyptian temple on the East banks of the Nile and inside the present city of Luxor, was just a few minutes walk from our hotel and so we went there in the afternoon. As light fell, the huge complex was lighted.

The earliest parts of the temple were built by Hatshepsut; the colonnade and the sun court were built by Amenhotep III, and Ramses II added a couple more buildings to the whole.

right: At the entrance pylon to the Luxor Temple.

The size of this entrance pylon is huge; it can be gauged from the diminutive size of the person in the foreground. A similar obelisk as the one in the left of this picture from this temple is now on the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

It is amazing to consider that as late as the 19th century this complex was still mainly buried under the sand. Hooray for modern technology. And we are born in the right century to be able to enjoy this and more.

left: These papyrus-inspired columns with closed capitals are from the court of Amenhotep II in Luxor Temple. The architraves are richly adorned, but not very visible in this picture.

It was dusk when the picture on the left was taken.

d: The Temple in Karnak.

Most of the temples follow a master plan: You first have an open court, where people can gather. Sometimes this court is lined with columns, and sometimes this area is partially or completely covered. You then go through the entrance pylon, which is a huge wall with a door in the middle, into the second area, called the Hypostyle. The Hypostyle is usually covered and has lots of columns. You walk through the Hypostyle and you get to the second pylon, again a huge wall with an opening in the middle, usually. You go through the door in the pylon and enter another hall, the Vestibule area, which is also filled with columns and is usually covered. Both the Hypostyle and the Vestibule areas are enclosed with walls on both sides. At the back of the Vestibule is the third pylon with an entrance in the middle, usually, and behind that pylon is the inner sanctum of the temple. In the back of this sanctum may be an altar, or another small room where the statues of the god, to whom the temple is dedicated, is kept. In the Luxor Temple, the large entrance pylon actually leads to the first open court, before the Hypostyle area.

right: Standing between the pillars in the Hypostyle Hall.

The Great Hypostyle Hall in the Temple in Karnak is considered by some to be the eighth wonder of the Ancient World. You stand in a 50,000 sq feet hall with 134 granite pillars in 16 rows, all richly decorated. Some of these pillars are 69 feet tall and have a circumference of 33 feet. One is completely dwarfed by these monoliths. This Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak and the pyramids at Giza are the most visited monuments of Ancient Egypt.

It takes amazing engineering skill, vision, and effort to construct the Great Hypostyle Hall and build these huge columns. Just the architraves above the columns are estimated to weigh up to 70 tons each.

left: row of lions in front of columns in the Entrance Hall

In the evening we went back to watch the Sound and Light show, presumably one of the best in Egypt. It was magical to walk in the alternatively dark and lightened area of the complex. The show tells the highlights of Karnak.

“At its height, there was an annual 10-day festival honoring Amun, as the Pharaoh arrived here in his royal barge. The temple of Karnak has always been the province of the pharaohs who worshipped Amun. An exception was Echnaton and his wife Nefertiti, who espoused the cult of Aten.

Time marched on. The Assyrians came and conquered. Then Alexander the Great came, conquered, and crowned himself pharaoh of Egypt. Then the Romans came. Germanicus was here. Then the tourists came, like locusts on a harvest day.”

Good show.

e: The Valley of the Kings.

Then there is the Valley of the Kings, also called Wadi Biban en-Moluk, located on a desolate road flanked by tall red sandstone mountains. Here, from the 16th to the 11th century BC, tombs were built for the pharaohs and the nobles of the New Kingdom, which is the period of the 18th to the 20th Dynasties of Ancient Egypt. The whole area is dotted with rectangular holes, which are the entrances to the tombs. The valley is known to contain some 63 tombs and chambers. On the peaks of the mountains there was the ubiquitous Antiquity Police, watching out for us, I presume.

right: Trudging into the Valley of the Kings.

In this Valley we visited the tombs of Tausert/Sekrakht, Ramses III, and the adjoining tombs of Ramses V and VI. Our ticket allowed us to visit three tombs and the guide suggested these were the three best ones of the tombs open that day. There is an extra charge to look into the (empty) tomb of Tutankhamun. After entering the gateway in the rocks, there is usually a long corridor leading to different chambers and finally to the large chamber holding the tomb of the deceased. Almost everywhere are drawings, in some places even on the ceilings.

Even though these tombs are thousands of years old, the quality of the frescoes on the walls is still incredibly good. The most prevalent colors are blue, red, yellow, which are the royal colors, but we also saw a lot of orange, dark brown and black. On many places the colors were still clearly visible.

left: Entrance to a tomb.

These tombs are hewn in the sandstone rock; the walls are plastered, carved, colored, and finally varnished. In some areas the stone is hard enough for direct carving. There are many depictions of the cobra in the tombs, because only they can make judgement on the veracity of the statements after the death of a person.

Regretfully, the accessible walls of these tombs are also covered with thousands of graffiti, some even in Greek, Latin, or Coptic. Defacing with graffiti is also an ancient art, it seems.

right: Fresco in the tomb of Ramses I.

This drawing shows Ramses I between the falcon-headed god Horus and the jackal-headed god Anubis, who are escorting him the Underworld. Horus is the God of Protection, son of Isis and Osiris. Anubis used to be the God of the Underworld, until Osiris took over that position. His job now is to be the God of Mummification, to ensure that mummification is performed correctly. Anubis is also a son of Osiris, but his mother is Nephthys, a sister to Osiris and Isis.

The two light-colored cartouches above the deceased pharaoh show his names. You will recognize in the left cartouche the sun god Ré and below it the plant with the three hanging stalks, standing for the word ms; the staff to the left stands for the letter s. So this reads Re-ms-s, which is Ramses because vowels do not exist. The sedge plant below signifies Upper Egypt of which he is the ruler. The quail to its left here stands for great.. And above this cartouche there is the duck and the sun disk, signifying “son of the god Ré” So the left cartouche stands for “The Great Ramses, Ruler of Upper Egypt (Thebes), son of Ré. The light-colored cartouche on the right is that of his name after he became Pharaoh.

To the right of the the cartouches is a snake, meaning “words spoken by” and below it is “Amun-Ré”. So this reads: Quoth Amun-Ré,.... followed by the text on the column to the left

f: The Valley of the Queens.

On the other side of the mountain range is the Valley of the Queens, also called Biben el-Harim. where excavation have shown the presence of at least some 20 tombs. The most well-known is the tomb of Nefertari, the wife of Ramses II.

left: Queen Nefertari holding the hand of Horus, the falcon-headed god, who is wearing the double-crown of Egypt, as she enters the Underworld

But not all of the tombs there are of queens. We visited the tomb of Amun-Hir-Khopschef, the crown prince son of Ramses III, who died when he was still young. He is portrayed as a young boy, with shaved head, and with side-locks. He carries a fan, symbol of a honorific office at the court.

g: Breakfast on the banks of the Nile

Well, this is not really ye regular Bedouin breakfast. We had carpets everywhere on the ground. And the breakfast was prepared by the 5-star hotel on the other side of the Nile.

right: A “simple” Bedouin outdoor breakfast on the banks of the Nile.

We left our hotel at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.n. for our “Bedouin” breakfast. First we had to cross the Nile at dawn in a pleasure boat to get to the East Bank, and in a cordoned area on the banks of the river were plush rugs for us to sit.

Picnic tables and chairs were set up, as well as tablecloths, napkins and silverware. Breakfast was sumptuous, with the stuff brought over from the hotel. Except for the bread which, to make the breakfast more authentic, was heated in a small Bedouin oven specially set up for the occasion. I presume this is not really what the average Bedouin has for breakfast.

On our own, we visited a Bedouin family who invited us to come and visit them in their simple house nearby, about a few hundred yards away. The ground floor was for the livestock; a sleepy cow, several forlorn looking sheep, a rather belligerent goose, and some chickens. You do have to watch out for animal poo. Upstairs there was the mother, with 10 of her children. We made some small talk, they posed for pictures, and we left them with some US$ as gifts.

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left: Bedouin Bread oven

The family on the right dressed up very nicely to come at our breakfast to invite us to visit their house nearby. They must have done it more often, even though they didn’t speak any English and our Arabic was almost non-existent.

right: Charming Bedouin family inviting us to visit them

g: In a balloon over Luxor.

As balloon rides go, they were rather inexpensive at $100 apiece. To get the necessary lift, we had to leave early in the morning when the weather was still cool. We went up just a few hundred feet, and we were crammed in a small basket. There were six compartments of about 4 by 4’. The captain needed two compartments to himself. There were 5 passengers in each of the other three compartments. There was luckily only 4 in my compartment, but it was crowded already. And the haze and the pollution were not conducive in making good pictures of the sun rising through the haze.

Well, it was only a hundred bucks ...

There was little wind so we did not move very far before we went down again. It is one of those things, which are maybe not worth doing. But you would feel sorry you didn’t go, because you would not know what you missed. And one day at a party somebody will ask whether you took the ballon trip over Aswan. If you said no, he/she will tell what a wonderful opportunity it was we missed. Now we can turn the table around and ask the question instead.

The only savings grace is that we did see the three-tiered funeral temple of Queen Hatshepsut in the distance and we spent some time circling the Ramesseum, the ruins of the beautiful mortuary temple of Ramses II. It is here that Shelley saw the remains of the 75 foot tall statue of Ramses II, hewn out of a single piece of granite and estimated to weigh around 1000 tons. Both temples were not on our tour list, and these are the places we would visit if we ever would come again to Egypt. But not by balloon.

right. The Ramesseum as soon from the (hazy) air.