Egypt Day 8: Exodus

Our last day in Egypt.  What a long day it will be.

We sleep in and make our way the souk in Rehab.  Souks are open air markets.  They’re pretty common in Egypt and they’re where people who can’t afford to go to a fancy modern malls do their shopping.  The souk is several blocks of narrow storefronts selling all manner of goods and services.  It’s kind of looks like what a neighborhood made out strip malls might look like if there were no anchor stores.  Dawn’s grandparents were looking for vegetables and printer ink.  It didn’t take long to find both.  We speculated that you could find damn near anything in a souk if only you knew where to look.

Afterwards we stopped for our last Egyptian meal and bowl of lentil soup.  Lentil soup was the first thing I ate upon arriving in Egypt, so it seems like a good way to close out our journey as well.  We spent the rest of the afternoon in Dawn’s grandparents’ apartment packing and getting ready to travel.  Our flight left at 7:00 pm Egyptian time.  Between flying from Cairo to Dubai, Dubai to Dallas, and Dallas to Huntsville with layovers we’d be traveling for more than 24 hours.  A very long day indeed.

Things I learned in Egypt:
Throughout the whole trip I was constantly amazed by traffic and driving in Cairo.  It’s an completely different system of transportation than I’ve seen anywhere else.  The major difference between driving in the US and Egypt is there is no concept of right-of-way in Egypt.  Meaning that no one expects to have the right-of-way in Egypt so no one gets upset when someone cuts in front of them.  Driving is a game of trying to find a spot to move your car into that gets you closer to the general direction you want to go.  There are no hard and fast rules of the road and the general direction of the flow of traffic is only agreed upon by general consensus and it not regarded as absolute.

At first I felt bad ignoring people trying to sell me stuff at tourist attractions.  With enough exposure my stance hardened and I eventually came to view them as scammers.   Being a guest in foreign country kept me polite during my stay, but even that was wearing thin.  

Apart from the scammers, the people of Egypt were very friendly and welcoming.  I felt safe walking the streets, especially in communities like Rehab.

I enjoyed what I got to sample of the local food.  It reminds me that I need to spend more time exploring the food of Africa and the Middle East.

Here’s a sign you almost never see in Egypt:

The culture is very indulgent of their children.  Meaning where there are children, there are children running around and screaming.  Children are allowed to wander around and scream pretty much wherever they want and adult just look on and smile.

Wow, what a busy week.  It’s hard to take in thousands of years of culture in a single week spending mere hours in any one spot.  I’m glad we went with an aggressive schedule and packed in as much as we did.  It would have been a real shame to travel so far, get so close, and then flat out miss a major archaeological attraction.   I know we’ve only scratched the surface of what Egypt has to offer, but I’m thankful that I got to experience the parts that I did.

السبت

For our last day, we elect to laze about in Rehab, visiting the souk and returning to the restaurant we first had dinner at for a final lunch. Excellent lentil soup.

Then we are off to the airport to start our long journey home. Cairo’s international terminal is chaos and insanity. The lady at the check-in counter for Emirates was talking on three cell phones while processing people in line. Dubai’s airport is way more hopping at 2AM than it was at 2PM so our two hour layover was just long enough to make our next gate. On the last leg of our journey, I said to the guy seated next to me, “when I woke up this morning it was 36 hours ago.” The standard intercontinental journey.

I’m glad we made this trip and that we did now while things are stable enough not to be too dangerous but also not terribly crowded with tourists. I’m also glad to be getting back to potable tap water.

Egypt Day 7: Birqash Camel Market and Memphis

Got up around 7:00 today but couldn’t tarry for too long because we were supposed to leave at 8:00 AM for a guided tour of the the Birqash Camel Market and then onto Memphis and Saqqara. 


The drive to the camel market takes a bit of time. Not because the market is especially far away, but because the road is narrow and speed bumps are frequent. In Egypt the speed bump is the traffic control measure of choice. I suppose the logic is you can ignore traffic lights and stop signs, but it's hard to ignore speed bumps. Our tour guide says the road to the market is especially slow because not all of the speed bumps are government sanctioned. According to him when the locals want to slow the traffic down to make it easier to cross the road they just install their own speed bumps. There is a bit of DYI simplistic elegance to the solution, and it certainly explains why the speed bumps come in so many different widths and heights.  
I read that the Birqash Camel Market is a place for travellers, not vacationers.  I think sums up the experience very concisely.  The camel market is a regional place to congregate to buy/sell/trade camels.  It is not a tourist destination.  Besides ourselves, I think I saw one other group of tourists.  While I won’t say it was pleasant, I really enjoyed visiting the camel market.  For the last few days we’ve been visiting the obvious tourist attractions in Egypt.  The draw for us is the Ancient Egyptian ruins.  The draw for the Egyptians at these locations is us, the tourist spending money.  At the camel market we don’t even figure into the equation.  We’re there witnessing a part of traditional Egyptian commerce.  There is a photo taking license that we had to buy while we were entering the market, but that is very modestly priced.  Once in, the market is a pandemonium of everything camel.  The smell of camel and camel poop (which is all over the ground) is thick and clings to you.   The sound of camel roars fills the air.  Camels make a surprisingly deep sound that is not at all indicative of how calm and friendly they look.

I’m just going to list some of the sights that l saw in no particular order, because honestly, I don’t have nearly enough context to processes all that I saw.

On the outskirts there is a field of decomposing camel carcasses.  I guess these are the guys that didn’t survive the journey to the market.  

There will be two or more camels being loaded into the bed of a pickup truck.  The camels just lay there and look happy that they’re going for a ride.  To get them into the truck, the truck backs up to a earthen ramp and the camels walk on up.   

Camels are hobbled by tying their front legs so that the lower part of the leg is folded at the elbow/knee and tied to the upper part of the leg.  Either one or both of the front legs will be hobbled.  This results in a lot of camels either hopping around on three legs or crawling around on essentially their front elbows.

Everywhere camels will be beaten with sticks.  Everyone has a four foot stick in hand and whenever they want a camel to do something they hit it with the stick until the camel does what they want.  

Occasionally a camel will get free and go sprinting off.  It will be chased by several people carrying sticks.  Try and guess the next part of the process.

Shifting groups of camels will be herded around.  I can’t emphasise enough how important your situational awareness is while walking through the market.

We got to watch a camel auction while we were there.  A group of men stand in a circle.  A camel is led into the circle.  As far as I can tell, the next part is two men begin to beat the camel all over with sticks to show how “stick-proof” the camel is.  Eventually they poke the camel in the side of the jaw with the sticks and it roars.  I suppose that is so people can see the teeth.  Someone gets the winning big and the winner’s symbol is sprayed onto the side of the camel with a can of spray paint.  The camel is then led off by the winner.

I can’t stress this next part enough. While all of the above is going on around and to the camels, they all look perfectly serene and friendly.   Every camel holds its head up high and wears an expression that seems to say “I am proud to be a camel.”

After the camel market we stopped for a quick lunch and head to Memphis.  Memphis was an important city for the ancient Egyptians.  It served as one of the first capitals of the united upper and lower Egyptian empire nearly 5000 years ago (it’s an old city).  Not much remains of the ancient Memphis.  In truth, much of it has been buried and built over.  The Nile river used to run along Memphis, but when the modern dams were built to control the river the branch that flowed past Memphis dried up and disappeared.  What is left of the ancient Memphis is fragments of the ancient temple that once stood here.  Thats mostly statues built for the temple through the ages.  They are collected into an “open air museum.”  

Open air museums are pretty popular in Egypt.  Many of the sites we’ve visited can be classified as open air museums.  Basically you find some old stone stuff, drag it all together and put a fence around it.  The first time we encountered them we asked about protecting the statues from the elements.  It would seem that one would want to stop any of the artifacts from further deteriorating.  As far as I can tell the Egyptian answer is that it almost never rains and these statues are already thousands of years old, what’s the rush?  

The Memphis collection has a couple of outstanding items from the big names of New Kindgom, namely our friends Ramses II and Queen Hatshepsut.  Outside here is a merely large statue of Ramses II.

Also there is a large statue of Hatshepsut dressed as a man.  This is part of her media campaign to be accepted as ruler of Egypt.  The second largest sphinx in Egypt is at Memphis.  This one is carved out of a block of alabaster.  The one item not left outdoor is an enormous sandstone statue of Ramses the II.  The immense statue is laying down and has a building built around it.  Not only is this statue impressive for it sheer size, but for the muscular detail of the pharaoh.  The craftsman that carved this was obvious a badass.  There is however a small anatomical mistake in this statue that stands out because everything else is so perfect.  The ears were carved too high in relation the eyes.  Weird.   

The last stop of the day Saqqara.  Saqqara is a necropolis similar to the ones we visited in Giza and the west bank of Luxor, but older.  Saqqara is home to the first stone building complex in Egypt.  This is essentially one of the first places on Earth that mankind got the idea that they could carve stone into bricks and build something out of it.  That first building just so happens to be the first pyramids.
The story, as our tour guide told it, goes along the lines of previously everything was build out of mud bricks.  When kings died they dig out a tomb, and over the entrance they built a rectangular mud brick bench.  The first pyramid was built for Djoser by his master architect Imhotep.  Imhotep basically said that instead of mud bricks he thought they could build the king’s tomb from stone.  A bold new plan.  The king agreed and commissioned the work to begin.  A white limestone bench was built.  Everyone agreed it was pretty spiffy and an improvement.  Then Imhotep get an idea that he could improve on it and build a bench on top of the bench.  Djoser approved the radical idea and they expanded the first bench out and built a second on top of it.  Again everyone was pleased.  The king was in good health (and still fabulously wealthy) so Imhotep proposed yet another improvement to add another four benches to the top of the existing two... and the first step pyramid in Egypt was born.     

Djoser wanted to take a lot of stuff with him to the afterlife.  The stuff in his brand spanking new pyramid wouldn’t be nearly enough.  He wanted to take Memphis with him too.  At the time there was a precedent for granting the wishes of kings when they wanted to take something impractical to the afterlife.  Bury a model of the thing they wanted with them.  In this case they decided to build a scale model of Memphis around the pyramid for the king.  Remember this is the first complex built of stone in Egypt... everything before it was build out of less durable materials.  Which means that while the original temple of Memphis is lost to time, the model built around the step pyramids has persisted.  

The thing that’s really cool about the stone model of Memphis is that builders were imitating a structure built with more organic materials.  They carved the wooden logs used as columns into the stone and reed ceilings. They carved doors and door hinges into the stone.  All the little details of what must have been in the real temple are captured in stone facsimile.  The other part of the structure that’s really interesting is how they didn’t trust the stone, not really.  Building with stone was new and untested.  It’s put together strange and in places buttressed with mud bricks and other supports in case the stone wasn’t up to the task.  Little did they know exactly how long their new building would last.    

الجمعة

The state department issued an email alert warning us to avoid Tahrir Square today and tomorrow. Good thing we hit the adjacent museum already. Instead, we are headed to Memphis and Saqqarah, but first a stop at the camel market. Our tour guide, Maget, admits that he hasn’t been here since 2009 and seems to be having a ball and taking lots of pictures himself.

That was so much fun! Sometimes they get a little excited and make a run for it so we have to keep an eye out and quickly duck out of the way. That aside, they are actually very sweet animals that don’t bite, spit, or kick. And they ride in trucks!

Not all of them make it to the market, so outside is a stretch of road with the remains of the unlucky. Though, as most of the camels purchased are intended to be slaughtered for food, lucky may not be the best descriptor for them.

Carolyn tells the driver to go to the nearby Dandy Mall for lunch, thus avoiding another potential bad, overpriced lunch in favor of the guaranteed blandness of Hardees. All malls, all over the world, are the same place.

Also, because Friday is part of the weekend, there is almost no traffic in Cairo. What little congestion we see is concentrated around gas stations as there is a gas shortage happening.

In Memphis, we visit an open air museum on the grounds of what used to be a temple. They have a building with a gigantic statue of Ramses II that I am not sure the photographs do justice.

On our way to our next location, the driver stops for some Egyptian peas and shares a few handfuls with us. They’re more like lima beans than peas. Either way, pretty good as an early afternoon snack.

Saqqarah centers around the great step pyramid – the first of the pyramids built. There are several other pyramids in the area as well.

The step pyramid is built inside a smaller Memphis made entirely out of limestone so that the King could take it with him. At the time, this was a new building material. Rather than rely on it, the locals shored up the structure with mud bricks just in case. The ruins of both Memphis actual and mini-Memphis are on the west bank of the Nile now. Before the massive civil engineering project that brought the river under control, though, one of the branches of the wider, wilder Nile ran between the two areas so it was still life on the east and death on the west.


On the way back, our driver takes advantage of having tourists along to cut in line at the gas station.

Dinner is at Lemongrass in the local Marriott. They have dim sum sans pork, which is an odd experience. Dessert was an amazing rose flavored flan at a Lebanese restaurant in the same hotel.

Egypt Day 6: West Bank of the Nile

This morning we got up at a leisurely 6:00 AM (compared to the morning before).  We were to meet our guide again and tour the west bank.  Egyptians believed life was a lot like a day.  In the morning the sun is born, it ages during the day, and then dies at night.  With this idea in mind it followed that people would have a next life, because there was always a next day.  When it comes to things representing “new” or “birth” they are always located in the east, because that is the direction of the sun’s birth.  Likewise the west is where you locate things related to death because that where the sun goes to die.  Guess what’s located on the west bank?  Tombs, tombs, tombs (and temples).

Our first stop was the Valley of the Kings.  This is where all the famous pharaoh tombs are located (sixty-three by my last wikipedia count).  Home to the famous King Tut tomb.  Our tour guide gave us some background information on tombs.  How they got started - the short version goes: the problem with pyramids is everyone knows where they stashed your body and your treasure.  People are going to break in and steal the stuff you need for the afterlife and that is way lame.  We need a new, more exclusive, less flashy way to chill in the afterlife.  Maybe some sort of rich-god king and nobles only valley would do the trick.

The standard practice was to commission your tomb pretty early in your career (assuming you’re a professional god or nobel).  Obviously the longer you lived, the longer workers had to finish the project.  The guide told us that 20-25 years was the average length of time it took to carve and decorate a plush afterlife pad.  Of course if you died early that meant work had to stop and you had to make do with what you had.  The worst case scenario is workers got 70 days (the time it took for the mummification process).  The smallest tomb in the valley is pretty close to the worst case scenario.

He said they started a tomb by picking a likely spot, then chisling some holes in the ground and stuffing them full of echinacea root (at least I think that’s the root he said).  Then you pour warm water into the hole over the next couple of weeks and the roots expand and begin to crack the rock.  Then you bust out the chisels and go to town carving out a tomb.  What kind of rock you burrow down into effects what kind of tomb you’ll get.  It will be either limestone or sandstone.  If it’s limestone they can carve all sort of intricate designs on the walls to decorate the tomb.  If its sandstone that’s not going to make a good carving surface, so they’ll coat it in plaster and paint the designs on instead.  We got to see both types during our visit and if you have the means, I recommend the limestone wall tomb.

When you buy a ticket for the Valley of the Kings you’re really only buying a ticket to visit three tombs.  I don’t know how many are open, but each time you go in they punch your ticket to keep count.  Our tour guide recommended that we visit Ramses IV, Ramses III, and Ramses I.  King Tut’s tomb is also available but there is an extra surcharge for it, and our guide recommended against it because all the good stuff is in the museum in Cairo anyway.

By-the-by, King Tut was a pretty inconsequential pharaoh because he died early.  The reason he’s so famous is more or less due to where his tomb is located.  It got completely covered up with debris when they were carving out a nearby tomb for a later pharaoh.  It was the only one of the known tombs that grave robbers didn’t find and loot all the valuables out of (that is, before grave robbers become more respectable archaeologist and found it and looted it).  

After the valley of the Kings our tour guide took us to the “rock museum.”  Which is a very euphemistic name for “store that we sell tourist Egyptian themed stone crafts at.”  That sounds harsh, but I was actually glad for the stop.  Luxor is known for quarrying alabaster and making stone crafts.  Attempts to walk down the street and shop have been so harassing that we gave up and decided to forego the opportunity. This was a nice and quiet shop where the owners promised not to harass or bother us.  Which was half-true.  They still felt the need to frequently stop by and inform us what we were looking at, but they also assured us that this was not harassment.  They were merely supplying information to allow us to make informed buying decisions.  The arrival started with a presentation of what was and wasn’t alabaster and the difference between handmade and machine made alabaster pieces.  Then they started in on basalt and how you could tell the cheap plastic imitations from the real thing.  As far as I could tell the true test of a stone good was holding it over fire.  They burned a lot of things for us.  It was important we recognize how badly the plastic copies smell when burnt.  I’m not sure what common usage scenario for stone tchotchke involves frequent fire application, but we’ll be well prepared in the future.  We eventually bought a couple of items and probably paid too much for them.  After the sale they started to offer us “presents” and then promptly asked for a tip for the present.  That was pretty sketchy and I felt in poor form after we had actually bought something from them.  I’m kind of angry with myself after-the-fact for going along with it.

Hatshepsut Temple was our next destination.  I got the feeling that our tour guide liked the story behind this temple, but didn’t actually like the temple itself.  The story behind it is Queen Hatshepsut was born into a royal family with problems.  For some reason I don’t quite follow the solution to the problem was that Hatshepsut needed to marry her brother.  Thus it was and for a few years she was queen of Egypt and her brother was the pharaoh.  Hatshepsut was a properly clever queen and delved into the administrative tasks of running of the empire.  She also got in tight with the priests and nobles.  Her husband/brother on the other hand spent his time investigating the royal consort situation.   Hatshepsut eventually decided she'd make a better king than her husband and poisoned him.  Egypt is supposed to be ruled by a man, but there had been some wiggle room in the past for a properly motivated woman.  Hatshepsut styled herself not so much as a woman, but the daughter of a god and therefore divine herself.  (True story: to help mitigate the whole woman thing she carved up some big statues where she had a beard so as to look all pharaoh like.)  She launched a media campaign to win over the empire.  Hatshepsut Temple is pretty much a propaganda piece for her bid.  It’s designed to explain how she’s divine and the gods accept her as one of their own.  To speed things up she dismantled a nearby temple and used it stones as material for her temple.  

Hatshepsut has a successful rule over egypt for some 22 years.  The people liked her, she did a good job and things were going swimmingly, until one of her brother and consort’s sons showed up and made a claim for the throne.  Hatshepsut met him in battle and things didn’t go her way.  (It turns out the son, Thutmoses III, was a deft military strategist and won numerous campaigns as a pharaoh expanding Egypt’s empire to its largest footprint).  Once Thutmoses III gained control he went around erasing the legacy of Hatshepsut by replacing her works in other temles and completely destroying the Hatshepsut Temple.  According to our tour guide the temple we visited was basically rebuilt by a Belgian Egyptologist in the 1900’s.  I got the feeling that while the place looks awesome our tour guide felt it was somehow less authentic.

Last up was Valley of the Queens, which is where queens, female nobles, and princes were buried (the logic being that children would prefer to be with their mother).  It’s very similar to Valley of the Kings, but seemed like it was much less visited.   We got to visit three tombs there as well.  There was one notable tomb that we weren’t able to visit, Queen Nefertari’s which was the favorite wife and one true love of Ramses II.  (Ramses II was an innovator in the field of political marriages, he had 42 wives - one from each state in Egypt).   Queen Nefertari’s tomb is supposedly both magnificent and very well preserved, however to get access to it you have to buy a special license from the Egypt that costs $1000 (US), then after you have the license there is a 150 Egyptian Pound per ticket fee (about $30 US).  Our tour guide said he had got to visit it twice when he was leading large groups that pooled money together to get the license.

We rounded out the day with a trip to an Egyptian restaurant that our tour guide kept recommending.  It’s an open secret that tour guides get kickbacks from stores and restaurants they direct tourist to.  Fortunately the food was very very good and the place didn’t feel very touristy.  It actually felt kind of authentic (though I have very little to base that impression on).  The stand out dishes were duck and fried eggplant (or aubergine as they were referred to).

We got to see two new tourist scams today at the tombs.  Scam one I call the “unrequested tour guide.”  A skeevy guy hangs out in a tomb and helpfully points to wall and names the obvious gods.  Naturally they want to be tipped for this valuable service.  Who would have guessed to look at the intricately decorated walls in a tomb that is pretty much all walls!?!?  An innovative twist on this scam is to carry a flashlight and then light up whatever you’re looking at... even though the walls are already perfectly illuminated.   This allows them to ruin your visit no matter where you look.  What I found really objectionable is the same guys who punch tickets will follow you in and try to scam you.  The second scam is a good old fashion photobomb.  You’re lining up a shot of a statue or painting, they step into your photo at the last moment and pantomime what the statue or painting is doing and then you owe them a tip.  Both of these scam artists can be so persistent that’ll you want to leave a tomb just to get away from them.

One final interesting tidbit I learned today.  They are continuing to find new tombs (but not necessarily tombs that grave robbers haven’t previously found!)  Considering how many Ramses pharaohs there were alone that are accounted for, the valley ought to contain a few more of them.  There are two types of digs going on in Egypt at any one time.  Digs sponsored by Egypt - which are taking the exhaustive approach.  Dig somewhere, then dig next to there, and next to there, and so on until you’ve dug everywhere.  There are also universities outside of Egypt that sponsor digs, but they are targeted digs.  They suspect something is located in a certain area and are given permission to explore that area for it.


After a quick trip back to the hotel for a shower to freshen up we're headed back to the airport for a flight back to Cairo.

الخميس

We started less early this morning with a quiet drive crossing the Nile by bridge before picking up our tour guide on the west bank. Our first stop, Valley of the Kings, doesn’t allow photography. The tour guide tells us a bit of the history of the place and then sets us free to explore on our own. We only visit 3 tombs, in various states of decay as most are not open to the public. Bill seems to be bothered by the vultures hiding in them, but I’m enjoying looking at the differences between carved and painted figures. Our guide seems pleased that I am asking the correct questions – one of the tombs we visit is unfinished, but he left that out of the original talk.

Our next stop is the ever present tourist trap that exists on every tour in every country everywhere. This one is better than most (I am looking at you, giant grocery store in the middle of nowhere, China) in that there are actually some guys outside carving the types of things being sold inside. Bill had just said last night that he thought we should ask our tour guide if he knew a good place to buy alabaster, so I guess it will do. Not that what they are selling is actually made there, though it takes a few pointed questions to get a straight answer on that. Also, they served complimentary beverages. We picked up a few baubles we liked for probably more than we should have spent, but way less than they’d cost us state side. There seems to be some gift “custom” plied on tourists where they give you a gift and you elect to give them some amount of money. I totally stiffed the guy that handed me some stone charms and a rock sample while Bill was overly generous to the other guy for a couple of scarabs so we’ll just call that even.

Our next stop involves another lecture before being set free to wander on our own after a short ride (that is consistently referred to as “the Walt Disney”). We’re the first aboard, so obviously we’re the best target for a couple of kids selling resin cats and hideous beads. I respond to every polite question with “no” including “where are you from?” Bill is less firm and gets a lecture from one of the kids about how he’s poor and we’re rich and he can’t get a job or go to school so we have to give him money to keep his family from starving. When that doesn’t work, he heads out for easier targets. After snapping a few pictures and realizing that my camera battery is critically low on charge, we head back down. The same kid greets us again to discuss his dire circumstances and try to get us to buy stuff we don’t want. I told him the problem with his argument was that it assumed I have a heart. Bill asked him why he was wasting his time on us when we obviously weren’t going to give him anything and there were plenty of other people on the car he could be talking to instead. He stuck it out with us for the entire ride anyway and was pleasant conversation all the way back while trying every button to see which one might result in a little cash (did we have kids, if he was in America he would help our people, doesn’t he look like Obama, I am sure I’ve forgotten a few). I wished him the best of luck, but still didn’t give him anything besides the chance to practice his English.

The vultures on the west bank are not nearly as annoying. Some even take no for an answer in the Valley of Queens. We aren’t allowed to take cameras into here either, so I have no images to show why using archeological sites as munitions storage is a bad idea.

We had a late lunch that is actually quite good. Our tour guide joined us, so I figured it wasn’t going to be terrible or he’d have made himself scarce. We chatted about politics and religion in relaxed tones. He is a very likeable and knowledgeable young man whose services I highly recommend if you are going to be in the area. Let me know, I have his contact info.

Our last stop is the Colossi of Memnon and then it’s back to the hotel to pack and enjoy just a bit more luxury. Several more guests have arrived since we checked in two days ago. They may be up to 35 rooms at this point. It’s starting to feel crowded. We’re headed back to the airport.

Egypt Day 5: Karnak and Luxor

Another punishing early start.  4:30 AM this time.  As we were checking into the hotel yesterday our local travel agent asked if we’d be interested in a sunrise hot air balloon flight over Luxor.  Dawn had read about these when she was originally scoping out Luxor but we dismissed it as something that probably wouldn’t fit into our itinerary.  He explained that since we had booked a private tour of Luxor we could move the times around however we liked.  The hot air balloon was all of a sudden a viable possibility.  One look at Dawn’s face and I knew it was an inevitability.  I agreed that we should do it, but I had my mental reservations.  I have a weird relationship with acrophobia.  High enclosed places don’t usually bother me too much.  I verified this when I rode a glass bottom cable car in Hong Kong over some impressive heights.  High places without a railing tend to wig me out.  I had no idea how I was going to respond to a hot air balloon.

The shuttle for the sunrise hot air balloon left our hotel at 5:10 AM.  The shuttle took us to a dock.  There we hopped on a ferry that would take us across the Nile while we had tea/coffee and a Twinky (seriously, a Twinky).  I was still half asleep, and I don’t handle boats well, so consuming anything on a watercraft was straight out.  Fortunately the Nile was extremely calm and the trip across was enjoyable.  It was a bit chilly and I regretted not wearing a coat like many of the other people on the ferry (doh!).  At the dock on the other side of the Nile another shuttle was waiting to take us to the hot air balloon launch site.  It appears that the service has congregated guests from multiple hotels for this morning’s flight.  Groups of 12 got assigned to balloons.  The baskets were larger than I was expecting.  They each had 5 compartments.  Three people were assigned to the four outer compartments while the balloon captain rode in the middle compartment.  The balloon captain gave us a little preflight talk that mostly centered around landing.  Evidently there are three possible scenarios.  Scenario one was called the “Egyptian Landing,” which is a smooth landing where the basket just kisses the Earth.  Scenario two was the “American Landing,” which involves bouncing the basket off the ground a few times before things come to a stop.  Scenario three was called the “English Landing,” which is a full-on hit the ground and drag the basket along for awhile.  We were hoping for the Egyptian Landing but had to practice for the other two before lift off.

The sun rose right before we took off, but before long we were up in the air and treated to some amazing views.  The ascent felt strange, but peaceful.  There wasn’t much in the way of feeling the acceleration of lift.  It was more like riding a slow elevator that kept going up.  Mind you an elevator powered by bursts of open flame (which are pretty much the best kind of elevators).  Once I was standing beneath a ginormous flame thrower belching fire I was glad I had foregone the coat.    

I quickly discovered that if I didn’t look down I was fine with the experience.   The panorama was amazing and I was glad I took a chance on trying the balloon.   After a while the captain announced that we were going to make a quick landing to pick up a couple of passengers that has missed the launch due to a transportation hiccup.  We landed and 1-2 people were added to each passenger compartment.  This made things rather cramped for the second half of the flight.  Initially I was being pressed into the outer edge of the basket and my mind decided to start fabricating scenarios where I fall out of the balloon and go splat.  I managed to push myself into the center of the balloon and got a grip on the situation.  We ended up landing in some farmer’s field.  His kids seem to think a hot air balloon landing in the yard was cool (what kid wouldn’t).  The farmer seemed less pleased and it appeared that some heated words were exchanged.  The balloon ground crew that were swarming over the balloon preparing to pack it up and transport it seemed pretty indifferent to the farmer’s objections.  I got the impression they were basically telling him: “What should we do now?  Unland it here?” After landing we did the reverse of shuttle-ferry-shuttle to get back to the hotel.

One of the things I found very striking about the balloon ride is exactly how abrupt the transition between lush green irrigated field and desert takes place. It's pretty much immediate.
After a bit of a rest and some breakfast we were ready to embark on our second adventure for the day.  A guided tour of the Temples of Karnak and Luxor.  We met both our driver and tour guide and set out for Karnak.  When we arrived at the Karnak visitor center our guide set us down and told us there were three ways we could work the tour and the choice was up to us.  If we were interested in archaeology it could be more like a lecture where he would provide a lot of information and we’d take our time making our way through the temple.  If we really just wanted to take photos he could point us in the right direction for some key spots and we could wander around as we please.  The third option was a kind of hybrid where he’d rattle off the temple’s main attraction headlines and then let us do whatever.  We obviously opted for option one.  At that point he pulled out a blank piece of paper and a pen and started to hand draw a map of Egypt.  He provided a 20+ minute lecture on the history of Egypt and proceed to populate the map with important features as he explain the three unifications of Egypt during Pharionic times and the periods in between.  By the end of the lecture we had an excellent context for what we were about to see in the temple.  I can’t imagine a better start to the tour.

It turns out our tour guide is very interested in archeology and has an undergrad and Masters degree.  He’s working on a Phd in the field, but explained he had to work a day job too, so naturally I liked the guy.  He’s been giving tours for 8 years.

Before the tour I didn’t know much about the temple of Karnak or Luxor.  To my shame, I hadn’t even connected that Luxor is the same city of Thebes (Thebes was the Greek name, Luxor is the Arab name, the original Egyptian name is Waset).  What I certainly didn’t know is the temple had deteriorated over the millennia, but since the late 1800’s there has been an active effort to restore the it.  The visitor center has photos over the last century showing various milestones of restoration.  Even today there are portions of the temple that are under reconstruction.  For some reason thinking of the temple as a “work in progress” instead of just a set of ruins slowly decaying is comforting.  Our tour guide explained some of the reconstruction rules.  They pretty much don’t fake anything.  Obviously if a foundation needs to be shored up they’ll dismantle the area and rebuild it.  If they are missing pieces to a hieroglyphic or area they don’t try to “fill in the blank” instead they just fill it in with a smooth sandstone mixture.  Looking at the walls you’ll see them mottled with smooth areas from the reconstruction.  They don’t repaint anything.  If there are colors on the walls they are original.  The most they’ll do is clean the area with paper soaked in acetone.  Besides time taking its toll, the temple suffered a flooding in the late 1800’s when the set of ancient dams up river that protected the area failed.  The result was the temple was flooded for a couple of months and received serious damage.  I’m not positive, but I think this may have originally kicked off the restoration project.

Karnak is a pretty amazing place to visit.  We were told that it’s the single largest religious site in the world.  Pharaohs spent more than a millenium adding bits and pieces to the site.  Although actively adding to it went in and out of style during that timespan.  According to our tour guide Karnak and Luxor are dedicated to a holy family.  There is a father, mother, and son.  The father and son’s homes are in Karnak.  The mother’s home is the temple of Luxor.  Every pharaoh more or less joined the holy family and were then ordained by the father as a divine son to rule over the Earth.  Once you “made pharaoh” part of the deal was to then build something at Karnak and/or Luxor to show the holy family you were worthy and also to show the people you were accepted into the happy holy family.  Some pharaoh’s had longer reigns than others and really enjoyed temple building (Ramses II ring a bell? A.K.A. Ramses the Great).

Evidently there were also rules to monument building.  You could only build a monument of the living... meaning once someone died they didn’t get to be added.  This plays out with some Pharaohs being shown with different wives at different times because a wife would die and not get included in future monuments (even if the wife was his one true love... looking at you again Ramses II).

The tour guide did a great job cluing us into how to pull details out of hieroglyphics.  Obviously we didn’t have enough time to learn the alphabet, but there are a bunch of little tricks that make understanding the scene a bit easier.  His first tip was to look at the direction the heads are facing.  If all the heads are facing right, you read the panel left-to-right.  If they’re facing left then you read it right-to-left.  Same goes for up and down.  His second tip was “how to recognize a god or goddess.”  (I think that should be a standard title in all tour books.)  If the figure has an animal head it’s easy, god/godess.  If the figure has a beard look the beard, if it’s straight, not a god.  If it’s bent, then god.  Feathers are also a giveaway.  Figures with feathers over their heads are usually gods, unless the figure is an animal with feathers, then it gets complicated and you start counting the number of feathers to figure out the meaning.  What’s in the figures hands tell a lot of the story.  If a not god is touching a god that is usually mean the mortal is winning favor.  If they are holding a spear they are a warrior (duh).  There are a bunch of panels with a figure leading prisoners to the temple for sacrifice, so a rope from a big figure to a little figure usually means an unhappy ending for the little figure.  

After Karnak we drove over to the Temple of Luxor.  It’s a short drive, only 2 km away.  There used to be a road lined with sphinxes between the two.  Every year the priests would carry the golden father statue down that road and let it hang out with the mother for a 15 day honeymoon.  Over the centuries the road fell into disrepair and was eventually lost and ultimately parts of modern luxor was built over it.  There is an effort to reclaim all the land and rebuild the road.  Our tour guide told us that perhaps next time we came to visit we’d be able to walk between the temples.

The Temple of Luxor is much smaller than the grand Karnak, but there are some cool things to see there.  A couple of giant statues of guess who... Ramses II!  The short lived but now famous Tutankhamun got a bit of monument building in for himself and his wife.  One of the parts I found interesting was the repurposing of the site as a holy place.  Coptic Christians repurposed part of the temple as a church during early Christendom.  Part of that process involved plastering over hieroglyphics in order to paint Bible story pictures on the wall.  Turns out that they inadvertently preserved some vivid colors on the original artwork by sealing it behind plaster for centuries. 

Over time the temple was filled with rubble and eventually people forgot a temple was even there.  Much later on they decided to build a mosque on the site for a celebrated holyman.  Eventually they figured out they had a Egyptian archaeological site was under a mosque and that posed a conundrum.  They excavated around the site of the mosque and now its front door hangs up on the wall of the Temple.

The visit to the temples was an amazing tour.  I feel very lucky to have received a private tour from a someone so knowledgeable.  The only thing that marred the day is whenever we tried to walk around and take photos the same scene would unfold.  An old man who had been ignoring everyone else would spot us and stand up.  As we drew near he’d start trying to get our attention and try to get us to follow him to this amazing thing that we missed.  Once there he’d point to something on the wall.  Perhaps there be some little ritual he show you how to perform and then demand a tip for his valuable service.  It would happen in like every large space in both temples.  It’s difficult to enjoy the space when a group of men is desperately trying to catch your attention to scam you.

الأربعاء

This morning we got up at 4:30 and stumbled down to the hotel lobby for our ride. While I wasn’t able to get Bill onto a camel in Giza, he was totally up for a hot air balloon ride, even though it involved two boats and great heights. Again, it is strange and kind of nice that nobody is here. Nice for us, that is, not for all the people working in the tourism industry in a tourist area with no tourists.

The ferry ride to the west bank included coffee and twinkies. We were seated with some other guests from our hotel and I got to chat with a man from Nottingham about Hong Kong. He lived there for a while about ten years ago. On the other side, we are divided up into different vans to go to the launch site. Bill and I somehow end up in a van with the film crew that videos the flight and tries to sell DVDs which interested us not at all. At the launch site, several balloons are getting underway.

We’re the last people to get into ours and then we are off. This is a new experience for both of us, and one I genuinely enjoyed. We got a wonderful view of the tombs and the west bank area.

We also got two flights as a group of tourists arrived late by train (George told us the sleeper train had gotten less reliable) and our balloon landed out on a flat, sandy area near a road to pick them up. It was so fast they didn’t take the time to drag out the steps. As the British lady next to me said, “they’re just chucking ‘em in!” That made for a slightly more crowded flight, but I was able to finagle my way back to the outside corner, so I didn’t mind. The second landing was a bit more interesting. He brought us down in the middle of the farmland much to the annoyance of the farmer. And to the delight of children who got to dance around laughing at the balloon deflating and beg for change.

Our van on the way back didn’t even include the film crew (I guess they went where there might be business), so we had a private ride to the docks followed by a ferry to ourselves. Paradise so exclusive it only includes us.

After breakfast, we headed back out with a new tour guide with a couple of archeology degrees under his belt who is looking into getting a doctorate. When we get to Karnak Temple, he asks if we want the lecture tour, the highlights tour, or just to be left alone to wander around. Being the sort of people who watch things on the Harvard Youtube channel, we obviously opted for the lecture tour. I’m pretty sure that the vast amount of typing Bill has been doing is a summary of the history, so I’ll stick with observational commentary.

Bill tried a couple of times to get the tour guide to talk about the drop off in tourism and his responses were evasive. He seemed quite determined to project the current experience as typical even though we mostly had the place to ourselves.

There is a downside to having the run of the place – the vast number of people who are trying to get money from you have not decreased proportionally. While in both Karnak and Luxor Temples, so long as our guide was in sight, nobody bothered us. His philosophy was that he’d give us a tour with a lot of history about the structures, point out places where the original colors were still visible, explain some of the scenes carved into walls, and then he’d give us some time to wander around and take pictures on our own. As soon as he was out of sight, the vultures would descend.

I read Bill’s comments about feeling bad that he’s ignoring people trying to be nice at the pyramids and my response was that he’s never been a single woman. He feels bad because he is making the mistake of letting them define his context. And those were guys with services and products to sell.

These guys don’t have anything but the desire to take your money. They are constantly calling out to you, “Please, sir, please ma’am, let me show you this, there’s a photograph here, there’s a story to this panel.” Whatever they can to try to lure you into an isolated area and then make the universal gesture for greasing their palms with your cash because they’ve just done so much for you.

I decided it might be an interesting experience to see how they operated and let one lead me off in Luxor with only a token of resistance on my part. He was super polite the entire time that he was forcing me into an isolated area, taking my hands to make me touch some carving he didn’t explain, tugging at my camera to take a picture of me I wasn’t interested in, generally playing off of the societal expectation of politeness to keep me from yelling at him or running away before asking for money. I handed him a twenty, which is about $3.30, because it was the smallest bill I had. Pretty generous for someone who has done nothing but waste my time and harass me, but I did elect to try the experience. He held the bill up and said, “No, you don’t understand, 100.” I laughed at him and walked off. So, yeah, douche bag frat guys have the same operating principles. Here’s the picture. Obviously worth every penny.

Shields back up, here are some pictures of Karnak Temple.

And Luxor Temple.

After our tours, we returned to the comfort of our hotel and again wiled away the rest of the day enjoying the weather and relaxing as boats glide. Sipping drinks on the banks of the Nile while the sun goes down is a pretty nice way to end the day.