Our Egypt Experience
Historically, when taking a big vacation to a special place, I have been challenged to get the most out of it since I rarely allowed the time to do reading in advance or to digest and absorb the trip on return. With my newfound retirement time, I was able to do more advance reading and this trip to Egypt was so impact full I felt the need to write down thoughts along the way and did a couple of emails as well. Here’s the consolidated trip report. I understand most won’t have time to read it, but I sure enjoyed the experience of trying to capture what we had seen and felt during the trip and the process really helped me internalize the experience of the trip.
First day in Cairo was at the Giza pyramids and Sphinx, we caught it on a weekend day so had a lot of locals with kids--pretty neat. It hadn’t occurred to me that every generation of Egyptians has to get here to see these as well. It is amazing how few Americans, and even Europeans we saw in Egypt --our kind of place:) The locals even take pictures of us! Kind of sad though, even at its height just before the Arab Spring uprising and overthrow of Mubarak in 2010 they only had 14 million tourists in Egypt. That's what Nashville does in a year now! They dropped down to about 5 million in 2016 before rebounding last year a bit.
After seeing the pictures of these wonders of the world my whole life, it was a thrill to see them up close and personal, even climbed into the tunnel to the burial chamber in the great pyramid. A bit like caving. The Sphinx was a surprise. Given the scale of the Pyramids, it's actually pretty small. I can see now that most of the pictures I've seen over the years have been a bit misleading, kind of implying it is on the scale of the pyramids, but it's actually probably only a tenth of their size—still very impressive.
the blocks up the side of the pyramid.
Everyone we meet, even casually, seems happy to see Americans here. We've found the Egyptians to be a warm and happy people. However, our tour company, and the Egypt dept of tourism, isn't taking any chances. We've had a security guard, with an assault weapon, with us wherever we go.
This detail scene, from the Papyrus of Hunefer (c. 1275 BCE)-Cairo Museum, shows the scribe Hunefer's heart being weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the jackal-headed Anubis. The ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the gods, records the result. If his heart equals exactly the weight of the feather, Hunefer is allowed to pass into the afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the waiting chimeric devouring creature Ammit composed of the deadly crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus.
We did have a neat unplanned experience one evening. Estelle and I had entertained a group of VSA Egypt folks in our home a month or so ago. We connected with one of them here and they insisted on taking us to dinner at a local place. Really a cool experience!
Luxor and the Valley of the Kings
After a couple of days in Cairo we flew to Luxor and had three nights there at the Winter Palace, and visiting the temples there and at Karnak and the tombs at the Valley of the Kings.
However, the other tombs wall decorations were incredibly detailed and colorful and I'd say the Valley of the Kings was the highlight of the trip in many ways. What's amazing is the fact that these tombs and temples were all pretty much buried and lost to history until the Europeans, beginning with Napoleon and his group of scientists in 1798, began to uncover, analyze, reconstruct, and document. A lot of the temples were pretty much piles of engraved stone and required re-assembly like a jigsaw puzzle.
At Luxor, we boarded our boat for five days sailing up the Nile river, south, to Aswan.
Cruising the Nile is the stuff of dreams. Beautiful weather every day watching the mostly natural, palm lined shoreline drift by interspersed with fields, pastures, livestock, and small communities.
The stops were visits to ancient temples, quarries, local farms, and communities where we got to visit, and share meals, with local folks. But a lot of time was just peacefully and comfortably cruising, and eating of course. The food and service were first rate. We enjoyed the Egyptian staff interactions as well. Again, a fun and happy people. Estelle was the pre-dinner show a couple of nights with her performances of "No News," and "Ntombe," expanding her fan base around the world!
Egyptian food is lots of legumes, vegetables, and fruit from Egypt's rich Nile Valley and Delta. It shares similarities with the food of the Eastern Mediterranean region, such as rice-stuffed vegetables, grape leaves, shawerma, kebab and kofta. Examples of Egyptian dishes include ful medames, mashed fava beans; kushari, lentils and pasta; and molokhiya, bush okra stew. Grilled chicken and beef were often served to us along with fish, but in general Egyptians are pretty much vegetarians. Pita bread is served at every meal along with lots of hummus, and other dips. Although not favored by their religion, alcohol, especially beer, is easily available. Limited wine and liquor choices at pretty steep prices relative to other food and drink, are also generally available.
One Highlight for Estelle of the cruise section of the trip was the Camel market. Talk about an ancient tradition! On Saturday mornings, when we were there, the camel sellers from Sudan meet with the camel buyers in Egypt in a market in Daraw. So there we are, of course, right in the middle of a hundred or more hobbled camels jumping around on three legs, and live spontaneous auctions going on all around us. Talk about sights, sounds, smells! We got a little time with one of the senior Sudanese traders who, with the help of our guide, shared how this all works, and has worked, for hundreds of years.
The time on the boat really allowed reflection on the what and how of Egypt and its people. What's astounding is the fact that, in actuality, Egypt is 90% unoccupied desert. People live in just a narrow stretch of land on each side of the Nile river as it traverses from the current southern border with Sudan to the Mediterranean at the Nile Delta. The political geographic area of Egypt is about the state of Texas, but 90% of the people live in the 10% of that land that borders the Nile. The Greek historian Herodotus called Egypt the "gift of the Nile", since the kingdom owed its survival to the annual flooding of the Nile and the resulting depositing of fertile silt.
After five days on the Nile, we left the boat in Aswan. Aswan to us could be called the Jewel of the Nile. In fact, Agatha Christie actually stayed in our hotel, the Old Cataract, as did Churchill and other notables. Built in 1899, it is one of the colonial classics and today is updated to world class five star level. The view from our balcony over the river, the city, the temple ruins, and more was worth the price of admission for the entire trip. In fact, we elected to skip the last day of touring, Christmas Day, to just have a great down day on our balcony at the hotel overlooking the Nile and Aswan, before we are off on the next phase of our trip to South Africa. Estelle loved the sounds from the city and the river and, as with many river cities, you don't have to go anywhere, just watch the world pass by your window.
We did a trip through the desert to Abu SImbel from Aswan, which introduced us to the Nubian culture and people and the temples there to Ramses the Great, thought to be the Pharaoh of Moses fame, and his wife Nefertari. The story of the Nubian people is a familiar one that we know of ethnic minorities both from American history and many other places we've traveled. They are an African ethnic group of people who have occupied what is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt since before ancient times. In ancient times they were frequently at war with the Egyptians and ended up conquered by them as is often displayed in the temple art. However, even in modern times they've had real challenges. First the British, when they are ruling here in the 1800s, decide to draw an artificial boundary between Egypt and Sudan, which just happens to cut across the Nubian people's lands, so that people often needed passports to visit their families in the other country. Then, when Nasser built the Aswan dam they created a modern Noah's flood displacing 100,000 Nubian families from their historical farms along the river, which created a diaspora of those people who are still struggling today.
Our Guide
About 24 hours after leaving Nashville, with stops in NYC and Rome, we arrived on time and all worked well for the trip to Cairo. Things were a little weird when the leg from Rome to Cairo was loaded and we saw about 180 mostly middle eastern looking men and about 5 women, including flight attendants and Estelle. Seems only one gender travels back and forth from Europe to Egypt. Estelle and the driver from the airport, a Coptic guy, were exchanging the only Arab we knew. Marhaba (hello), Shukran(thank you). We stayed downtown, near Tahrir Square at the Cairo Marriot, built on the site of an old palace—everything here was old at one time! And a whole lot hasn’t changed very much.
Cairo is one of those multi-faceted old/new cities. Much of the main city is a chaotic maze of dusty streets, cluttered shops and businesses, and crazy drivers who have their own system of moving through the city which has almost no traffic lights and very few painted lanes. Do not even think of driving here. And our only Uber experience was a bit challenging since we couldn’t communicate very well with the driver trying to find us in this maze of unmarked streets.
The Pyramids and Sphinx
First day in Cairo was at the Giza pyramids and Sphinx, we caught it on a weekend day so had a lot of locals with kids--pretty neat. It hadn’t occurred to me that every generation of Egyptians has to get here to see these as well. It is amazing how few Americans, and even Europeans we saw in Egypt --our kind of place:) The locals even take pictures of us! Kind of sad though, even at its height just before the Arab Spring uprising and overthrow of Mubarak in 2010 they only had 14 million tourists in Egypt. That's what Nashville does in a year now! They dropped down to about 5 million in 2016 before rebounding last year a bit.
After seeing the pictures of these wonders of the world my whole life, it was a thrill to see them up close and personal, even climbed into the tunnel to the burial chamber in the great pyramid. A bit like caving. The Sphinx was a surprise. Given the scale of the Pyramids, it's actually pretty small. I can see now that most of the pictures I've seen over the years have been a bit misleading, kind of implying it is on the scale of the pyramids, but it's actually probably only a tenth of their size—still very impressive.
Of course, you have to keep asking yourself, how in the world did they do this? Quarry these massive blocks of stone, then move them to the sites, and then raise them up and put them in place? Think about it, the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world from its construction in 2560 BC till 1311 AD when the Lincoln Cathedral spire passed it.
For those number folks out there:
· The mass of the pyramid is estimated at 5.9 million tons. The volume is roughly 2,500,000 cubic meters (88,000,000 cu ft).
· Based on these estimates, building the pyramid in 20 years would involve installing approximately 800 tons of stone every day and, since it consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks, completing the building in 20 years would involve moving an average of more than 12 of the blocks into place each hour, day and night.
· Many of the casing-stones and inner chamber blocks of the Great Pyramid fit together with extremely high precision. The mean opening of the casing stone joints is only 0.5 millimetres (0.020 in) wide.[5]
· The accuracy of the pyramid's workmanship is such that the four sides of the base have an average error of only 58 millimeters in length. The base is horizontal and flat to within ±15 mm (0.6 in).
· The sides of the square base are closely aligned to the four cardinal compass points (within four minutes of arc) based on true north, not magnetic north, and
· The finished base was squared to a mean corner error of only 12 seconds of arc.
· The ratio of the perimeter to height of 1760/280 Egyptian Royal cubits equates to 2Ï€ to an accuracy of better than 0.05 percent (corresponding to the well-known approximation of Ï€ as 22/7).
There have been many theories over the years of how they could have done this in the time required during the King’s life, very little supporting archaeological evidence. However, a new discovery, just a few months ago, seems to point to a system of raising the blocks with ramps, side stairways, posts, and ropes allowing men to apply their weight down the stairs and pulling
the blocks up the side of the pyramid.
It’s still strange to me that the Egyptians preserved in writing (on papyrus and stone) and art much information about how they lived and what the king did, but nowhere have we found any documentation records of how they built these massive structures.
More Explorations in Cairo
Everyone we meet, even casually, seems happy to see Americans here. We've found the Egyptians to be a warm and happy people. However, our tour company, and the Egypt dept of tourism, isn't taking any chances. We've had a security guard, with an assault weapon, with us wherever we go.
The big Cairo Museum was pretty awesome but old and run down. They've invested a billion dollars and 15 yrs in a new museum which still is a couple of years away from opening. Still, where else can you find 4000 yr old art like this?
It's the age of all this that blows my mind. The ancient Egyptians were using advanced techniques, and lots of manpower, to build these huge structures and create this art, and writing stories about it all, 2000 yrs before the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, or Mayans were doing much of anything. Also interesting that they had concepts like afterlife, including heaven or hell, and that one of their kings, Akhenaten, the father of Tutankhamen, even mandated a one-god religion in 1300 BC.
This detail scene, from the Papyrus of Hunefer (c. 1275 BCE)-Cairo Museum, shows the scribe Hunefer's heart being weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the jackal-headed Anubis. The ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the gods, records the result. If his heart equals exactly the weight of the feather, Hunefer is allowed to pass into the afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the waiting chimeric devouring creature Ammit composed of the deadly crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus.
We did have a neat unplanned experience one evening. Estelle and I had entertained a group of VSA Egypt folks in our home a month or so ago. We connected with one of them here and they insisted on taking us to dinner at a local place. Really a cool experience!Luxor and the Valley of the Kings
After a couple of days in Cairo we flew to Luxor and had three nights there at the Winter Palace, and visiting the temples there and at Karnak and the tombs at the Valley of the Kings.
Karnak (2055 BC) and Luxor are massive temples (1400 BC) built to their various gods and are fairly representative of ancient Egyptian temples built over a couple of thousand years.
, including King Tut's tomb. Of course, there’s nothing really in his tomb now since it was all removed to museums. It was not even very decorated, since he died young and they didn’t have time to do much. The neat thing is, Estelle and I had actually seen what they found in the tomb at the King Tut Exhibit in ‘78 in New Orleans, when it toured the US. That exhibit was presented as a replica of the tomb, where you entered as Howard Carter did when he discovered it. It was very moving to be entering the real passage he did, 96 years later.
However, the other tombs wall decorations were incredibly detailed and colorful and I'd say the Valley of the Kings was the highlight of the trip in many ways. What's amazing is the fact that these tombs and temples were all pretty much buried and lost to history until the Europeans, beginning with Napoleon and his group of scientists in 1798, began to uncover, analyze, reconstruct, and document. A lot of the temples were pretty much piles of engraved stone and required re-assembly like a jigsaw puzzle.
Our hotel in Luxor was the Winter Palace on the Nile. Another beautiful place.
We also did the sunrise balloon ride over Luxor and the Nile to give another perspective on this ancient land.
Cruising the Nile
I'd always heard about Nile Cruises but never knew much about them. They run between Luxor and Aswan, where the Dam is. The most popular are the large cruise ships that carry about 130 passengers each. They can do the trip in a couple of days with a single stop. The second option, which we chose, is to take one of the smaller (20 passenger) Dahabiyas, sailboats, which use a small towing boat if needed. So the quiet cruising allowed Estelle, and us, to hear the sounds of the river and shore. Multiple times per day, whether on the boat or on shore, Estelle heard the Muslim call to prayer. Our frequent refrain was, “Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore.” Our trip was 5 days with about 8 stops to see temples, towns, and people along the way.
Cruising the Nile is the stuff of dreams. Beautiful weather every day watching the mostly natural, palm lined shoreline drift by interspersed with fields, pastures, livestock, and small communities.
The stops were visits to ancient temples, quarries, local farms, and communities where we got to visit, and share meals, with local folks. But a lot of time was just peacefully and comfortably cruising, and eating of course. The food and service were first rate. We enjoyed the Egyptian staff interactions as well. Again, a fun and happy people. Estelle was the pre-dinner show a couple of nights with her performances of "No News," and "Ntombe," expanding her fan base around the world!
Egyptian food is lots of legumes, vegetables, and fruit from Egypt's rich Nile Valley and Delta. It shares similarities with the food of the Eastern Mediterranean region, such as rice-stuffed vegetables, grape leaves, shawerma, kebab and kofta. Examples of Egyptian dishes include ful medames, mashed fava beans; kushari, lentils and pasta; and molokhiya, bush okra stew. Grilled chicken and beef were often served to us along with fish, but in general Egyptians are pretty much vegetarians. Pita bread is served at every meal along with lots of hummus, and other dips. Although not favored by their religion, alcohol, especially beer, is easily available. Limited wine and liquor choices at pretty steep prices relative to other food and drink, are also generally available.
One Highlight for Estelle of the cruise section of the trip was the Camel market. Talk about an ancient tradition! On Saturday mornings, when we were there, the camel sellers from Sudan meet with the camel buyers in Egypt in a market in Daraw. So there we are, of course, right in the middle of a hundred or more hobbled camels jumping around on three legs, and live spontaneous auctions going on all around us. Talk about sights, sounds, smells! We got a little time with one of the senior Sudanese traders who, with the help of our guide, shared how this all works, and has worked, for hundreds of years.
The time on the boat really allowed reflection on the what and how of Egypt and its people. What's astounding is the fact that, in actuality, Egypt is 90% unoccupied desert. People live in just a narrow stretch of land on each side of the Nile river as it traverses from the current southern border with Sudan to the Mediterranean at the Nile Delta. The political geographic area of Egypt is about the state of Texas, but 90% of the people live in the 10% of that land that borders the Nile. The Greek historian Herodotus called Egypt the "gift of the Nile", since the kingdom owed its survival to the annual flooding of the Nile and the resulting depositing of fertile silt.
Our guide, Caroline, was great at helping us understand and match up what we saw along the trip with the history of ancient Egypt as best it is understood. Egyptians trace their history to about 3100 BC when king Narmer, essentially became the father of their country by unifying the previously warring peoples of the upper, southern, Nile, and the northern, lower, Nile. From then on, there were about 20 dynasties, where a king and his descendants ruled in partnership with the priests, keepers of the polytheistic religion. About the same time as the Sumerians, they invented the idea of written language, which enabled the continuity of their religion as well as the administration of the entire Nile river valley. The abundance they created enabled the civilization to develop not only the language, but art, engineering, anatomy, astronomy, and culture far ahead of the rest of the world. What's remarkable is, today, as we traveled the Nile, we saw and visited villages along the way where they are subsistence farming, much like they were 3000 yrs ago.
So, the question is, why did they invent all this in ancient times, and then really never progress much past this level of development until the Roman empire takeover? You would think, with that 2000 year head start as a civilization they would have proceeded to stay ahead of everyone and be rulers of the world today.
My assessment is, they reached the advanced level they did, early on, and then rested on their laurels, continuing to do the same things, tell the same stories, about the same gods, in the same way for a couple of thousand years. Consequently, they weren't the first to develop things like iron, steel, plows, mathematics, literature, advanced weapons, farming tools and techniques, and tactics of war. So, they were leapfrogged by multiple other western, and eastern, civilizations.
Therefore, in 670 BC they were conquered by the Assyrians, followed by, the Persians, Alexander, the Romans, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, French, and British, until regaining their independence under King Fuad in 1922, by which time their people and culture had been displaced in many ways. I must say, after visiting other Islamic-culture countries, Islamic culture has different priorities than the West. It does not seem to recognize and reward the same type of freedoms and technological and economic progress that most Western countries do, even though their young people are hungry for the life they see today in Western countries and many are pursuing it in Cairo today.
Aswan—the city, dam, and the temples at Abu Simbel
After five days on the Nile, we left the boat in Aswan. Aswan to us could be called the Jewel of the Nile. In fact, Agatha Christie actually stayed in our hotel, the Old Cataract, as did Churchill and other notables. Built in 1899, it is one of the colonial classics and today is updated to world class five star level. The view from our balcony over the river, the city, the temple ruins, and more was worth the price of admission for the entire trip. In fact, we elected to skip the last day of touring, Christmas Day, to just have a great down day on our balcony at the hotel overlooking the Nile and Aswan, before we are off on the next phase of our trip to South Africa. Estelle loved the sounds from the city and the river and, as with many river cities, you don't have to go anywhere, just watch the world pass by your window.
We did a trip through the desert to Abu SImbel from Aswan, which introduced us to the Nubian culture and people and the temples there to Ramses the Great, thought to be the Pharaoh of Moses fame, and his wife Nefertari. The story of the Nubian people is a familiar one that we know of ethnic minorities both from American history and many other places we've traveled. They are an African ethnic group of people who have occupied what is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt since before ancient times. In ancient times they were frequently at war with the Egyptians and ended up conquered by them as is often displayed in the temple art. However, even in modern times they've had real challenges. First the British, when they are ruling here in the 1800s, decide to draw an artificial boundary between Egypt and Sudan, which just happens to cut across the Nubian people's lands, so that people often needed passports to visit their families in the other country. Then, when Nasser built the Aswan dam they created a modern Noah's flood displacing 100,000 Nubian families from their historical farms along the river, which created a diaspora of those people who are still struggling today.
Abu Simbel is the largest of the huge temples that had to be moved in the sixties when they built the Aswan High Dam and flooded the area. The story of how they moved these mountain-sized temples
is almost more incredible than how they were built to begin with. UNESCO, led by support from the US, is the only reason these are visible today. Otherwise they would be beneath 60 meters of water. We saw a nighttime light and sound show which included not only lighting the temples and telling the stories, but even projecting giant sized images of the ancient art on the side of the mountains as they told the story.
The magic of the night was punctuated by the rising full moon behind us over the lake as we watched the show, and then, after the show ended and we were walking out, the space station passed overhead, standing out like a huge shooting star in the sky. Talk about a trifecta! We couldn't have written that script any better. While you can do a quick day flight to and from the temple at Abu Simbel, we’re glad we did an overnight stay there to absorb the Nubian culture and to see the nighttime show at the temple.
is almost more incredible than how they were built to begin with. UNESCO, led by support from the US, is the only reason these are visible today. Otherwise they would be beneath 60 meters of water. We saw a nighttime light and sound show which included not only lighting the temples and telling the stories, but even projecting giant sized images of the ancient art on the side of the mountains as they told the story. 
The magic of the night was punctuated by the rising full moon behind us over the lake as we watched the show, and then, after the show ended and we were walking out, the space station passed overhead, standing out like a huge shooting star in the sky. Talk about a trifecta! We couldn't have written that script any better. While you can do a quick day flight to and from the temple at Abu Simbel, we’re glad we did an overnight stay there to absorb the Nubian culture and to see the nighttime show at the temple.
Our Guide
One thing we have learned over the years, is a great guide can make all the difference. This trip was no exception. We had the same guide, Caroline, https://www.facebook.com/caroline.fayez, for the entire two week trip. She got to know us all and we got to know her. Her proud interpretation of her country and facilitation of the logistics of the trip were outstanding. Caroline is an educated Egyptologist who has been guiding with OAT since 2000. She is Coptic Christian, which is about 15% of the population, but they have had to live under Islamic law for about 1300 yrs now. She represents the younger generation of Egyptians. She was supporting the revolution at Tahrir Square in 2011 when Mubarak was overthrown. But the subsequent upheaval in Egypt, including the precipitous drop in tourism, which was her livelihood, caused her to move her family to Canada. She only returned this year as the tourism has somewhat rebounded, and she is glad to be home, but wondering why nothing has really changed for the people of Egypt under the new government led by their president El-sisi.
Accommodations and our group travel
The OAT accommodations were five star hotels in Cairo and Luxor, and Aswan. The boat we were on, AIDA was launched in September of ’18 and is very reminiscent of the beautiful Aria we had on the Amazon. We have been very impressed with Overseas Adventure Travel. We traveled with 14 other folks about our age, almost all of whom have done multiple trips with OAT and are a neat group of people to be around. The trip was really fast paced and active, climbing over, under, and into assorted ruins and rubble, and covering lots of ground on town and city streets with three meals a day of generally very tasty local food. Estelle was happy that she was able to touch most of the engravings and statues we've seen. It's all pretty much an open air museum that you can just wander through and experience any way you wish.
When Caroline at the end asked each of us to share our personal highlight of the trip, mine was how enjoyable and compatible our traveling group was, and what an extra bonus that was for our trip. The other 14 travelers were a fun and interesting group and with all our shared experiences and time together we feel like we have new friends from around the country. Surprisingly, two of the couples actually met as single travelers on previous OAT trips.
Postscript
So, as I’m finishing this write-up we got the news that, the day we flew from Egypt to South Africa, a terrorist bomb exploded next to a tourist bus at the pyramids, killing four Vietnamese tourists and the local guide, injuring eleven others. Our first thought is how sad we are for the 99.9% of the Egyptian people who just want to live peacefully and want to welcome tourists to their country, and now will have another setback in their main industry, tourism. Would we go back right now, even after hearing this? Absolutely.
Well, that's about it for Egypt. We're glad we went and I encourage you to put/keep it on y our travel bucket list. If you do go, we can highly recommend this particular tour company, this guide, and this itinerary.
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