| Egypt's
modern cities are mostly nothing to write home about, but it's definitely
worth staying a few days in Cairo, which is by far the largest city in
the country. One day at least should be reserved for a look
around the Egyptian museum, which is home to many fabulous treasures from
the days of the pharoahs. The museum itself was built before
Egypt became independent and walking through it you might be forgiven for
thinking that nothing had changed or been touched since the previous French
and British curators had departed. |
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The timeline of Egyptian
history is very long and very full, but the museum has items from every
period, including prehistoric mummies preserved by being buried in the
hot desert sands, through to the Narmer palette, a perfectly preserved
stone tablet which records the first uniting of the kingdoms of Upper Egypt
and Lower Egypt under one of the first pharoahs whose name is known to
use.
Of course there are many items from the long line of Egyptian pharoahs,
and more from the period after Alexander the Great brought Egypt into his
empire, starting a lineage of Ptolemaic kings and queens, including the
most famous Egyptian queen of all, Cleopatra VII, who married Mark Antony
and thus began Roman dominance over her kingdom.
None of the artifacts in the museum is more famous than the death
mask of Tutankhamun, unearthed in a remarkably good state of preservation
in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. Tutankhamun's treasures
are kept in a series of connected rooms and hallways on the second floor
of the museum, with some of the most valuable items within a dimly lit
room where flash photography isn't permitted. |
| Tutankhamun
(sometimes spelled Tutankahmen) was a very minor Egyptian king, but he
is now extremely well known because his grave is the only one which has
been found intact with virtually all of its hundreds of treasures, many
made of gold and other precious materials. As well as the death
mask, there are many other artifacts such as statues
of Tutankhamun and the three nested gold coffins in which his mummified
body was found. |
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| There's
also furniture like this throne, inlaid with a depiction of Tutankhamun
with his wife Ankhesenamun, executed in a much more naturalistic style
than most Egyptian art. The young royal couple had two daughters,
both of whom were still-born and buried with their father. |
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These differences in artistic style can be traced back to pharoah Ahkenaten,
shown here enjoying a quiet moment with his wife Nefertiti.
His original name was Amenhotep IV, but he changed it to Ahkenaten ("spirit
of Aten") to signify an extraordinary shift he made from traditional Egyptian
religion to worship of the Aten, or sun disk, whose rays are shown extended
down towards the royal family.
This move to a monotheistic religion was very radical and probably alienated
the traditional priesthood, so Ahkenaten tried to solidify the change by
constructing a new capital called Akhetaten ("horizon of Aten"), which
is now referred to as Amarna. He also introduced many changes
into Egyptian artistic expression, including unusually informal family
settings like the one shown here, as well as changes in portraiture such
as pot bellies and very strangely shaped hips and facial features.
However
after his death the old establishment reasserted itself, all of his changes
were eliminated and a systematic attempt was made to erase him completely
from history by the destruction of monuments and artworks and the removal
of his name from records, often by defacing his name on carved works.
It's thought that Tutankhamun was either his son or grandson, but even
he changed his name Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun to signify the destruction
of Ahkenaten's heretical beliefs. |
The museum isn't all pharoahs and their wives. There are thousands
and thousands of items on exhibit, many depicting daily activities like
fishing, farming and agriculture.
Many of these items were commissioned by government officials, like the
dwarf Seneb shown here with his wife and two children. Following
Egyptian fashion, the boy has long hair and the girl short hair and, in
another Egyptian convention, males are shown with dark skin and females
with light skin.
In ancient Egypt dwarves were regarded favourably and could attain positions
of power; Seneb was apparently chief of the royal textile works under
pharoah Pepi II. The modern day Egyptian government has used
this image in televised family planning campaigns. |
| Cairo
is also a good base for visiting some of Egypt's most striking monuments.
The site of the sphinx and the three great pyramids at Giza is without
doubt the tourist destination people most closely associate with Egypt,
and they're so near to the city that they're in danger of being engulfed
by Cairo's western suburbs. It's well worth hiring a camel
or horse and a guide and taking a ride around the desert. |
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| The
large complex at Saqqara is about 15 kilometers south of Giza and is most
famous as the site of Zoser's large step pyramid and various well preserved
tombs and other structures. This step pyramid is the oldest
surviving large-scale stone structure in the world. It was
designed by Imhotep, the most famous architect in all of Egyptian history,
who stacked six traditional stone platforms on top of each other. |
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| The
pyramids
at Dahshur are 10 kilometers to the south of Saqqara, and have only
been accessible to the public since 1996 because they were previously within
a restricted military area. Largely because of their isolation,
they're considerably less known than the archaeological remains at Saqqara,
but the structures are actually more impressive and at least as historically
significant, with the Bent
Pyramid, the Red Pyramid and the Black Pyramid all within a fairly
small area. The Bent Pyramid was the first attempt to build
a true pyramid and it still retains more of its limestone casing than any
other pyramid in the country. However it appears that the builders
started at too steep an angle and had to change their plans part-way through
construction. The Red Pyramid was constructed soon afterwards
and was a complete success, its sides have the same 43 degree angle used
on the top section of the Bent Pyramid. |
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| There
are other interesting tourist sites within Cairo, the most obvious being
the Citadel built on a promontory above the city. This was
a military fortification for the Arabs, Turks, French, British and Egyptians
in turn and contains several examples of Islamic architecture, such as
the Mohammed Ali mosque, named after the 19th century Egyptian ruler who
almost single handledly attempted to bring Egypt into the modern world. |
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| The
Egyptian National military museum also occupies a site within the citadel
walls, with displays of Egyptian military hardware, captured Israeli equipment
and other artifacts intended to glorify Egyptian military achievements.
It's fun for the whole family, as you'll see from the many schoolchildren
and mothers wearing all-enveloping black burqas who stroll around while
enjoying the technological, historical and sociological aspects of the
tanks, jet fighters and amphibious troop transports. |
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| The
citadel also hosts cultural performances in the evening, in this case a
troupe of whirling dervishes. The dervishes belong to the Sufi
sect of Islam, which originated in Turkey from the teachings of the Persian
poet and theologian Rumi. The Sufis follow a mystical approach
which is very different than traditional Islam, and many orthodox muslims
consider them heretical. However its emphasis on the love of God
makes it the perfect brand of Islam to present to western tourists, and
the tradition of poet, dance and song makes it very well suited to this
sort of display. The audience at this performance was certainly
very enthusiastic, the ushers had to continually remove barriers and other
furnishings from the room so that more people could be allowed in, and
there was a great deal of applause throughout the show. |
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| The
area known as "Islamic Cairo" lies directly outside the walls of the Citadel
and there are quite a few interesting sights to see, such as some of the
old city gates, mosques and a few harems. Some of these mosques
were damaged by cannons fired by the French from the Citadel, and you can
still see the holes in the walls where the cannon balls landed.
While I was visiting the mosque of Al Ghouri the imam kindly had one of
his students show me around and take photos of the interior, even though
this is a working mosque. |
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| Not
all of Egypt's treasures are to be found near Cairo, therefore many tourists
take a trip up the Nile, the most popular destination being Luxor.
Following the collapse of the Old Kingdom and a period of disintegration,
Egypt was reunited with the city of Thebes as its capital.
Even though the administrative capital was later moved north to Memphis,
Thebes remained the ceremonial capital, with the temple of Luxor as one
focus. The avenue of sphinxes leads to a gate between two statues
of Ramses II and a 25 meter high obelisk; there were originally six statues
of Ramses, four seated and two standing, and there were also two obelisks,
but in1835 one of them was taken to Paris where it now stands in the Place
de la Concorde. Inside there are various shrines and temples,
as well as halls and courtyards with many columns and reliefs carved into
the stonework. |
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| The
avenue of sphinxes originally stretched for 3 kilometers northwards to
the temples at Karnak, a large complex measuring 1500 meters by 800 meters.
This was an even more important site than the Luxor temple, the pylons
at the entrance are twice the size of those at the Luxor temple, and inside
you can still see the sacred lake and the many temples built by pharoahs
over a long period of time. The Great Hypostyle Hall shown
here has many of its pillars intact, you can get a sense of its scale from
the tourist dwarfed in the background, but a single photo can't show the
roughly 130 columns originally holding up the roof, or the many freizes
on the walls. |
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There's more to see on the western bank of the Nile at Luxor, the fabled
location of the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.
Not only are many of the most famous Egyptian kings and queens buried in
this region, but so too are many of their high officials.
Nowadays it's possible to tour many of the tombs in the region, with walls
and even ceilings entirely covered in paintings and hieroglyphics.
Unfortunately, to preserve the colors of the paintings it's not permitted
to take photographs, so this is something you have to experience first
hand. Some of the burial chambers still contain the original
stone sarcophagai, though the unimaginable treasures that were entombed
along with the occupants were stolen long ago, or were removed more recently
to museums.
As well as the tombs you can also see the Colossi of Memnon, two somewhat
the worse for wear seated statues 18 meters high which are all that remain
of the funerary temple of Amenhotep III, which he rather foolishly built
on the Nile's flood plain.
The
temple of Hatshepsut is in much better condition, since it's much further
from the river, carved into the mountain which borders the Valley of the
Kings. Hatshepsut was one of Egypt's most successful queens,
and her temple is still in good condition, with many statues and pillars
standing together with still-colorful paintings, all the more remarkable
since many of them are outside and exposed to the air and sunlight. |
| Aswan,
sometimes spelled "Assuan", is about 200 kilometers south of Luxor.
It must be the most attractive city in Egypt, perched on the banks and
hills lining the Nile as it makes its way through large granite outcrops
in and around the river. These are the famous Nile cataracts,
which made navigation on the river difficult and also made Aswan a strategic
gateway to the trading routes of the south, and a fortress against invasion
from the south. Since it often represented the southern limit
of control for the pharoahs, there are fewer large temples and ruins here
than further down the Nile, but there's certainly enough history to keep
a tourist's interest. Within the city itself there is an unfinished
obelisk, which would have been the world's largest worked block of stone
if it hadn't developed a flaw which caused the workers to abandon it as
it still lay in the quarry. Just a little further afield is
the Temple of Philae, which was rescued from the lake created by the Aswan
dam built by the British between 1898 and 1902. |
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| The
greatest of the ancient treasures in the southern area of Egypt is a 280
kilometer drive or flight further south to Abu Simbel, where the Temple
of Ramses II and the Temple of Hathor stand next to each other, cut into
the rocks lining this part of the Nile. Abu Simbel is only
40 kilometers north of the border with Sudan, and it always represented
the limit of Egypt's power. The reign of Ramses II represented
the pnnacle of this power, and he built these temples as a reminder to
those living further south. |
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| Here's
the temple of Hathor, which also used to face the Nile. Over
time both the river and the sand shifted and it wasn't until 1813 that
the temples were rediscovered, with only the tops of Ramses' statues showing.
The building of the Aswan high dam and the subsequent filling of Lake Nasser
threatened to submerge the temples, so starting in 1964 they were moved
at a cost of $US80 million to a location 65 meters higher and 200 meters
back from where the river had been. The cut marks from the
stone saws are still evident, but it was certainly a remarkable achievement. |
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| The
temple of Ramses is the more magnificent of the two, inside there are large
statues and various rooms covered in stone carvings. Both inside
and outside there are reliefs showing Ramses subduing his enemies, Ramses
trampling on his enemies' faces, Ramses leading his enemies away in chains,
and so on - it seems like he had trouble making friends, but he certainly
had a way of influencing people! |
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| Cairo
with its trash, smog and traffic can get tiring very quickly, and even
outside the city it's easy to succumb to temple exhaustion after seeing
your 100th statue of some pharoah you've never heard of. Thankfully,
relief is available at any of the tourist centers on the beaches of the
Red Sea coast, whether at Hurghada on the main coastline, or along the
eastern shore of the Sinai Peninsula. As well as the beaches,
the Sinai Peninsula also has some great desert scenery, like the multi-coloured
mountains at Ras Mohammed national park, which preserves coral reefs and
fish life even more colourful than the mountains. |
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| I
flew from Aswan to the southern Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, but since
that area was too ritzy for me, I hired a car and drove 85 kilometers north
to the more laid-back town of Dahab, whose mountains are every bit as attractive
as those elsewhere. From here you can see right across the
Gulf of Aqaba to Saudi Arabia, which is probably as close as I'll ever
get. I was lucky to experience some unusually calm weather,
which made it much easier for me as a free-diver to see some
of the highlights of Egypt underwater. |
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| Of
all the people I met in Egypt, the bedouin around Dahab impressed me most.
The majority of Egyptians are poor by western standards, and particularly
by the standards of tourists with enough money to fly here, so it's not
always a comfortable thing when they encounter an Egyptian society which
has long been captive to the notion of "baksheesh", which depending on
how charitable you feel is translated either as "tip" or "bribe".
I carried around a large wad of small Egyptian notes so I could keep up
with the requests for baksheesh, whether in the form of a bribe to photograph
(without flash) inside one of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, or
in the form of a tip for the cleaning ladies who made up my hotel rooms.
However I never heard any of the bedouin request baksheesh, and one young
man even refused my offer after he had gone far out of his way to show
me where a place was. |
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| It's
certainly nice to get away from all of that human history and get into
some natural history. The Red Sea is one of the world's premier
dive areas, and there's plenty to see even if you're only snorkelling,
such as this Picasso triggerfish in only two meters of water near the Blue
Hole just north of Dahab. |
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Since the Red Sea is nearly fully enclosed by land, there are many species
here which are not seen elsewhere, including several varieties of butterflyfishes,
surgeonfishes and triggerfish and many other small but attractively coloured
fish.
I saw so many butterflyfish, including four species found only in this
part of the world, that I put together a whole separate page of Butterflyfishes
of Egypt.
Spending a week on the Red Sea, whether prostrated on a beach in reverence
to the sun god Ra, or underwater swimming with the fishes, is definitely
a nice way to recover before returning to your ordinary existence. |
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