Last Post from Egypt...

This will be our last post from Egypt!  It has been a remarkable trip, too big to get one’s head around this soon.  We arrived Cairo yesterday and are for the moment resting in the other Four Seasons.  The few days aboard the boat were exhausting.  Very little sleep as dinner wasn’t until 8 or 8:30 and then there was entertainment in the lounge after that, and we had 6 am calls every morning, so it was not what you could call restful.  I last left you at the temples at Philae I think.

The next day we went with our new friends Paul and Erika, also on Nubian Tours, to visit the west banks and east banks of the Nile at Luxor. They are really fun- Paul a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills and Erika formerly with the film industry and now a realtor.   The West bank has the enormous Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens and the temple of Hatshepsut.  It was unbelievably hot and crowded in all three places.  We started at the Valley of the Kings where all the early Kings are buried.  They were buried in holes in the hills there- essentially tunnels into the mountain with long sloping corridors, followed by a burial chamber and sarcophagus at the end.  The halls are white washed with gypsum, and then filled with glyphs of all different natural colors, still intact.  The sarcophagus at the end is made of Aswan pink granite.  All the tombs are the same, with the exception of different slopes and lengths of the entry ramp.  Once the kings are placed, the door area is filled in such that it isn’t visible, in hopes that the graves won’t be robbed.  The older the king when he died the longer and more ornate the tunnel, as his workers began work on the tomb at his birth.  The walls are interesting in that the glyphs are designed not to mean anything- you can’t read them.  They are covered in gypsum, then carved and painted, and then covered in bees wax.  In many places you can see the original color quite vividly, where the sun hasn’t been.

Hatshepsut was the only female pharaoh in Egyptian history.  Through a long series of family fights and intrigues she just assumed power, and after ruling 22 years was finally killed by the factions beneath her who didn’t like working for a woman.  Her temple is enormous, with long wide staircases leading to three different levels.  The Valley of the Queens is very similar to the Valley of the Kings- only smaller tombs.  Got tombed out rather quickly, since they are all the same.

We returned to the ship for lunch and a brief pause, and then headed out to the village of Luxor, with the Karnack Temple and the Luxor Temple.  Wowie Kazowie is in the middle of excavating a long wide path between the two temples, lined with row upon row of sphinxes with lion heads.  The Karnack temple is enormous, covers 65 acres and is really amazing.  A couple pics attached.  It was begun about 2000 BC and finished around 400 AD to honor the main God in the pantheon Amon Ra.  Apparently many of the pharaohs added touches to it to be able to write their names there.  The entire city of Luxor was dedicated to Amon Ra, known as Anu in the Sumerian for you Sitchin fans.  We stopped for a photo op at the colossus of Mennon, which apparently was quite the huge temple in its day as well.  Finally on to Luxor temple and another huge expanse.  Must have looked somewhat like Washington DC in its heyday.    We went to the ship for a last night aboard and an early airport call for Cairo.  On the way into Cairo we saw Sakara from the air, as well as the Giza pyramids!

We were invited last night to our guide Hosam’s house for dinner.  He lives in New Cairo, a huge development northwest of the old center of Cairo.  He says it looks just like Beverly Hills and I guess it does, if you don’t look too close!  There is building and rubble everywhere in the streets- don’t know if that will actually get cleaned up, but there it is.  We had a lovely home-cooked meal from his wife Gada, met their kids Omar (8) and Sara (12) and had general good fun.  We watched the Hajj on TV and some old movies depicting the life of the Prophet Mohammed- just like Christmas Eve, as the Hajj feast was the next day.  On the way there and back to the hotel we saw pick-up truck after pick-up truck with cows tied in the back for sacrificing for the feast.  The sacrifice begins after the dawn prayer.  As I lay in bed this am listening to the dawn call to prayer, I thought of all those goats, sheep and cows meeting their doom!  

Omar was so very cute and smart.  He is reading the Wizard of Oz in English.  He and I had a spirited discussion of all the characters.  He has seen a bit of the movie and I will send him a copy on my return.  He is apparently also reading Call of the Wild in English.  He loved looking at the pictures of our animals on my phone.  What a love.  Sara is also very pretty and smart but not so taken with American guests as Omar. 

So we are off at 11:30 this evening to our plane and home.  Will post again for a wrap up from America!