Archives for November 2022

I am in Luxor and today we went to the Temple of Karnak. It is one of those places you have probably seen on TV or in photographs. Huge walls tilted on the front with an opening in the middle. Carvings of the pharaoh in “Smiting Pose,” fat columns in a colonnaded hallway. These were purposely left open to the sky. The reason, I was told, was for the spirit of the dead pharaoh, his Ba, could land in the courtyard. Okay. Cool. 

I keep wondering, “Didn’t anyone ask if any of this really worked?”

But then again, can’t you say that about any religion?

Ya gotta believe!

Okay. Cool. Once again.

Because we were with Chris and he is recognized by many of the people at the temple we were given access to a room off-limits to the general public. It was a small area, maybe 10’x15’. The walls were covered with brightly painted figures of the pharaohs and the gods interacting. The colors were striking, and to think they are 3500 years old!

November 24, 2022

Egypt

There is so much to report since my last missive. Since being in Egypt I can say that one hotel had internet. Others claimed to have it, and in some cases there was a signal and a connection however brief and however slow. At the last hotel they handed out a network login and password. If you went to the hotel reception area you could get a wi-fi signal. But connection to the internet? No. One couple from Canada wanted to watch the FIFA World Cup game between Canada and Belgium. I went to my room and looked for the game. They had at least six hundred channels, None had the game. (My friends saw it down in the bar.) What was on those channels? Talking heads mostly. A Bollywood channel, a few English speaking channels, a few French, but mostly Arabic from half a dozen or so countries. In amongst these would be someone selling pots and pans or whatever. The talking heads appeared to be divided into news, commentary, and religion.

Today we went to Abydos. I have heard about the place many times. Usually by people who have been and they say, “Oh you must go to Abydos!” Why, was never clear to me. I have seen pictures and TV shows about Abydos, but nothing really stuck in my mind. Now I can say – I have been to Abydos and my mind is blown. You must go to Abydos! Why?

Well, our day began with descending into a rock cut tomb. It got hot and we got sweaty. At the end, there is a saucer shaped hole about eight feet across. That’s it. And big slabs and chunks of granite. How they got them down here I don’t know. But there they are. Coming out near the entrance we welcomed the cool air. Air that felt hot before we descended.

Then we moved on to the Temple of Rameses II. It’s called the small temple. Active archaeological work is going on around the main building and we could not film that. People don’t want their discoveries shown to the world before they can publish the results. But inside the main temple we were good to photograph. The walls are brightly colored in yellows, blues and I forget what other colors. Scenes of Ramses, one of them shows him drinking milk. “So what?” You ask? He is drinking it directly from the cow’s utter. (I know. I know. Don’t say it.) The cow represents the god Hathor. (Utterly … I told you not to say it.)

We were only given 20 minutes to film whatever we wanted. You would need several hours to do it all. This is a large open air temple. The walls are seven to ten feet high in most places and it is a large rectangle 50 by 125 feet with column’s in two courtyards and rooms around the courtyards.

Why were we rushed out? Why couldn’t we stay? The Temple of Abydos beckoned. 

We entered the temple from the back and worked our way to the front. This is covered colonnaded temple. At the back is a hallway dedicated to the god of the dead Osiris. The temple was built by Seti I, father of Ramses II. Rameses finished his father’s work and added on. On one wall there is a list of many of the pharaohs of Egypt, It has been used to develop the King’s list. Interestingly, some of the rulers are not listed. If they were from the period of religious change, known as the Armana period, they are not listed. If they were women ,they are not listed. If they were the invaders from the north, known as the Hyksos, they are not listed.

Passing through this hall you come to one of two large colonnaded halls. These halls have ceilings made of stone, supported by bulbous pillars. I’d guess the height to be forty feet and the pillars eight feel in diameter. It is quiet, semi-dark and cool in these places. It is quietly magical.

I walked around in a revered state of mind. Outside it’s bright sunlight; inside it’s cool and the light filters in from a few doorways and open spaces. Fluorescent lights mounted on the floor to illuminate the walls add a white greenish tinge.

It is transcendent. When you come to Egypt you must go to Abydos.

Written on the morning of Nov 20

On the 18th we took the bus up to Alexandria, 200 km away.

We stopped at Pompey’s Pillar, which he had nothing to do with, and we went and looked at some tombs and the Serapeum of Alexandria. The Serapeum is where they buried the bulls, known as Apis Bulls. It was a cult that admired a bull with certain marking and thought it holy. When one died it was buried in a large sarcophagus, and another bull was then found. Kind of like the Dali-Lama. The cult survived for longer than Chritianity has been around, just to put it in perspective. It is the trademark of Nova-Nordisk, the bull with the sun disk between its horns. 

The Serapeum here was rather poor compared to the one a Saqqara. Here it’s more of a descending staircase that ends in nothing, while at Saqqara it’s a double parallel wide hallway with huge chambers off to each side with giant sarcophagus in each. In Alexandria there was none of that. When I came out of the long staircase I saw another opening called the Sanctuary or something like that. I went down that long corridor and at the end they had a black casting of an Apis bull, suitable for selfies.

Alexandria itself sits on the Mediterranean. You can see the huge sweeping bay of a port with a fort on the western finger where the famous lighthouse once stood. The port is lined with big restaurants with names like Wave, and Luna Park. A new very modern looking Library of Alexandria sits where the old one once was. 

After you get away from the port, the city devolves into streets with tiny streets off of them. The tiny streets may have room to park a car on one side. Some do not even have that much space and the cars are parked one in front of the other and the whole street is one long parking lot. How a person gets their car out from the middle of the pack is a mystery to me. 

Cairo and Alexandria both have the problem of dust. It settles on everything. Therefore, anything outside looks grimy and dirty. The fancy hotel we stayed in managed to keep the dirt down because it is in a park that used to be reserved for the king and there is grass around the back of the building. The front faces a beach and the Sea. Nonetheless a man with two wide dust mops hooked together to form a V is constantly walking the floor of the lobby. How does he hold onto two wide dust mops at once? You have the two handles come up in an X frame which is joined at the intersection – very clever.

As we drove down the streets just wide enough for our gigantic bus to pass, I would see trash. Trash in the canals, at the ends of alleys, in vacant lots of which there were many. These vacant lots were really places where whatever had been there was torn down and the rubble was left.

Yesterday, then19th we left our hotel and went along the coast to Taposiris Magna. Notice the first word has the name Osiris in it, which is the Egyptian god of the underworld. A woman named Kathleen Martinez has been working there for 15 or more years. I remembered her from an episode of “Josh Gates Expedition Unknown.” In that show Josh went down in a oil drum elevator. Literally it was an oil drum connected to a winch that was run on a Briggs and Stratton one lunger. Before Josh went down they made sure the engine would start. “We want to make sure we can get you back up,” Kathleen had said. Josh looked at the camera like, “What?”

I had to ask Kathleen what it was like to work with Josh. In her slow measured quiet English (she is Dominican-Egyptian) she said, “Oh Josh is a lot of fun.”

She then went on to say he was the only TV person to go down in the bucket elevator. All the other crews looked at the set up and give her the camera.

I spent five days on the Giza Plateau, touring all the sites and doing some 360 video work.I was staying at a hotel right beside the southern entrance to Giza (directly off the right paw of the Sphinx) and could watch the light show from the rooftop restaurant.The hotel is the Pyramids Valley Boutique Hotel and if you want to do Giza on your own I highly recommend it.When my formal tour began I switched to the fancier Steinenberger on the other side of the plateau.Fancier, internet a little better in the morning.

We toured Giza yesterday and I had saved going into the great pyramid of Khufu for then, hoping my tour leader could pull off some magic for entry like he did last time and I got to see the Subterranean Chamber, the Queen’s Chamber and the King’s Chamber, No luck so I went in and saw only the King’s Chamber for ten minutes along with several hundred of my close friends. Because heat rises and you are climbing up to the King’s Chamber it is hot and sweaty in there.

Yesterday we headed to Saqqara and toured several burial chambers (mastabas) and the tomb of Seti I, and got entrance into the southern entrance to the Step Pyramid.That entrance is a short stooped walk to an opening of a 35 foot in diameter vertical shaft that looks down some 150 feet to a giant rock block chamber. If you are afraid of heights this may not be for you!
In looking at the photo I took of the shaft it seems to be rectangular and only 100 feet or 75 down.

This is day three of my journey, I think. I have already lost count. I was dropped off at the airport having been notified I had to see the Delta ticket desk to check in. I was informed that the middle leg of my trip, New York to Rome, had been changed to a later flight. That was no problem as I had the same flight to Cairo and was being met at the airport by someone. My layover in Rome was eight hours. Now it would be split between Rome and New York. Fine.

The original flight to Rome was booked by Delta on Italian Air. The new flight was Delta. I thought at first the ATA flight had been oversold, but now, I am more of the mind that Delta wanted to keep the money. The Delta flight was full. I was seated next to a young rather pretty lady. She was maybe seventeen. Before we took off she had switched seats to be closer to her mother. I got the pushy Italian man, who needed to us one of the ports on my seat because his didn’t work. He spent all of the time before take off staring into his phone screen at a woman about his age whom I later learned was his girlfriend in Palermo. He made pizzas in Syracuse, New York.

The plane was late taking off. First they needed to add fuel – one hour. Then they needed to enter the amount of fuel into their computers and it would not go in. They did it by hand or something like that – one more hour.

I knew I had plenty of time in Rome, so no problem. Wrong. Problem.

I was in the 39th row. I had forty minutes to get off the plane, find my new gate for the flight to Cairo, and get on the plane. I landed at gate E41. I found a representative who informed me Cairo was gate E2. “A five minute walk.” Yeah? Well, maybe if you aren’t lugging a backpack full of lithium batteries. I soldiered on, hefting my backpack. A woman approached holding up an 8×10 sheet with “Cairo” written on it. I pointed at it and said, “That’s me.” I thought she’d point me in the direction I had been going, but no, she turned around and said, ”Follow me. I tell them to not give away your seat.”

I got to the gate with her in the lead. Only two attendants were there, no one else. They casually pointed to the doors behind them and said, “Wait for the bus.”

In a few minutes a bus pulled up. No markings. The attendants were yakking in Italian, having a great conversation.

“Excuse me,” I said, “Is this the bus?”

They casually indicted it was. By casual I mean they kind of gestured like, “Yeah. I guess so.”

I got on. The bus didn’t leave. The driver went in to chat with the attendants. One more guy got on. We left, wandering the tarmac to our plane. The other fellow was in the U.S. military assigned to Afghanistan, but deployed to Egypt. He was an IED expert and said his skills really weren’t needed there so he sat around. “It’s boring. All this training…”” 

“Yeah,” I said, but you have all your arms and legs.”

It didn’t persuade him. He was bored.

I was the last one on the plane. I made it with six minutes to go until take-off.

When we landed in Cairo. Our bags did not make it. Surprise.

No one was there to meet me. 

I filled out the form and gave the fellow Ahmed’s number. I had him call Ahmed because my phone didn’t seem to work. Ahmed said catch an Uber. Okay.

Fortunately, I had taken a picture of my luggage tags so I didn’t have to dig through every pocket to find the originals. I asked the luggage fellow to ask Ahmed for the address of the hotel, which he did and he wrote it in Arabic for the driver. He mentioned that the hotel was not well known.

I pushed the few belongings I had out toward the street where a line of people were yelling, ‘Taxi! Taxi!” and waving notepads.

I went over and they directed me to the head of the line. A fellow in a gray suit said the taxi would be $30.00. Okay. He had a little book and filled in a line and grabbed my cart and pushed it out to the street. The place was a mass of cars blocking one another. Horns beeping. Lots of yelling. In short – chaos. He found me a taxi driver (“Wait? What? Didn’t he have one? No? What the heck?”) Then he said, “How about something for the driver?” (“Wait? What was the $30 for? For you to push my cart out to the street?” It seemed so.) The $30 was 500 Egyptian pounds and the driver was another 200. Okay. What’s done is done.

I thought the airport was only a few minutes away. I was wrong.

We left the airport and immediately the road made a hairpin bend and we went by the place we had just been, but on the other side of a giant cement barrier. A few more twists and turns and we were on a wide new roadway – six lanes in each direction. Maybe five, depends on how you count. Do you count the fifty feet on the side of the road where people are standing or cars are pulled off? Lanes seem a suggestion here. You stick with one until some one beeps, or a car begins to drift into your lane, then you beep.

There were huge electronic billboards, most of the had pictures of reddish orange horses in electronic slow mo stop action. This was the logo of the company selling the space I think. I learned later the highway was completed a few months ago.

Near the airport were new massive high rise apartment buildings. Each building was a series of curved vertical blocks of apartments. They were all empty. This gave way to the more traditional Egyptian high rise. Brick buildings with reinforced cement beams. Many unfinished on the top with rebar sticking out. I have heard this is a way to claim a building is unfinished and pay lower taxes. I have also heard that maybe it’s just a stop in the upward building. Maybe they ran out of money? I don’t know. A few places had lights on. Many had openings instead of windows. Balconies, but built into the structure, not sticking out. Those places usually had a heavy curtain across, covered in dust.

As we moved further into the city I saw shorter buildings, maybe ten stories. Many of them facing the raised highway had a side where you could see painted squares at each level, which was all that was left of a former room. To build the highway they must have cut through the old city with a giant buzzsaw.

We descended the highway and were then in a typical Cairo street, dusty with dirt covered stores and stalls, bare light bulb on strings of wire, covered in thick grim, People on the side of the road: waiting, talking, moving about. Many places were hooka tea bars. Men were sitting, drinking tea and playing a game. The game was in a two piece box, like backgammon. Maybe it was backgammon, I don’t know.

At one point my driver pulled over and consulted his phone. I guessed he didn’t know where he was going exactly. I called Ahmed. Amazingly, the call went through. I gave the phone to the driver. They exchanged Arabic. He handed the phone back to me. Ahmed said we were five minutes away.

We made a u-turn. We wandered back the way we had come. He stopped a few more times. There were police and military around. We went through gated zig-zag barriers. I guess to slow traffic. Better than speed bumps. More military (we’re talking guys with hard hat like helmets and rifles.) Eventually, we went down an alley and he stopped and pointed. A sign, half hidden by an overhanging balcony said, “Pyramids Valley Boutique Hotel.” I indicated I wanted him to stay while I made sure this was the right place. Seemed sketchy.

“Mr. Richard? Yes, we have you here.”

I ran out and gave the driver the ‘thumbs up.’ He waved and backed out of the alley.

“Where was I?”