Woke up at a reasonable hour on Day 2 (i.e. not at 3 AM) for a huge breakfast and a tour of Karnak Temple. Which, to be honest, was not that much different from Luxor Temple - a pattern we would all detect over the remaining two days of our trip - but still pretty awesome. In addition to being famed for its size (Karnak
is the second most-visited monument in Egypt, after the Pyramids at Giza), the temple is also notable for the length of time over which it was built. Beginning during the Middle Kingdom period, around the 16th century BC, work continued on the temple up until the Ptolmeic period, with much of the construction done under Ramses I, Seti I and Ramses II.
A row of sphinxes guards the entrance to the Temple; at one time, this extended all the way to the Nile, and was where the statues of the gods would be paraded between Luxor Temple and Karnak.
Hatshepsut has two obelisks within the temple, one which is standing and the other which has been
knocked down - but interestingly enough, is still mostly intact.Here's me in front of the 
sacred lake, which used to be filled naturally with water from the Nile. Now it's just a bunch of standing water, and mosquitoes, I would imagine. They don't call it West Nile for nothing.
We spent a lot of Day 2 on the boat, traveling from Luxor downriver to Aswan, and most people, myself included, elected to spend that time sunning ourselves on the top deck. I was alternating between napping on one of the chaises with some friends and reading Georgina Howell's biography of Gertrude Bell (good, but not as good as Janet Wallach's), when I was suddenly roused from my sleep by loud banging and yelling from over the side of the boat.
Naturally, my first thought was "Oh God, we are being taken over by Nile pirates." (Irrational much?) My first instincts proved wrong; we were not being captured by bloodthirsty river buccaneers, but approached by several dozen rowboats full of Egyptian men, selling everything from galabiyas (those long cotton garments you see Egyptian men wearing in some photos) to tacky t-shirts to women's scarves. Selling them to us. Four stories up. Over the side of the boat. Somehow, this did not seem to me to be a wise way to conduct business, but the feeding frenzy that ensued proved that I was of the minority opinion.
Amanda and I watched, amused, as one of our cohorts attempted to complete a transaction for a galabiya with one of the vendors. After haggling the gentleman down from LE50 to LE35, he stuffed the galabiya and a LE50 note back into the plastic bag, and threw it back down - the general idea being that you would receive your change and your purchase back. Except, when the guy pulled out the galabiya to get the money...no money. Furious, he began tearing through every other bag in his boat. No luck. He started yelling up to us, we started yelling back in a sad combination of English and Arabic, but to no avail. In the end, our man ended up with another shirt, LE15 short of where he thought he would be. I, however, was throughly entertained from the safety of my chair, away from the madness over the edge.
My recent blogging frenzy is a direct result of deciding to stay up all night (well, sort of) prior to my 3 AM departure for Luxor on Tuesday morning. By the time we arrived at the airport in Luxor, I was seriously regretting this lapse in judgment, although the sweets Dan bought from el-Abd, an excellent bakery in Midan Taalat Harb, made the morning a little bit easier. Upon our arrival at the Sonesta Moon Goddess, we learned that our first day's schedule had been rearranged to allow us a few hours of sleep prior to our first excursion, an announcement which endeared our tour guide to us for life.
After four hours of blissful, healing rest, we enjoyed a huge buffet lunch (and some LE12 Coca-Colas) and set out on motor boats for the west bank to tour the Colossus of Memon, the Temple of Hatshepsut, the Valley of the Kings, and the Temple of Luxor. I am still in awe that we managed to cram all of that into a single day, and without feeling like we had insufficient time at any of the monuments.
The Colossus of Memon consists of two seated statues of Amenhotep III, the last remains of his funerary temple. They are really tall, and not particularly well preserved. Needless to say, it was not that exciting.
Our second stop was the Temple of Hatshepsut, a funerary temple for the female pharaoh. Even at a distance, the temple is quite impressive - the lone man-made structure rising out of the desert cliffs - but the history and the power struggle underlying the temple, and Hatshepsut's reign itself, are even more amazing.
Hatshepsut dedicated the temple to Amun, the sun god, in an attempt to secure the legitimacy of her reign. Most temples of the New Kingdom period (all the monuments we saw on this tour were New Kingdom or Greco-Roman) contain a room known as a mummesi, or birth room, which depicts the pharaoh being born out of the union between the queen and the god Amun, thus suggesting that the pharaoh is of divine birth. Although Hatshepsut was not the first female to rule Egypt as pharaoh, political turmoil surrounding her reign most likely led her to feel that such an assertion of her divine right to power was necessary.
Hatshepsut's temple is only a short boat-and-bus ride away from the Valley of the Kings, through a winding road carved out of the surrounding mountains. After a brief orientation at the visitor's center, where we saw this sweet model of the valley's layout, we hopped the tourist tram to the entrance. Caprill and I sprung for the LE50 tickets to see Tutankhamun's tomb, in addition to our regular three-tomb ticket, and I'm definitely not sorry that I spent the extra money (even with the declining dollar).
We first ventured up to the tomb of Thutmosis III, Hatshepsut's step-son and successor. I say up, since after a brisk
walk through the valley to get to the tomb, one must climb up the equivalent of two flights of rather rickety metal stairs to get to the entrance, and then descend the equivalent of three flights to get into the tomb itself. And let me tell you, it was totally worth it. The paintings in the tombs - all of them - are so much better preserved than I ever would have imagined possible, and Thutmosis III's is considered one of the best examples of funerary text art in existence. After that, Caprill and I hit Ramses I and Ramses III - where, LE18 later we had some photos inside the tomb (below) - and finally, Tutankhamun.
Our guide, Dr. Kareem, had warned that for LE50 we might be disappointed by Tut's tomb, but I thought that I'd be more likely disappointed later if I didn't go - or at the very least, I'd rather regret the money. I definitely didn't. Information about the reign of the Pharaoh and the layout and significance of the tomb is posted outside each entrance; at Tut's, they also had those classic black-and-whites from Carter and Carnovan's expedition. I breezed past these on the way in, but was surprised on the way out at how clearly I could tell exactly where all the stuff I'd seen at the Egyptian Museum so many weeks before had once been strewn.
We brought up the rear coming out of the Valley, and made our last stop of the evening at the Temple of Luxor. Luxor was one of a pair of temples - the other being Karnak - dedicated to the trio of Amun, Mut and Chons. During annual fertility festivals, statues of Amun and Mut would be brought downriver from Karnak for visitation. Carvings outside depict the various military victories of Ramses II and Amenhotep III, and inside show these pharaohs revering their gods.
Part II: Karnak and Adventures on the River Nile.
The recent silence on the blogging front reflects the lull I've been in for a few weeks now here in Cairo. I haven't done any traveling since my recent trip to Mt. Sinai; however, on Tuesday morning I will depart for a three-day Nile cruise, stopping in Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel. Since we are an American institution, we take time off for Thanksgiving, and I think that a lot of my fellow students are as much in need of a break as I am. The infamous Cairene "Black Clould" obscured everything on the opposite side of the Nile this morning, and even the sunset looked a little smudged as we drove home at 5:30; my lungs will thank me for a few days away.
As things begin to wind down for the semester, I am repeatedly struck by how completely unprepared I am to return to the U.S. It's not that I'm not looking forward to seeing my family and friends again; rather, that I feel I have only just begun to find a comfortable pattern in Cairo, and to scratch the surface of what it is really like to live here. At long last, I have achieved victory over city transportation; having solved the mysteries of traffic patterns, cab fares and how to ride a crowded Metro train, nothing can stand in between me and my destination. My weekends as of late have been spent not on the road to exciting locales in the Middle East, but wandering my neighborhood with my friends, frequenting our favorite coffee shops and not considering a day spent simply walking and talking to be wasted.
In part, I think that some of my anxiety about coming home is due to the looming specter that is my college graduation, now less than six months away. I wish that I could say that my time in Egypt has made clear for me what I want to do with my life, but that's not the case; I have no more ideas, to be sure, but no more definite plans than I did six months ago. What I do know is this: whatever I do, I want to be doing it in Arabic. When I came here, I enjoyed the language - for both my triumphs and its continued challenges - but since September, I have grown to truly love the little nuances, the clever patterns, and even the occasionally baffling grammar that makes up the Arabic language. (Did you know, for example, that the verb "qalaba," meaning "to turn" comes from the same root, "q-l-b" as the word for "heart" ["qulb"], because the heart is something that may turn? I leave it to you to determine if that's a depressing or uplifting connection.) I actually like verb forms. I can hold my own against case endings. I can read a newspaper - not perfectly, but enough to keep up with what the Egyptian government wants me to think is going on. And Hans Wher and I? We're friends for life.
I had to write an essay for one of my classes this week about "My Experience in Egypt." I struggled with the assignment, largely because it was difficult for me to put into words (even in English) exactly what my experience here has entailed. When I say that everything here is great, or busy, or anything else, that's not exactly what I mean; it is all that, and it is more. Every day here is a joy and a challenge; time spent soaking up the sunshine outside Ewart Hall and struggling to recall my Media Arabic vocabulary, speaking in a combination of Arabic and Frantic Hand Gestures and speculating about what the future holds when the semester's over and half of us head back to the U.S. There are plans in motion - we're working on a trip to Istanbul in December, and I've already made plans to visit Stephanie and Molly in Pennsylvania in the spring - and until it's really over, and I'm standing back in O'Hare, I'm savoring every minute of being here...
Today it was 75 degrees and partly sunny, and I was cold all day.
I spent this past weekend at Mt. Sinai with 10 friends, friends-of-friends, and friends-of-friends-of-friends (it was quite the group, let me tell you). It was a fantastic experience, and as God is my witness, one that I will never, ever feel the need to repeat. Let me put it this way, for future study abroad students or potential foreign tourists: if your idea of fun does not include a 3.5 mile uphill hike, followed by sleeping (and I use the term loosely) on top of a mountain, followed by waking to see the sunrise just before 6 AM, followed by a 3.5 mile climb downhill, then Mt. Sinai is not a good weekend activity for you.
The drive between Cairo and Mt. Sinai is supposed to take about 9 hours; we made the drive there in 7 and the drive home in about 6:30, thus proving that our bus driver graduated from the same school as myself and my father, wherein we are taught to regard speed limits as mere suggestions of how fast you might wish to go, but please, for goodness' sake, don't limit yourself. That would be the real crime. The bus was a bit cramped with 11 of us, but the price was right and the company entertaining. We ate an enormous lunch at a restaurant inside the preservation area before heading over to the trail entrance.
This was when our troubles began. There are two trails to the top of Mt. Sinai, the Camel Trail, which is a
series of sloping switchbacks culminating in 750-odd stone stairs to the summit, or the Stairs of Repentance, which are 3500-odd steps that snake up the mountain to the summit. Arriving at the tourist police checkpoint just after 2 PM, we had hoped to get started right away, taking the Camel Trail up, but we ran into a problem: all tourists making the ascent, regardless of what time, are now required to have a registered guide with them. (Nevermind the fact that both trails are very straightforward, and since we would be overnight guests, all our climbing would be during daylight hours.) This isn't the first time we've squabbled with the police over having escorts on our various excursions (and wouldn't be the only time this trip, either), but in the end, they stuck us with Sulieman, nickname Alex, an 18-year-old kid who claimed to have climbed Mt. Sinai 1,003 times.
And I'm sur
e that his pace was perfectly appropriate for someone who climbed Mt. Sinai for a living, or even someone who has taken a lot more time to workout than I have. To say that the climb up was grueling is a gross understatement; by the halfway point, I felt like my lungs were going to collapse and my head was going to explode. To top it off, I've been recovering from a minor cold for a few days now, a recovery which is apparently going to be a bit prolonged now. It could have been a lot worse, though - Jessamyn, my friend and sometimes-roommate from my Eid vacation in Jordan got altitude sickness from the climb (about 7,500 feet), spent most of the night throwing up, and had an absolutely agonizing time on the descent and the subsequent bus ride home.
My frequent need to stop and rest on both the ascent and descent, however, gave me the chance to take some great photographs and to enjoy the scenery. The sky was absolutely amazing for the entire trip; only a few white wispy clouds during daylight, and clear skies providing a blanket of perfect stars at night. Granted, this probably kept it a little bit colder, but the view from the mountaintop far outstripped any I've ever seen in my life. I really loved seeing mountains again; after my Eid trip to Jordan, I've developed quite an affinity for deserts and mountains, and the Sinai geography is quite similar to that of the Jordanian mountains where I spent time in October.
We reached the top literally at sunset, snapped a few photos, and continued up a few dozen steps to the summit to rest, take in the view, and put on a few additional layers of clothing. Accomodation was Problem Number 2 of the trip: originally, several members of our group had expressed interest in staying on top of the mountain, while others, myself included, wished to stay a few hours at a local camp before making the ascent at about 2 AM. We had heard about a good place to stay from some friends who did Sinai before Eid; what we failed to register was that the
camp was located in the town of St. Catherine, not within the preservation area itself. After fighting with the tourist police in broken Arabic over the guide issue, we decided not to push for the hotel, instead electing for everyone to stay on the mountain. We were able to rent blankets and thin mattresses at the top, and I ended up snuggling with three of my girlfriends under our collective four blankets for extra heat. My head was freezing all night - I wrapped my scarf hijab-style around my head and neck before going to bed, but the gauzy wrap did little against the cold. Aside from that, though the night could have been worse - I'd estimate that I probably slept a total of six hours between about 7 PM and 5 AM, when the early-morning tourists stared pouring in.
Caprill,
Jessamyn and I all made the descent together the next morning - Jess and I were both slow-going because of health discomforts, and Caprill was good enough to mommy us all the way down, letting us rest frequently and making us drink plenty of water. We ultimately elected not to visit the monastery, after being informed by our friend Amanda that it was a) crowded, b) boring, and c) not possible/permissible to take photos inside. I did some shots outside instead, and we perused the vendors set up around the monastery. I bought myself a small blue stone vase (successfully haggled down to LE30) and some postcards; one of the guys on the trip managed to convince the vendor to sell him the Saudi-made kufeya off his back for LE65.
On our way out, we got into fistcuffs with the tourist police again, this time over their insistence that we take an armed security escort back to Cairo. We'd been told on Friday that we could sign a waiver and avoid the extra passenger, but come to find out today that this wasn't possible. After some grumbling from everyone, I pointed out the fact that this guy's trip to Cairo was his problem, not ours, and as long as we didn't have to pay for any of it, it didn't matter. Truly, I do not know what this guy's purpose was - well, no, I do, it's because we're Americans
and Mubarak is, according to Jessamyn, "trying to cover his ass" - because we didn't get through security checkpoints any faster or more efficiently with him sitting in the front seat. We've almost been required to have escorts back on two other trips - Alexandria and Jordan - but both times the idea was dropped when they found out we were students rather than "real tourists." For me, it's a bit unnerving; I am well past the point where I consider the level of policing in this city to be anything that makes me safer, and certainly not any more comfortable with my surroundings. The security guy mostly kept to himself, talking to the driver occasionally, and I'm sure that driving back to the Sinai is going to be a great time for both of them...
Insha'allah I'll add some photos tomorrow - right now I'm off to eat a quick dinner with the roommate and then study for a grammar exam I have on Monday. Look forward to rocks and more posts this week!
Here's a preview of some of the pictures I took on my Thanksgiving Break trip to Upper Egypt. Full report to follow tomorrow; insha'allah a few longer entries that have been a while in the making will happen this weekend as well.
Left: Caprill
and I at the Valley of the Kings
Woke up at a reasonable hour on Day 2 (i.e. not at 3 AM) for a huge breakfast and a tour of Karnak Temple. Which, to be honest, was not that much different from Luxor Temple - a pattern we would all detect over the remaining two days of our trip - but still pretty awesome. In addition to being famed for its size (Karnak
is the second most-visited monument in Egypt, after the Pyramids at Giza), the temple is also notable for the length of time over which it was built. Beginning during the Middle Kingdom period, around the 16th century BC, work continued on the temple up until the Ptolmeic period, with much of the construction done under Ramses I, Seti I and Ramses II.
A row of sphinxes guards the entrance to the Temple; at one time, this extended all the way to the Nile, and was where the statues of the gods would be paraded between Luxor Temple and Karnak.
knocked down - but interestingly enough, is still mostly intact.
sacred lake, which used to be filled naturally with water from the Nile. Now it's just a bunch of standing water, and mosquitoes, I would imagine. They don't call it West Nile for nothing.
Hatshepsut's temple is only a short boat-and-bus ride away from the Valley of the Kings, through a winding road carved out of the surrounding mountains. After a brief orientation at the visitor's center, where we saw this sweet model of the valley's layout, we hopped the tourist tram to the entrance. Caprill and I sprung for the LE50 tickets to see Tutankhamun's tomb, in addition to our regular three-tomb ticket, and I'm definitely not sorry that I spent the extra money (even with the declining dollar).
walk through the valley to get to the tomb, one must climb up the equivalent of two flights of rather rickety metal stairs to get to the entrance, and then descend the equivalent of three flights to get into the tomb itself. And let me tell you, it was totally worth it. The paintings in the tombs - all of them - are so much better preserved than I ever would have imagined possible, and Thutmosis III's is considered one of the best examples of funerary text art in existence. After that, Caprill and I hit Ramses I and Ramses III - where, LE18 later we had some photos inside the tomb (below) - and finally, Tutankhamun.
Our guide, Dr. Kareem, had warned that for LE50 we might be disappointed by Tut's tomb, but I thought that I'd be more likely disappointed later if I didn't go - or at the very least, I'd rather regret the money. I definitely didn't. Information about the reign of the Pharaoh and the layout and significance of the tomb is posted outside each entrance; at Tut's, they also had those classic black-and-whites from Carter and Carnovan's expedition. I breezed past these on the way in, but was surprised on the way out at how clearly I could tell exactly where all the stuff I'd seen at the Egyptian Museum so many weeks before had once been strewn.
We brought up the rear coming out of the Valley, and made our last stop of the evening at the Temple of Luxor. Luxor was one of a pair of temples - the other being Karnak - dedicated to the trio of Amun, Mut and Chons. During annual fertility festivals, statues of Amun and Mut would be brought downriver from Karnak for visitation. Carvings outside depict the various military victories of Ramses II and Amenhotep III, and inside show these pharaohs revering their gods.
I spent this past weekend at Mt. Sinai with 10 friends, friends-of-friends, and friends-of-friends-of-friends (it was quite the group, let me tell you). It was a fantastic experience, and as God is my witness, one that I will never, ever feel the need to repeat. Let me put it this way, for future study abroad students or potential foreign tourists: if your idea of fun does not include a 3.5 mile uphill hike, followed by sleeping (and I use the term loosely) on top of a mountain, followed by waking to see the sunrise just before 6 AM, followed by a 3.5 mile climb downhill, then Mt. Sinai is not a good weekend activity for you.
series of sloping switchbacks culminating in 750-odd stone stairs to the summit, or the Stairs of Repentance, which are 3500-odd steps that snake up the mountain to the summit. Arriving at the tourist police checkpoint just after 2 PM, we had hoped to get started right away, taking the Camel Trail up, but we ran into a problem: all tourists making the ascent, regardless of what time, are now required to have a registered guide with them. (Nevermind the fact that both trails are very straightforward, and since we would be overnight guests, all our climbing would be during daylight hours.) This isn't the first time we've squabbled with the police over having escorts on our various excursions (and wouldn't be the only time this trip, either), but in the end, they stuck us with Sulieman, nickname Alex, an 18-year-old kid who claimed to have climbed Mt. Sinai 1,003 times.
e that his pace was perfectly appropriate for someone who climbed Mt. Sinai for a living, or even someone who has taken a lot more time to workout than I have. To say that the climb up was grueling is a gross understatement; by the halfway point, I felt like my lungs were going to collapse and my head was going to explode. To top it off, I've been recovering from a minor cold for a few days now, a recovery which is apparently going to be a bit prolonged now. It could have been a lot worse, though - Jessamyn, my friend and sometimes-roommate from my Eid vacation in Jordan got altitude sickness from the climb (about 7,500 feet), spent most of the night throwing up, and had an absolutely agonizing time on the descent and the subsequent bus ride home.
camp was located in the town of St. Catherine, not within the preservation area itself. After fighting with the tourist police in broken Arabic over the guide issue, we decided not to push for the hotel, instead electing for everyone to stay on the mountain. We were able to rent blankets and thin mattresses at the top, and I ended up snuggling with three of my girlfriends under our collective four blankets for extra heat. My head was freezing all night - I wrapped my scarf hijab-style around my head and neck before going to bed, but the gauzy wrap did little against the cold. Aside from that, though the night could have been worse - I'd estimate that I probably slept a total of six hours between about 7 PM and 5 AM, when the early-morning tourists stared pouring in.
Jessamyn and I all made the descent together the next morning - Jess and I were both slow-going because of health discomforts, and Caprill was good enough to mommy us all the way down, letting us rest frequently and making us drink plenty of water. We ultimately elected not to visit the monastery, after being informed by our friend Amanda that it was a) crowded, b) boring, and c) not possible/permissible to take photos inside. I did some shots outside instead, and we perused the vendors set up around the monastery. I bought myself a small blue stone vase (successfully haggled down to LE30) and some postcards; one of the guys on the trip managed to convince the vendor to sell him the Saudi-made kufeya off his back for LE65.
and Mubarak is, according to Jessamyn, "trying to cover his ass" - because we didn't get through security checkpoints any faster or more efficiently with him sitting in the front seat. We've almost been required to have escorts back on two other trips - Alexandria and Jordan - but both times the idea was dropped when they found out we were students rather than "real tourists." For me, it's a bit unnerving; I am well past the point where I consider the level of policing in this city to be anything that makes me safer, and certainly not any more comfortable with my surroundings. The security guy mostly kept to himself, talking to the driver occasionally, and I'm sure that driving back to the Sinai is going to be a great time for both of them...
