Egypt: Glory Days

It’s been nearly a week since I last posted an update. That’s because we were at sea for five days. We left Muskat, Oman on Friday night and arrived in Safaga, Egypt on Thursday the 6th. During the sea days, I don’t have much to tell you (except perhaps you’d be thrilled to learn I came in 3rd in the World Cruise Cribbage Tournament? No? Well, okay then.)
We were amazed by Egypt. We went on a twelve-hour tour from the cruise port in Safaga to Qena, then on to Luxor, then we crossed the Nile to the Valley of the Kings and took in a bunch of tombs (King Tut was buried there) then on to Queen Hatchepsut’s Temple. Actually, Queen H preferred to be called “King”— she even dressed in men’s clothing and wore a fake beard. I guess you could call her one of the original cross-dressers.
During the unbelievably long bus ride from Safaga to Qena and then on to Luxor, (there’s nothing in Qena to speak of, but it’s the place where Egypt stops being sandy desert and becomes green due to the Nile valley) our guide, a young Egyptologist, gave us hours and hours of information about the ancient Egyptians. Meanwhile, the bus driver was negotiating the dozens and dozens of armed “checkpoints” along the road. Every half mile or so there’d be a checkpoint, with soldiers carrying automatic rifles and a bunch of policemen armed to the teeth, as well. We had two armed guards on our bus, and I saw one guy’s gun poking out from under his suit coat. It was a huge black thing that looked like a sawed-off shotgun or a little Uzzi. We joked that in Egypt, “Security is Job One.” Nearly every other guy you see is in some kind of security job.
Anyway, the guide is droning on about Egyptian history, but we were prepared because we’d watched a bunch of Discovery Channel and History Channel programs on the ship. The ancient Egyptians were basically interested in only a few things: political power, land, water, and death. You can pretty much sum up everything they did by grouping it in to one of those four categories. The preoccupation with death was due to the fact that they believed that this life is only a short time which prepares you for eternity (sound familiar?). So, you better have your ducks in a row before you check out. For instance, as soon as a king or queen was crowned, they began work on their tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The VotK was created before the pyramids—these tombs were made some 3,000 BCE (BCE is the politically correct way to measure time. It used to be BC, for “before Christ”. Now, it’s BCE “before the current epoch.” Clever, huh?)
Luxor is a spectacular place of huge statues, columns and a temple that boggles the imagination. How did those ancient guys get those immense stones to the top of the columns? How did the intricately-carved hieroglyphics withstand 5,000 years and not get sandblasted off or wrecked by invading armies? Why on earth do they allow mere mortals like us to just amble through these priceless treasures touching everything and climbing on stuff to take a picture? Amazing.
Then we went to lunch at a fancy-schmancy hotel in Luxor that was right on the banks of the enormous Nile River. The Nile is huge—more like a lake in spots than a river. And it flows north—the only river that does this. The reason it flows north is that Egypt is kind of “backward.” When they say “Upper Egypt” they are talking about the south. When they say “Lower Egypt” they are referring to the northern part of the country. The reasoning behind this is that Upper Egypt is higher in elevation than Lower Egypt, thus the water flows from the higher point (in the south) to the lower point (in the north) and then into the Mediterranean Sea.
We then went to the Valley of the Kings. It was hot to the max. A real scorcher out there in this huge mountain of rock where the Egyptian Kings had their remains squirreled away with a few million dollars worth of gold, jewelry and knick-knacks to keep them company on their way to the afterlife. The whole afterlife story is depicted in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and believe me, I know more about the Book of the Dead than I ever wanted to know, but briefly, the BotD is a scroll that is buried with people to help them get through the many hurdles that await them on the way to the “Place of Reeds” or Paradise. The BotD reminds one a little of the Hobbit books. There are all kinds of bad guys and challenges and disaster lurking at every turn. The BotD is sort of a “cheat sheet” for the dead guy to refer to whenever he runs into a problem.
The sad truth about most of these tombs is that there’s not much left of them. Robbers took most of the really good stuff soon after many of the kings were buried (again, we’re talking some 5,000 to 3,000 years ago). The kings even tried clever ways of foiling the robbers. One foil was to create shafts (like empty elevator shafts) between the different chambers of the tomb so that robbers would fall into the dark shaft and die trying to plunder the tomb. But the thieves figured that one out and continued to spirit away (bad pun, sorry) most of the goods. The current thinking is that most of the thieves were guys who had worked on building the tombs. They were blindfolded each day before being led to work (on foot) but don’t you think that after traveling the same route for six to ten years you’d have the muscle memory to go back there once the dude had died? Yep. Probably so.
We went past King Tut’s tomb opening (it was closed when we arrived, but it doesn’t have much left since all the goods are now in the Cairo Museum) and went on to King Ramses III’s tomb. It was really spectacular. I thought the tombs would just be bare walls with a few hieroglyphics of guys with falcon heads and some cats or something. Nope, the entire inside of the tomb is painted and it’s still as vibrant and colorful as it was 5,000 years ago. Amazing. They do not allow photography of any kind in the tombs (all the better to sell you postcards) but we understood because too many flashes would certainly fade those natural colors and because they are in the dark (with photo-sensitive lighting so you can see in there) they stay pristine.
Then we went on to Queen (or King, whatever) Hatchepsut’s temple on the other side of the mountain. That temple is known for two things: first, it is in the “modern style” which means it has columns and a roof and is three stories high, and second, it’s the place where some tourists were killed a few years ago. I can’t stress enough the amount of security that we observed on this trip. Guns everywhere. Cops everywhere. We had to travel in a long convoy of buses (twelve buses) and mini-vans with an armed police escort at the front. We went about a hundred miles an hour on the way back to the ship because, as our tram driver told me on the way down the mountain from Ramses’ tomb, “The bad guys come out at night.”
It was a long day, but an incredible experience. I would love to come back and go to Cairo and see the museum there. There’s so much to see, it boggles the mind. And, the TSA could take a few tips from these guys regarding security. Flashing a bunch of big guns around certainly got my attention. On second thought, forget that. As Tom pointed out, you really don’t want to give those TSA guys and gals anything approximating a gun…