Thanksgiving Wrap-Up
Posted November 27, 2006I'm sitting on my bed with my laptop, listening to Charles Mingus and thinking of the trip to Upper Egypt. We returned late last night, after flying, floating, and touring. In the same way that I cannot give enough thanks on Thanksgiving to those whom I love, I cannot convey how much I enjoyed this trip.
The First Day
We left Cairo by plane in the extreme A.M. on Thanksgiving. The entire AUC group numbered about 75 people, and every one of us felt like the walking dead when we arrived at Aswan at dawn. We boarded two large tour buses and began our sightseeing. First stop: the Aswan dam.
The Aswan dam is a recent addition to the Egyptian landscape (you know, compared to the other monuments for which Egypt is famous). It is also actually two dams. The Low Dam was built during the turn of the 20th century, and the High (and much larger) dam was finished in 1970, creating Lake Nasser. According to our guides, Lake Nasser holds 168 million cubic meters of water, more than three times what Egypt uses each year. It is the largest man-made lake in the world.
The sunrise on Lake Nasser bathes sleepy AUC students on the Aswan High Dam.
Lake Nasser fundamentally changed the Egyptian landscape. What is now water used to be a Nubian settlement, surrounded by dozens of ancient Egyptian temples and monuments. A handful of these were rescued before the dam was inaugurated, but most now lie at the bottom of the lake. (One of the preserved temples is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.) The Nubian settlement of 150,000 people was moved - perhaps displaced is a better word - by the Egyptian government during construction of the dam, and the guides will proudly tell you that the new village built for them was a close replica of their original home, though the new buildings were supplied with electricity and running water.
(For more dam-related human displacement, read about the Three Gorges Dam in China, on the Yangtze River. Estimated people affected by rising water levels: 1.9 million.)
Construction of the Aswan dam also put an end to a part of Egyptian life that is older than writing itself: the flooding of the Nile and depositing of fertile soil on the river banks. Now that the Nile water levels are controlled by the dam, the Nile does not flood annually, and so it cannot deposit the fertile topsoil to its banks. Agriculture in Egypt was altered forever.
From the Aswan dam, we drove three hours to Abu Simbel, the first ancient stop on our trip. Two impressive temples comprise Abu Simbel, though they were also displaced by the Aswan dam. Their current location is 67 meters up the rocky slopes of the desert from their original location, which is now underwater.
The standing statues at Abu Simbel.
Now, my favorite part of Abu Simbel is the outside. Each of the two temples is fronted by giant statues, six standing at one temple, four sitting at another. The standing statues are flanked by honorific inscriptions, but the sitting statues feel more impressive because of the illusion of size: they appear the same size as their standing counterparts, but were they to stand they would dwarf the mountain into which the temple is carved.
A nerd in his natural habitat.
Another three hour bus ride took us back to the boat, where we ate and eventually fell asleep. I believe that was my first time sleeping on a boat, though we did not leave port until the next day.
The Second Day
Not by choice, we woke at 6 to visit the Nubian museum before their early closure on Friday. The museum is small but nice, and though they allow you to take pictures without a flash, their lighting prevents any good pictures from being taken. Sneaky!
The next stop was very cool. The Temple of Philae is a New Kingdom temple, which means it's relatively recent in contrast to the pyramids. It is home to the last hieroglyphic carvings, dated to 394 C.E. What makes these glyphs particularly interesting is that the priests who carved them didn't know what they were doing, really. By this time, language in Egypt had changed several times so as to be very different from the oldest hieroglyphic carvings. People spoke Coptic, the last stage of the Egyptian language, which has its own script. But the priests carved glyphs ceremonially, copying older writings with their own modifications, attempting to represent a language no longer spoken with a script no longer used. As a result, they made lots of mistakes - their carvings are riddled with grammatical errors and misspellings. This is how it's possible for more recent glyphs to be harder to read than older writings.
Colin and Eric prepare for some solar exposure.
Approaching Philae from our boat.
The Hall of Columns leads to the Philae main building.
The front of the main building at Philae.
Smiting!
Poor grammar. Humph.
Eric exiting a temple room.
We returned to our boat and had lunch, then boarded smaller boats for an early evening ride to a Nubian village situated on an island not far from our port. A band played and danced while the boats cruised. The boats, by the way, were tied together so as to let people pass between the two. Once at the Nubian village, we walked to the house of one of the families, where they tried to sell us various touristy things, such as African masks and bracelets.
Max Wallach giving his best "metal" face while pounding some hand drums.
On the way to the Nubian village.
Once night fell, we departed from the Nubian village for our boat, dinner, and the first leaving of Aswan port. As the night wore on, we sailed towards our destination, KomOmbo, and I fell asleep just as we put in again.
The Third Day
After rising at 7, we debarked and poked around KomOmbo Temple, which was beautiful by the morning light. Unfortunately, KomOmbo is not well-preserved, with many walls missing and broken stones littering the promenade near the Nile side. The remaining walls, however, are decorated with wonderful scenes and glyphs. In some places, remnants of the original paint can be seen.
After an hour at KomOmbo, we put into the river again, sailing until the afternoon. Drifting on the Nile is as relaxing as relaxing gets. Our ship's top deck had a cold jacuzzi and freezing pool, though we soon discovered that the jacuzzi could be made to feel lukewarm if we went in the pool first. The wind chill, a result of our boat's cruising speed, didn't help the warming process, either. After twenty minutes in the water, I decided to tan on deck and watch the Nile valley go by.
The top deck of the ship was great for relaxing.
In the afternoon, we put into the city of Edfu for a visit to Edfu Temple, the best preserved temple of Egypt. If I thought the glyphs at KomOmbo were well drawn, Edfu's were paragons of craftsmanship. I had never seen a number of the designs before, including many combination glyphs that surprised me. I'll have to look for references to them in my materials when I have a chance.
The front of Edfu Temple. Notice similarities to the front of Philae?
Some gorgeous glyphs on a pillar at Edfu.
From Edfu, we sailed the rest of the day, approaching Luxor. On the way, we had dinner and attended a party in the boat's lounge, where we danced and played games and had a good time. Not until we were all asleep did we arrive at Luxor.
The Fourth Day
Luxor is home to some of my favorite monuments of Egypt. Both sides of the city have things to see, and I could spend weeks exploring the temples. In the morning, we visited the Valley of the Kings, on the west bank of the Nile. Because we had short time, we were only able to see a few tombs. While inside the tomb of Thutmosis III, I was told by one of the guards to stop explaining things, because it would "bother the other tourists." The group of people I was explaining things to consisted of friends of mine from the trip, and since no one was complaining, we basically said, "No. Go away." What a jerk. He embodies one of the major problems in Egyptology today, which I see as the people who control the sites not disseminating any actual knowledge. They'll gladly take your money, but they don't even let tour guides explain things in the tombs.
(By the way, in my visits to various sites I have heard a fair bit of misinformation from guides speaking to their tour groups. The most egregious offenders are Egyptian.)
Hatshepsut's Temple. Tourists come standard on the 2006 model.
From the Valley of the Kings, we drove to the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, which is in my opinion the most beautiful construction of ancient Egypt. Her illegitimate son, Thutmosis III, succeeded her on the throne, and by the end of his reign he had effectively defaced her name from most of the monuments that once bore it. Only portions of her name remain in her temple, but enough to identify it as hers.
Jonathan's on my right, Max's on my left, and I'm singing Stealer's Wheel.
Molly and I pretend we're colossi.
We quickly stopped by the Colossi of Memnon, then returned to the boat for lunch, and I prepared myself for my own pilgrimage. The next temple is my Mecca: Karnak. New batteries in the camera, a new memory card, and some water - I was ready. I knew I would not get to see much of it, because it is a massive complex, but I was excited anyway.
We pulled up to Karnak and I was grinning like an idiot. I was here! The scene I had imagined many times before, consciously and not, depicted in art, home to various translations I'd done, was about to unfold.
The great hypostyle hall at Karnak.
I can't accurately describe how big this temple is. It was built like a city, with various sectors under construction at different times. Many kings modified it, adding new shrines, monuments, and buildings in an effort to outdo the last. It is the largest Egyptian temple ever built, now surrounded by ruins, the lot of which need cataloguing and analysis, to say nothing of restoration. A team of Egyptologists could easily spend a lifetime working on Karnak alone.
My friend Martine got this picture of me nerding out in the hypostyle hall.
Stepping into the great hypostyle hall was a religious experience for me, as was seeing Hatshetsup's obelisk, which I translated junior year with some of my classmates. I'm pretty sure most of my friends who were on the trip with me can confirm that my jaw was dropped most of the time.
Queen Hatshepsut's obelisk at Karnak is well-preserved.
Ruins at Karnak. There's work to be done!
Looking into the distance at Karnak only reveals more ruins. It's huge.
After a criminally short time at Karnak, we drove to nearby Luxor Temple, which is home to the brother of the obelisk located in Paris, in the park adjacent to the Louvre. Luxor Temple is nice, though it has a Mosque built into it, which I suppose is a nice microcosm of the history of Egypt, regardless of how awful it looks. From Luxor Temple, we headed back to the ship to pack our bags. Our flight from Luxor to Cairo left at 10:20 P.M. and took only 45 minutes, and we knew we were back in Cairo when we stepped off the plane and into the awful Cairo air.
The obelisk at Luxor Temple.
I began this post by saying that I cannot convey how much I enjoyed this trip, and that's still true. Visiting these sites whet my appetite for more, and I hope to return to Luxor for several days in January. And in addition to enjoying the trip on an academic level, I made some new friends, such as the Norwegians, who have become my favorite group of Norwegians, edging out the band A-Ha for the number one spot.
Now I have to get back into school mode, since there are three weeks left in this term. I will have winter plans soon, hopefully, but plans seem to change so fast here it's difficult to keep up sometimes. We'll see what develops!
