Teachout Trio fi Masr.
Seeing Ancient Rome was pretty cool. Laying over in Athens with the suggestion of ancient Greece not too far away was also cool. But the juxtaposition of seeing Ancient Rome, passing by Ancient Greece, and then touring Ancient Egypt was simply TOO cool. Literally minutes after arriving back to Cairo, I was waiting for a flight to Aswan, happily reunited with my parents. They had spent the last few days soaking up some much needed relaxation (don’t ask me how here in Cairo, perhaps because they hardly wandered outside the Hilton…) and partaking in some classic Cairene tourism. Below is a photo of my mum at the Great Pyramids at Giza. Apparently my mum enjoyed the day trip a bit more than my dad, as she had a camel of her own while he shared his camel with the guide, who as you can imagine was less “freshly-scented” than poor pops would have liked.
Nevertheless, we arrived to Aswan where Mahmoud, a taxi driver Sem arranged for us, delivered us to the jetty where we boarded on Nile Cruise. Before disembarking we ventured Aswan for some breakfast. Ofr course, it wasn’t even 10a, and nothing but ful and tamayya was available. So my parents a crash-course in balady style dinning as we squatted at a hole-in-the-wall ful place and laughed over how my obsessively-sanitary sister would react to the situation.
Our first stop en route up the Nile was the Aswan High Dam and Philae Temple. Ironically, the building of the High Dam flooded Philae Temple along with many other Ancient Monuments. In the 1980’s Philae Temple was de-constructed, transported, and reconstructed 550 meters away on a new island safe and sound above water, but water marks from the period when it was submerged will last forever. It was gorgeous. I discovered my two favorite hieroglyphs early on in the trip. The first is Bes. Bes is depicted as a naked, bow-legged dwarf with his tongue sticking out. He is a household deity of sorts as he represents amusement, pleasure, music, and dance and is considered the protector of children. His presence in the reliefs of many birth ceremonies, suggests he is a god of fertility. My tour guide told me he runs around naked with his tongue out to distract and entertain pregnant women with labor pains. I like that. The other is the source of the While Nile. There is the Blue Nile and the smaller White Nile, and the White Nile starts in a cave where the God depicted below smokes from a pipe and blows white steam into the earth’s crevasses.
Rumor has it the next stop at Kom Ombo was simple spectacular at sunset, but the Teachout Trio started an afternoon nap that didn’t finish until well after other temple-faring tourists had returned. The next day was Etna. While the monuments were great, as expected, the true highlight for me was a stop at an Internet Café (read: Internet Closet) where my mum replied to emails while my dad bargained my wedding price in camels with the owner. The final two days we were in Luxor, the true heart of Ancient Egypt. One temple (Karnak or Luxor, I can't remember) typified the various changes of Egyptian cultural history for me:
The temple itself was unique because each King to reign over it simply added to its architecture, rather than redesigning it in his image, so simply walking deeper into the temple you find Old, Middle, and New Kingdom history unravel before your eyes. However, mid-way through the temple, one finds the remains of a mosque suspended above some of the pillars and statues. This mosque was constructed in at the height of the Islamic Empire in Egypt unbeknownst that it was erected upon ancient ruins. In the deepest part of the Temple, one finds the reliefs change to Alexandrian style with incredible Roman influences, and finally Roman Catholic depictions of the flight of the Holy Family painted over the ancient surfaces. The polytheism of the Ancient Egyptians, the deep and turbulent history of Islam, and the imperialist force of Christendom all within meters of one another.
In Luxor, we also visited the Valley of the Kings, the less visited but brilliantly preserved Valley of the Queens, Hatsheput’s Palace, the Mumification Museum, and two of the oldest statues in Egypt (whose names escape me, wow I am ashamed sorry!). January was an ideal time to visit, because the sun was intense even though it was only in 60s and 70s. We flew from Luxor to Sharm where we were greeted my Mohamemd, an old acquaintance and a guy that radiates Beduoin gentility and strength despite the fact he’s not Bedouin. If my body was transformed into a map of Egypt, the Sinai most surely would be found in place of my heart. I love Dahab more than any other any other kilometer of Egypt that I've seen and being there with my family made it all the more pleasant.
The highlight was diving with my dad, who had just completed his SCUBA certification. Woot woot, Pops. With my dad busy in his PADI course and my better-half at work in Cairo, mum and I were cordially escorted by Mohammed around and about Dahab. We spent a morning at the Lagoon and while it was chilly there wasn't a single person in sight and we had the rocky beach to ourselves. Afterwards, we went off-roading into the mountains and saw... to be continued.
