Egypt 2023 - Day 8 - Abu Simbel

A very early morning, starting at 5:00 with a quick breakfast, then onto a bus to Aswan Airport to catch the shortest flight of my life (25 minutes) to the regional airport of Abu Simbel, a small town named for the next-door temple complex. Abu Simbel is the second most popular tourist location in Egypt, the location of the largest temple of Ramses II, aka Ramses the Great. Abu Simbel is named after the local Egyptian boy who assisted the Swiss researcher Burckhardt in discovering the temple in 1813. Burkhardt then led Italian Explorer Belzoni to the site, and it was Belzoni who eventually successfully excavated the entrance to the main temple in 1817.

Abu Simbel has been relocated from its original site, less than 200 meters away and 64 meters lower, due to the creation of Lake Nasser. The process of moving Abu Simbel was similar to the moving of Philae, so I won’t go into it again. Suffice it to say the relocation was impeccably done. Before the temple's relocation, the temple would have been revealed upon navigating a bend in the Nile. The relocators simulated the original mountainside so that travelers approaching the temple today would have a similar experience when approaching its new location.

The imposing statues of Ramses II at his Great Temple at Abu Simbel

The entrance to Ramses the II’s great temple is truly stunning. The second largest statues depicting our man-god, Ramses II, loom 20m (over 66 feet) high, flanking the entrance in pairs on either side. Inside is a trove of images worshiping the deified king. The main hall is flanked by statues of Ramses with the typical crossed arm, feet-together pose that would indicate that the statues were created after his death, but the straight beard indicates that he was alive. Archaeologists believe that this was to indicate that Ramses believed he was a living god and had already communed with the other gods in life instead of in death. 

People might have considered him a living god, as he was certainly larger than life. He was taller than most kings, at 5’7” (1.7m), with the exception of Amenhotep I, who had an inch on him. Ramses II was born a commoner, as was his grandfather Ramses I; his grandfather was a general in the army of Pharoah Horemheb, who uncharacteristically appointed him his successor. Ramses II followed his father, Seti I, as Pharaoh and had an incredibly long life with many wives (over 200) and many, many children (88-103, split pretty evenly between boys and girls). He was a very successful warrior-king, with dozens of triumphant campaigns and conquests. He also lived to be 91 years old, an epic feat in 1213 BCE when he finally joined his fellow Pharaohs in the Field of Reeds.

Ramses II smiting the Hittites with Ra-Horakhty’s approval

The engineering marvel of the Great Temple at Abu Simbel is its construction, which allowed the rising sun to shine more than 90 meters through the entire temple to shine light on three of the four statues there twice a year — his birth date and the date of his coronation. The four statues in his sanctuary are the god Ra-Horakhty (the personification of Ra as Horus), Amun-Ra, Ramses as deity, and Ptah, the creator god, who spoke the world into existence. (You can’t know how randy I am for name magic.) Ptah was said to exist in darkness until he brought about the world, so his statue remained in darkness during the alignment days.

The other cool feature of the complex at Abu Simbel is the Small Temple, dedicated to his wife Nefertari and the goddess Hathor. Of the four statues in front of this temple, two are of Ramses II (the fact that he put his own statues in front of his wife’s temple speaks to the level of his vanity, but was also likely a form of protection), and the other two are of Nefertari, who sits at equal height to her husband, an extremely rare occurrence in ancient Egyptian art.

The “Small Temple” of Nefertari at Abu Simbel

The coolest etching in Nefertari’s temple is near the back, opposite the sanctuary, and depicts Nefertari being crowned with the double-feathered crown by Isis and Neftis as if being made a Pharaoh. Not only is this the only representation of a woman receiving this honor, but the color work is very well maintained.

Nefertari’s coronation with the crown of Pharaohs by Isis and Hathor

The crowd inside both the temples at Abu Simbel was oppressive and frankly rude. Everyone jockeyed to get the best photos and pushed and broke queues to get to places first; that behavior, coupled with the heat and the humidity caused by the milling throng’s breathing, made the experience a bit unpleasant in both temples, but we managed to get our photos in the end and snaked our way back to the buses through the little market, where we were once again assailed by vendors.

Much to our relief, the rest of the day was leisure time. Napping, sun deck sitting, iced tea and cocktail drinking, blog article typing, and food consumption. There were no dances, no real presentations other than the usual announcements of the following day’s schedule. The boat set sail back north towards Esna, where we’ll stop briefly tomorrow to see the Temple of Khnum and the little town itself and then continue back to Luxor.

As usual, thanks for reading. Goodnight!

Egypt 2023 - Day 7 - Philae, Aswan Dam, Shopping, Felucca & Light Show

It was a packed day, with more places to visit than I could put in the title. Our first stop was to hop on a bus (of course), take a twenty-minute ride, then arrange on a little motor boat to putter us over to the temple complex known as Philae. The temple complex is only accessible via boat.

Philae temple at Sunrise from our little boat on the Nile

Philae is the Greek transliteration of the Nubian name Pilak, the island on which the temple was originally located. When the complex was threatened by the rising waters of Aswan Lake after the building of the Aswan High Dam (more on that later), the entire temple was moved stone-by-stone to another, higher-elevation island right next to the original.

Philae’s main excitement is the large temple dedicated to Isis, the goddess of love and magic and the wife of Osiris. It’s a beautiful building with a fully intact gate and lots of striking reliefs and paintings. The patron god of Aswan is Khnum, the ram-headed god of creation that shapes the faces of babies out of clay in the womb. We’ll be visiting a temple to Khnum in a few days, so let’s leave it at that for now. Since Isis is not the patron of Aswan, Taharqa, the Pharaoh responsible for the building of Philae, thought it appropriate to ask the high priest of Khnum to ask the god for permission to build a temple for another god there. In front of the main hall is a great stone inscribed with this permission, written in the apparent words of Khnum.

The “permission stone” from the God Khnum to build the Temple of Isis at Philae

Aside from the large temple to Isis, there is also a chapel built in the Roman era style, commissioned by the emperor Trajan, and a small temple to the Goddess Hathor because everyone needs to have a temple to the Goddess Hathor apparently, as she is considered the mother of all the Gods of Egypt. 

The other interesting thing about the island is it is filled with cats. They’re not the healthiest-looking little guys, but they are super affectionate, as tourists are constantly feeding them scraps. They will follow you about, demanding cuddles, and appear to be as much of an attraction as the temples.

Cat and her Kit at the temple of Philae

After Philae, we took a trip to see the Aswan High Dam. The dam is probably the most important innovation of modern Egypt and has changed the entire landscape of the country, both figuratively and literally. Construction on the dam began in 1960 and lasted precisely 10 years, completing near the end of 1970. Its completion created the imposing Lake Nasser, a massive 500km lake dividing Upper and Lower Egypt and preventing the inconsistency of the annual flooding of the Nile River.

High Aswan is 118 meters above sea level at its highest point and is very wide, acting like a huge wedge driven into the Nile. It is a critical military site. Walid stated that the destruction of the dam would flood the entirety of Upper Egypt within seven minutes, destroying everything in its path, including Cairo. That means security on the dam is tight. The bus was scanned and inspected at multiple military checkpoints, and we were only allowed to explore for ten minutes before the bus had to leave. We took pictures from atop the huge structure, looked at a few boards containing sun-faded photos of the construction and plans for the dam, and were on our way.

The High Aswan Dam (Aswan side) and the Monument built by the Egyptian Government honoring the Russian Engineers that oversaw it

I actually had to go back after writing the next section and add another bit in here because it's important to note that the creation of High Aswan was not without its sacrifices, willing or otherwise. The area that is now Lake Nasser was once the land called Nubia, which was a trade partner and sometimes a thorn in the side of the Egyptian kingdoms for thousands of years. Hatshepsut famously sent her stepson Thutmose III there to conquer it, which he succeeded at before she threw him into prison there to prevent him from ascending to the throne. The creation of Lake Nasser not only displaced 80-odd temples, which created a *massive* UNESCO project to transplant them all to new locations, but also obliterated the entirety of Nubia, displacing almost 100,000 modern-day Nubians to Aswan, Sudan, and several other locations. It has created quite a diaspora of the Nubian people, who have their own language and cultural identity. Egypt did pay to transplant all the citizenry, but not all of them went willingly. It is important to note that huge, mainly positive undertakings like this have economic and cultural costs. 

Afterward, the bus stopped for some shopping at an essential oils store. According to our guide, the oils are those used by all the major perfumeries to create their signature scents, but at ten times the dilution (and ten times the price), you could purchase them by getting the oils directly from Aswan, where they are extracted. I admit I decided to stay on the bus for the thirty minutes that it stopped at the store, as I am very sensitive to smells, and I assumed it would be overwhelming. The others in the group told me it was actually really cool and not overpowering inside at all, so now, as with most of the things I have opted out of, I regret not participating.

The next stop was the “Unfinished Obelisk” at the Granite quarry of Aswan. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the obelisk, ordered by Hatshepsut as part of a pair, isn’t much to look at. We had to hike up a small hill of granite to see it up close, and it’s…definitely an unfinished obelisk. It lays on its side, partially resolved from the lumpy granite surrounding it, like a sad little ruin.

The majesty of the Unfinished Obelisk. Notice the giant crack. Also Rob.

The story behind it, however, and its significance to archaeology, isn’t to be sniffed at. The reason the obelisk is unfinished is thus: the ancient method of carving such large structures out of granite involves drilling many holes into the solid stone and forcing water into them for weeks until the water causes the rock to strategically crack. This forms the general shape of the monument. Midway through this process on this particular obelisk, however, the massive stone cracked almost in half along its vertical axis, and the damage was irreconcilable. The ancient builders stopped construction, abandoning the first version and moving on to the second. The only reason archaeologists know how these obelisks and many others like it were constructed is because of Hatshepsut’s unfinished one, and so it is extremely significant to history despite its underwhelming appearance.

After the obelisk, we made one last bus stop to another shopping excursion, this time one I was actually excited about. The Papyrus Academy in Aswan is a part of the Aswan University Fine Arts program, and all the money made from purchases there goes to scholarships for the students of the artistic antiquities program. The students themselves run the shop, not just selling paintings they make themselves but explaining the designs and significance of each one. We were presented with a demonstration by an eager young female student named Mina of how papyrus reeds, related to sugar cane and also edible, are stripped, pressed, and dried to create paper that can last thousands of years in the right conditions.

The paintings were quite stunning and reasonably priced, given their handmade nature. I admit, we purchased a few (one of Isis and one of the Nile god Sobek), and I don’t regret it one bit.

At last, we returned to the ship for lunch. Yes, lunch. All of these stops were before 13:00. After some rest, several of us went on a very relaxing tour of the Nile with Walid on one of the large sailboats called a Felucca. Felucca are no longer used for practical purposes, merely as a way for tourists to get a sense of how sailing the Nile was once done. They are inherently slow, as the winds on the Nile are enough to sail by but not enough to sail consistently by. Taking a Felucca from Aswan to Luxor is a nine-day adventure, not for the faint of heart, as they are not very big ships (the smallest hold about 8 people and the largest about 20) and usually don’t have restroom facilities. Yeah, just ponder that for a minute.

Typical Feluccas on the Nile at Aswan

But a leisurely sail in the Nile near Aswan was just the thing after a long day of touring and shopping. The two Nubian sailors aboard the Felucca were very experienced, and one had an absolutely adorable eight-year-old son who steered the prow while his father directed him. We sailed around for the better part of an hour and, of course, were requested to partake of the very inexpensive, handcrafted Nubian goods displayed aboard the ship.

After the Felucca ride, a few more hours of relaxation before we departed for a journey *back* to the temple complex at Philae for an evening sound and light show sponsored by Egyptian Air. The light show tells the story of the history of the temple across the thousands of years of its existence, even into its modern-day transplantation onto the new island, all done from the perspective of the gods Khnum, Isis, Hathor, and a bevy of other historical voices. 

The Temple of Isis at Philae illuminated for the Light show

It was a little hokey, and we were all absolutely annihilated at this point in the evening, but the cats were all cuddles and love even at night, and the lights really did make the complex look beautiful, so that made the adventure worth the few hours of travel and show.

Late dinner, and so to bed. Tomorrow is a short day but a significant one, as we take a (very) brief flight to the temple of Ramses the Great at the small town of Abu Simbel, only 80km north of the Sudanese border, on the shore of Lake Nasser.

Until next time, dear readers!

Egypt 2023 - Day 6 - Kom Ombu, Birding at Aswan, & the Old Cataract Hotel

 I accidentally deleted the first draft of this article, which was about two-thirds complete, so hopefully, this will still be coherent in the rewrite. Ain’t that just the way.

Content warning: there’s a mummified crocodile later on, which is awesome, but it’s also a dead animal

The first stop of the morning was the temple of Kom Ombu, originally named Kum Mubuu, meaning ‘Golden Mount’ because Gold was mined in the hills behind the temple. Kom Ombu temple is dedicated to the gods Sobek and Horus. Sobek is the god of the Nile, a male figure with a crocodile head. The reason for the dual worship is that Sobek, according to our Egyptologist, was considered a ‘bad’ god. Some light research seems to indicate that he was considered a very dangerous god but also a god of life due to his connection to the Nile, the lifeline of Egypt.

The exterior of Kom Ombu facing the Nile. Note the double entrance for the two gods

Kom Ombu is considered the first temple of the Roman period in Egypt, around 30 BCE. It was a place pharaohs would visit to give offerings to both Sobek and Horus. Egyptian temples were not places for people. Only the priests and the Royal family were allowed in, and only the High Priest were allowed into the inner sanctuaries. Not even a Pharaoh could enter those rooms.

An earthquake in the 14th century severely damaged the Temple at Kom Ombu, and most of the columns were destroyed, along with every ceiling and many walls. Emperor Trajan added to the temple, creating the first known hospital dedicated to the Egyptian god of medicine, Imhotep. The hospital was used for surgeries, dentistry, and midwifery. There are depictions of the goddess Neftis, pregnant and sitting on a birthing stool, and her not-so-pregnant sister Isis.

Isis (top) and her pregnant sister Neftis (bottom) in Imhotep’s hospital at Kom Ombu

This temple also has great side-by-side examples of high-relief carving vs. sunken-relief carving. High relief was favored by the earlier Egyptians and was much more difficult since any mistakes were nearly impossible to conceal. By the Roman era, and starting with Ankenhaten, the Egyptians were using sunken relief, where the figures were carved into a background on the stone, which allowed for corrections via the addition of plaster and recarving.

Horus (left) and Sobek (right) in high relief on the walls of Kom Ombu

To the south of the main temple complex is a deep well, which was not used for drinking water but was a device for measuring the depth of the Nile, which flowed into the well via a tunnel at the bottom. The priest used the height of the Nile to determine how much tax to levy against the people. When the Nile was high, the taxes were high since the crop yields were higher in wetter years. This device is charmingly referred to as a “Nileometer.”  There are 87 known Nileometers throughout Egypt.

Nileometer at Kom Ombu

The Nileometer at Kom Ombu was also used to keep a single Crocodile that the high priest ordained to contain the spirit of the Crocodile god Sobek. It was worshiped as such and treated with great respect. When said crocodile would perish, it was given an honor procession, mummified, and kept in a crypt inside the temple. Today, there is a “Crocodile Museum” just outside the temple complex that houses the remains of these mummies, and they are super cool, if a bit creepy.

Mummified Crocodiles at the Crocodile Museum in Kom Ombu

I didn’t know much about Sobek before this excursion, and now he’s one of my favorites.

After Kom Ombu, we had lunch and sailed to Aswan, the Southernmost port of our trip, but certainly not the last adventure. After lunch, we hopped aboard a small motorboat to get a tour of the Nile around Aswan, specifically focused on the birds and flora of the area.

Kids on paddle boats scooted up to our boats to ask for money and sang songs in French to entice the tourists. Our gang, and just our gang, decided to brave sitting on the roof of the boat for a better view, and it was well worth the added wind, though Rob did lose his hat to a particularly strong gust early on in the tour.

Kids intercepting the small motorboats and Feluccas headed out onto the Nile for tours

The Nile around Aswan is home to many specie of trees and plant life including bamboo, mallow, palms of every variety you can think of, mango trees and acacia. We saw gray herons, cattle egrets, harriers, swifts, lots and lots of ducks, rock doves, sand grouse, squacco herons, little herons, and on and on. Our guide on this tour was a man named Mohamed Arabi, who is actually quite famous in the birding world and known as the “Bird Man” of Aswan. 

Cattle Egrets on a scuttled boat in the Nile

Along the way, we also got our first glimpse at the Old Cataract Hotel, which would not-so-coincidentally be our next journey stop.

Uniworld has a contract with the Old Cataract, which is made famous for being the filming site of the original version of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Christie stayed at the hotel for over a year with her husband when they visited Egypt. It was originally the summer home of King Farouk, the last king of Egypt, before being converted into a hotel after the revolution. Farouk stayed in the hotel for probably two weeks out of the year to escape the heat of Cairo.

Nowadays, a room at the Old Cataract starts at about $5000 USD a night in the peak season. The royal suite runs about $12000 USD an evening.

Old Cataract Hotel at Aswan

 The hotel has a beautiful English-style bar that we admired from a distance but were not allowed into. We took afternoon tea on the veranda connected to the New Cataract Hotel beside the Old, originally built to house the Russian builders who built the High Aswan Dam in the 1960s and 70s. The well-timed “light” meal of dainty little sandwiches and cakes coincided with the sunset and the adhan of Magrib over Lake Aswan between the older British dam and the High dam and was very striking.

Sunset from the Veranda at the New Cataract Hotel

Afterward, we returned to the boat for a little relaxation and another happy hour of Egyptian spirits in the lounge. Today’s special was a “Ramses II,” which was more or less just a Gin and tonic with some lime and a sprig of Rosemary, but it was a pretty decent one.

“Ramses II” G&T with Rosemary

At 19:00, we were honored with a traditional Nubian dance accompanied by a chanter and drum group. The first few dances were a lot of fun, but of course they had to get the tourists involved, and it turned into one of those contact embarrassment experiences that are hard for me to endure. I’ll talk a bit about Nubia tomorrow because the Nubian people are a key part of Aswan’s history, and their story is rather tragic.

Nubian performance on the boat

We were so stuffed from all the nibbles at tea that our entire group opted out of dinner for the evening, which frankly didn’t sound particularly exciting anyway. Instead, another round of G&Ts and chat awaited us on the sun deck, where we soaked in the evening air and enjoyed the glow of the KFC located right next to our dock.

It’s worth mentioning that here in Luxor, and indeed in Cairo, there are a lot of cruise ships very similar to ours (though we’ve been told the Sphinx is regarded as one of the nicer boats on the Nile). There are not nearly enough docks to accommodate all these boats, so they are literally stacked next to each other along the dock, and you walk through the lobbies of the other boats to go ashore if your boat isn’t the first on the dock. We were fortunate to be the first at our dock this time, so we got a closer view of the on-shore action.

Cruise ships stacked at the tourist port of Aswan

Tomorrow is a packed day — we’ll visit the Island temple of Philae, a perfume and essential oil factory, the High Aswan Dam, the Papyrus Institute, the “Unfinished Obelisk” of Hatshepsut at the Aswan granite quarry, and then return to Philae for a light show in the evening.

Egypt 2023 - Day 5 - Valley of the Kings, Et Al

Content Warning for this post: there’s a very long-dead mummy further down.

 Another early morning and another bus trip in the vicinity of Luxor. Today, we went to the famous Valley of the Kings and some of the surrounding monuments and visited a family-run Alabaster factory. This evening on the boat was also “Egyptian Night,” which promised a full buffet of Egyptian food and a “Galabeya Party” with dancing and Egyptian costumes.

Some of the group decided to wake up well before the crack of dawn to see the vicinity of the Valley of the Kings via hot air balloon, which Sean and I opted out of. The day was already going to be pretty packed, and we were both unwilling to sacrifice more sleep for the added adventure. I’ve been on hot air balloons before. They are fun, but it's a process, and I wasn’t keen this time.

Balloons taking off near the Valley of Kings

We collected the wayward balloonists at our first stop - The Colossi of Memnon. Memnon is what the Greeks decided to call Amenhotep III due to the similarity of his name to their own mythical king and their belief that the statues cried as if they’d lost their lover. This is likely due to the wind blowing through cracks in the statues, which have since been sealed, and the crying ceased. The Colossi were once attached to the mummification temple of Amenhotep III, but several earthquakes and the temple’s proximity to the Nile floodplain annihilated the temple itself and left the statues in bad shape. Tourists are not allowed too near the behemoths because they are liable to collapse in the near future.

The Colossi of Memnon

After the Colossi, we bussed our way to the nearby Valley of the Kings, where centuries of tombs lie excavated. There are 64 at the time of this writing, with two more likely on their way to being revealed. The only tomb that contained any artifacts whatsoever upon its excavation was the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun due to its position directly below the rubble of another tomb, but we’ve talked about that already.

The entrance to the Valley of Kings and the natural Pyramid above it

Walid likes to lecture. He’s a teacher, has three Master’s degrees in history and archaeology, and is currently doing his doctoral thesis, specifically about the journey of the soul through the afterlife in the ancient Egyptian religion. Suffice it to say he was enthusiastic to tell us about the process.

In order to be reborn into eternal life, the soul must undergo a journey through ten gates, which takes said soul a year to accomplish. Each of the gates is represented in the Pharaoh’s tomb, and the actions taken at each gate are depicted between them. I’m sure he could have gone on for hours about the process, but he only focused on a few for his pre-tomb talk.

When a soul presents itself to the first gate of death, it identifies itself by stepping forward with the left foot and presenting the left hand (though I swear every image we saw depicted the Pharaoh extending their right hand.) Once the soul is identified, they proceed to the second gate, where they must tell the great deeds of their life and confess their sins.

Ramses III presenting himself at the first gate to the Afterlife

Then, at gate three, they must toil for an entire year in the afterlife, doing physical labor to prove their strength of character. This may seem like not a very Pharaonic pursuit, so there’s an exception thrown in that you can have another person spend a day toiling for you in your stead. The Pharaohs, being as great as they were, always had enough people to volunteer for this honor, and this was represented by a series of small statues called ushabti, which were placed in niches between the third and fourth gates in the tomb. 

At gate four, all the people who supported you in life ease your journey, and all your enemies resist your passing. The artists of the tombs represented the supporters facing inward towards the door to eternal life and the enemies facing back towards the entrance of the tomb, representing their resistance to the pharaoh’s journey. The enemies were also often shown upside down, or with their heads removed (to prevent their resistance), or both.

The Allies and Enemies of Ramses IX in this Tomb

Gate five usually depicts the journey of the soul on a great golden boat. Walid skipped over gates six through nine, but at some point, of course, the soul’s heart is weighted in the presence of Osiris against a feather to judge whether their sins outweigh their purity. If they are judged worthy, they are allowed to pass through the tenth gate into eternal life in the Field of Reeds.

While researching a bit for this post, I discovered there is a lot more to it than that, but today, we’ll stick with the info shared by our Egyptologist.

There are currently sixty-four unearthed tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but many are not suitable for tourist exploration, and indeed, many more are in bad condition, their paintings long since faded and fallen. The Ministry of Antiquities keeps only eight or nine tombs available to the public at a time, rotating which ones are open every six months.

After the extensive lecture, Walid gave us recommendations as to which tombs to visit and the order in which to do them. To prevent crowding and protect the tombs from excess humidity caused by breath, tourists are only allowed to visit three tombs when they visit the valley, excluding King Tut’s tomb, which has its own ticket. Tour speeches are not permitted in the tombs due to the number of tourists moving in and out of them at any given time, so we were on our own to explore.

Each of the tombs is numbered with a key called the KV number. This number represents what order in which the tombs were discovered. Some examples: KV-1 is the tomb of Ramses VII, the location of which as been known since antiquity but which was only properly excavated in 1985 by explorer Edwin Brock. The famous tomb of King Tutankhamun is KV-62, famously unearthed in 1922 by French archaeologist Howard Carter and initially discovered by a young Egyptian boy digging outside of the prescribed excavation site, whose name is sadly lost to history. 

Only two other tombs have been discovered since the 1922 discovery of Tut’s tomb, but two more are currently being prepared for excavation, bringing the total up to 66.

I won’t go into a lot of detail of our tours of the tombs. They are all quite similar, with varying degrees of wear and fading. We visited the tombs of Ramses III (KV-11), Ramses IX (KV-6), Ramses IV (KV-2), and of course, the tomb of Tutankhamen (KV-64).

Sean and I in front of the burial chamber of Ramses IV

Tut’s tomb was small but was probably not originally planned to be so, as the boy-king died at just nineteen. The painting in the tomb is sparse and rushed, and there are few of the traditional gates to the afterlife represented. The burial chamber is also small, though the decorations have been preserved beautifully. Tut’s mummy is still housed in the tomb and kept under temperature and humidity-controlled glass.

Tutankhamen himself, disturbed from his rest

After exploring the valley, we visited an Alabaster factory nearby. Walid informed us that the family who runs the factory originally had their home directly above the tomb of a priest located outside of the Valley of the Kings, and the government paid for them to be relocated off the tomb and arranged for them to receive a tax discount to run the factory, which of course is also a store. The owner gave us a tour, including some guys at the front who demonstrated the ancient method of creating alabaster vases with augurs and sickle-like chisels. Clearly it’s not the way they do it now, and it felt a little hokey, but they were really happy to pose for pictures (and to pick up the tips on the way out.)

Alabaster Factory worker

Almost everyone we have interacted with outside of the official Uniworld staff has a little hustle to get bakshiish (tips) from tourists. The government actually mandates that all tourist sites have small markets in front of them where the aggressive sellers vie for the eyes and wallets of the visitors after they leave each site. They are aggressive. Their products are generally very cheap and often made in China, with a few exceptions in specific locations known for certain products (like cotton and alabaster in Luxor).

Despite the manager advertising the factory as ‘barter and pressure-free’, after the tour, we had a swarm of salesmen hover around us, waiting for people to express interest in things so they could pop in and show them the more expensive version. I admit to buying some stuff and had my first real bartering experience. Honestly — it wasn’t so bad. Sort of like roleplaying a character in D&D. I got the salesman down to about half the original price for a very nice Alabaster vase and a basalt scarab. I hope I can figure out how to get them back home, as we packed very efficiently and there’s not much room in our luggage for extra stuff. 

The last tour of the day was to the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, the Pharaoh in drag. She was definitely straight, as her temple was created by her presumed lover and architect, Senenmut. The temple was discovered in the 15th century, but unfortunately, like many other temples in the area, it was well destroyed by earthquakes. Most of the statuary and reliefs are gone; most of the paintings faded. There were a few highlights, including some cool statues depicting Hatshepsut in her false beard as the King of Upper Egypt and the King of Combined Egypt, and a chapel to Hathor. High on the mountain above the temple is a cave. The cave leads to a tunnel through the mountain, going directly into the tomb of Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Kings, but it is not accessible to tourists.

Hatshepsut as the King of Upper Egypt

After Hatshepsut it was time to return to the ship, and we at last set sail for a longer cruise. From Luxor, we traveled up to Esna, which took several hours. The sunset and the adhan were once again called for the sunset prayer, Maghrib. Muslims do not need to pray exactly when the adhan is called. It simply represents the start of a span of time in which they should do the specific prayer. Many Muslims do take the opportunity to pray at the time of the call, but it’s not required. The sound of the call echoing across the Nile is actually really profound. I’m sure Muslims are so used to it that it's just part of their day, but as a foreigner to both the religion and the region, it’s always spellbinding to me. We sailed through the lock at Esna, where we had to wait in line for a bit before they let us through the 20-minute process of raising us up the cataract so we could continue on to Aswan. Hawkers called their wares from little boats in the lock, and I’m told they threw items up onto the deck to convince people to buy things. We were already in the lounge awaiting our nightly briefing for the following day’s activities.

That evening was Egyptian night on the boat. We were all encouraged to don galabeya, the loose, long shirt that many men and women wear daily. Of course, the on-board shop sells them, but I had enough loose linen clothing that it didn’t seem necessary to buy something I would likely only wear once. A few cruisers certainly did wear the garment, and the entire staff was dressed up for the evening. Our favorite waiter/bartender, Moses, was wearing a scarf with red, green, and gold. When we asked what the significance of the colors was, he said it was because he really likes Bob Marley. When asked why he likes Bob Marley so much, he smiled. Ok, Moses, we see you.

We were treated to an amazing buffet of Egyptian food, including cabbage and eggplant stuffed with spiced rice. A huge array of mezze, a monster of a baked Nile perch that was carved up to order, lamb kofta, Egyptian phyllo pastry stuffed with pistachios and spices, and dozens of other treats. Dessert was a plethora of honey-soaked eclairs, dense coconut cakes, rich almond cookies, om ali bread pudding, baklava, and so on and on and on. Moses made us a house cocktail made with Egyptian rum, orange and mango juice, and fragrant cinnamon. I might have had three of those.

A bevy of Egyptian delights at the Egyptian night on the ship

After dinner, there was a big party, where the staff eagerly danced with the cruisers. I can already hear the disappointment of my mother when I say that I didn’t attend. I’d had enough social interaction for the day.  My husband, however, cannot resist a dance, and based on the encouragement from the staff the next morning, he was the life of the party, which lasted until at least 22:30. I was blissfully asleep by 21:00.

Sean getting down at the Egyptian dance party

Tomorrow is one I am really excited about, as we are going to visit the temple of Kom Ombu, which is dedicated to the Nile crocodile god Sobek. We’ll also do some birdwatching on a felucca and visit the Old Cataract Hotel, featured in Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, who lived at the hotel while she and her jerk of a husband lived in Egypt.