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| Sunset sailing in a felucca, with the Nile slipping by quietly. |
Erm....
Where to begin? Commentators
write that the history of Egypt is as long as the Nile. And by way of example, my guide book lists
dozens of different Pharoic dynasties, starting at 3100 BC and continuing up to
941 BC. It takes two full pages to detail
their names alone, and this still doesn't really convey how long ago they're
talking about.
If Pharoahs don't float your felucca, you
could study instead the later periods of Persian, Roman, Arab, Turkish or
European influence; as these controlling powers fell over one another to rule
Egypt for the next two-and-a-half millennia. 'True' independence was declared only
in 1952, when a home-grown dictatorship dynasty began (ending with the 'Arab
Spring' of 2011).
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| Temple of Philae - relocated and rebuilt, but still mightily impressive |
The weight of history, then, is heavy
hereabouts. One century is something I can grasp because my granny nearly
reached 94. I wonder if 'five hundred centuries' makes the leap back to Pharoic time easier to
contemplate? Hmmm. If life expectancy is now at least double
what it was, I'm not sure imagining a line of, say, one thousand grannies does
much to help.
I contemplate this Egyptian riddle as I
leap off the boat (literally), struggle through the crowds, and make my way
into the town of Aswan in the back of a
battered Peugeot 504 taxi.
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| The lion goes from strength to strength? |
Every third car is the same model. This French tank was our family car when I was a kid, and I'm filled with nostalgia: the
interior is just as I remembered it, all the buttons, knobs and switches. I remember my family wedging into the three
rows of seats as we crossed counties to holiday in Cumbria or Wales.
My trip down memory lane is much more
calming than the crazy driving carrying on outside. Egyptians, I can see, adopt an unorthodox
interpretation of their Highway Code. Traffic
light rules are optional, road lanes irrelevant, pedestrians expendable.
I have about a week whilst I wait for my
bike to be barged up from Wadi Halfa.
Fortunately, there are plenty of sites to keep me busy. And for once we're talking the archaeological
kind, not those of the interweb-thingy.
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A week is a long time in Aswan. Especially if you're fretting about the
security of your much-loved motorcycle. Will my bike even be on the next barge? 'I should have stayed to ensure that it
was..', I tell myself ruefully. Did I
trust too much to that fixer - the guy I'd met only twice? I'm uneasy about the arrangement and curse my
impatience to get to Aswan.
Strangely, even with days at my disposal, getting
an impression of what Egypt is about is proving even harder than usual. A few blog posts cannot summarise the broad-bound history books, and I don't intent to try.
But what of the other aspects of the national make up? After reading my
guide book I'm feeling intimidated by Egypt's cultural depth. Beyond picture-postcard pyramids and the
serpentine Nile, the country boasts a sophisticated identity that grapples with
modern environmental issues almost as challenging as that little
flooding-problem the ancients had. In
food and drink customs, national sports, or the role of women in society, Egypt
has something to say. And in anything
that could be termed 'art' they also keep us tourists guessing:
From my Lonely Planet Guide:
To the Arab world, Egypt (or more
specifically Cairo) is a powerhouse of film, TV, music and theatre. While
little of this culture has had any impact on the West, a great many Egyptian
actors and singers are superstars and revered cultural icons to Arabic-speakers
around the world.
And that is to say nothing of Nobel Prize
winning literature or the deeply embedded - and mostly peacefully co-existing -
religious convictions of the population (90% Muslim, 10% Coptic Christian).
Oh, and with Egypt being an Arabic-speaking
county my ignorance knows no bounds!
I don't know how best to scratch the
surface of all this - I need more research, more time on the ground and more
interaction with locals: I need to live here for a while, really.
===================================
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| Temporary plates |
Thankfully, my bike is delivered before any
other crazy notions pop into my head. I'm
relieved to find few signs of neglect: it's an easy bike to drop (ahem - take
my word for it), and I think somewhere along the line the stevedores might have
done just that.
Still, Bavaria's best
fires up first time and after a morning of paperwork I'm pleased to be motoring
out of the port and back into town. I
won't be hanging around long - this is Day 5 in Aswan already.
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| Like Cleopatra, she has a barge all to herself.. |
What did I do for a week in Aswan? Well,
there's the remote temples of Abu Simbel, a 200km bus trip in the 'wrong'
direction. I skipped that, and regret it
later. There's a trip to the Aswan
Dam. I skip that, too, after refusing to
pay the inflated ticket price to drive along a wall.
There's a famous "unfinished"
obelisk in the local quarry, which is 42m long and would have weighed in at
1168 tons if completed. (A Rolls Royce
car weighs about 2 tons, I was once taught, if you need a comparison.) I visit, but I'm not as impressed as I'd
expected - laying horizontal, the granite piece just doesn't deliver the
wow-factor.
The next day I hitch a boat ride with some
Londoners to the island of Philae: the temple complex dedicated to the Goddess
Isis. Her cult goes back to the 7th
century BC, but the temple I look around today is dated 'only' from 380BC. This is a slightly fake date, as the temple
was relocated (with the help of UNESCO) between 1972 and 1980. The remains needed raising out of the flooded
reservoir created by the newly finished Aswan Dam. Thus, the island is enhanced and the massive
stone structures were relocated and rebuilt here.
Perhaps because my expectations were low as
a result, I actually find the temple very impressive. I snap away at the picturesque setting, and
nod with respect at a point well made by my trusty guide book:
As
the world’s first nation-state, predating the civilisations of Greece and Rome
by several millennia, Egypt was responsible for some of the most important
achievements in human history – it was where writing was invented, the first
stone monuments erected and an entire culture set in place, which remained
largely unchanged for thousands of years.
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| Banksy has some way to go yet... |
It's the first time I've seen hieroglyphs,
and even today the quality of workmanship seems outstanding. Some areas show faint traces of paint, giving
an fleeting impression of how this place must have struck visitors from ancient
times.
Some of the magnificent carvings were
defiled by occupiers over the years. The
crusading Christians were particularly keen to deface the statues, it seems,
but even WWII soldiers couldn't help themselves. Then again, I suppose this is now part of the
history of the place too.
The trip to the temple has made a good
impression on me, and I think the tricks and traps of the touts will be worth
enduring if the other historical sites of Egypt match up to Philae.
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In good spirits I've ridden up to Luxor and
toured more temples and tombs here. The
famous ones - like the Valley of the Kings - are sometimes a bit too crowded
and exploited for my liking. I'd just as
happily hike around the nearby hills, but the midday heat is still
considerable, so I settle for the same behaviour as everyone else. But, with photos forbidden you'll have to hunt the web if you are interested - for example, here: http://www.molon.de/galleries/Egypt/Luxor/Kings/
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| Valley of the Kings: Not much to see from the outside... little sign of the dozens of tombs hidden in the hills |
Getting up early I tour the Karnak Temple: quite
spectacular with its field of massive, carved stone columns soaring into the
azure sky. The Temple of Luxor seems
tame by comparison, but all the sites have their charm: if you look closely you
notice a detail or line of beauty, even in structures so grand and imposing as
these.
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| The Temple of Karnak |
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| Recipe for rabbit stew? |
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| Karnak: a forest of columns |
I try to keep up, but there
are enough sites to keep you busy for years.
Here's an interesting observation:
From my Lonely Planet Guide: Hieroglyphs,
meaning ‘sacred carvings’ in Greek, are the pictorial script used by the
ancient Egyptians. It was first developed as a means of recording produce and
recent discoveries at Abydos dating to around 3250 BC make this the earliest
form of writing yet found, even predating that of Mesopotamia.
Although
they can seem incredibly complex, the majority of hieroglyphic inscriptions are
simply endless repetitions of the names and titles of the pharaohs and gods,
surrounded by protective symbols. Names were of tremendous importance to the
Egyptians and as vital to an individual’s existence as their soul (ka), and it
was sincerely believed that ‘to speak the name of the dead is to make them
live’.
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| You need to back up to get the scale of the things. Up close, the original carving is delightful. |
In
order to prevent this kind of obliteration, names were sometimes carved so
deeply into the rock it is possible to place an outstretched hand right inside
each hieroglyph, as is the case of Ramses III’s name and titles at his funerary
temple of Medinat Habu.
Yup, some of those carvings were mighty
deep. I wish I could think even half as
deeply about the significance of all that I'm looking at. If you come to Egypt, do a bit of pre-reading
and I think you'll enjoy it even more.
[After reading all the Egypt blog posts, you can view a full photo gallery here: Photo Gallery - Egypt Slideshow ]
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