Ancient Egypt

Egypt has been a place that Becs and I had been fascinated with ever since we saw the mummies in the British Museum. We finally decided it was now or never to do this trip during Becs school holidays as we may not have time to do it should we go home at the end of the year. This was to be our first trip made on the continent of Africa and the first to a third world country. We chose a tour company that Duncan's parents and sister had used which covered Cairo, The Nile, Luxor and Aswan.
After a brief stopover in Amsterdam, we landed in Cairo at around 2am. We were met by a guide who arranged for us to obtain Egyptian Visas and got us through customs with minimal fuss. This was the start of our journey where we found most things got done through tipping or a chat with the man in the booth. No lines for us as we were with the right guy. We soon checked into our hotel in Giza and wasted no time in hitting the hay for some much needed rest. The following day was spent lazing around the pool and keeping cool, the temperature ranged between 35-42 degrees over our journey but unlike other hot destinations we had been to, this was a very dry heat which made it a little more manageable.

The next morning we got up early for our departure to the Pyramids. We were bundled into a taxi van and were warned the 8km trip could take anywhere from 30 minutes to and hour depending on the traffic. Cairo is a city of around 25m million people although they cant really ever tell how many people there are on any one day because of commuters and because they struggle to complete an accurate census. The road was like a mad marketplace on wheels, no road rules, no lanes, every type of transport from donkey to truck, chickens in cages on the roof, boys running along the roadside selling breads to passengers when the traffic stalled, just crazy. There were traffic lights but because no one in Egypt takes any notice of them, they have armed police stationed at most intersections to direct and stop the traffic. Nothing says stop like an AK-47 waving around on the end of the arm of a screaming traffic officer.

About 40 minutes into our drive we saw the Pyramids. They dominated the skyline and the first impression we had was that they are a lot bigger than we had imagined. They were just huge, unlike anything else on the city skyline, they stood out like an alien ship (lets not talk about aliens and the Pyramids). Once dropped off outside we entered the site through the obligatory metal detector which beeped when every person entered but was ignored by the sleepy looking guards. These great tombs are from the ancient Kings of Egypt (originally created through piling stones on top of an underground tomb to hide its entrance). We managed to get a camel ride around the pyramids which was very bumpy, they are so much higher than horses! We opted not to go into one of the pyramids after seeing the long slow queue which had to crawl at waist height through a narrow entrance into what was ultimately just an empty room. No thanks! We then moved on to see the great Sphinx in front of the largest pyramid. It was carved from 1 stone and about the size of a warehouse! It was jaw dropping. A few photos here and we then made our way to the train station to catch a 13 hour overnight train to Aswan.

Fortunately for us, we had opted for the sleeper cabin upgrade on the train rather than sitting in a crowded seated carriage. It wasn't the roomiest, but remembering that this is a third world country, we were travelling in the best we could get. We soon got used to our little shoebox and settled in to a long bumpy noisy nights sleep across Egypt. On arrival at Aswan, we were bundled into a taxi van and couriered to our accommodation for the next 3 nights, a Nile cruise boat. Ahhh, what a wonderful change this was. The room was really nice and the boat had plenty of space on 4 levels including a pool on the top deck. We were to stay anchored in Aswan for the first night and spent the afternoon visiting a local temple which was relocated to higher ground after the government built a great dam, flooding many lower lands and all the temples they contained. It was our first up close encounter with carved hieroglyphics and this place had plenty on show. The walls here had endless stories carved into them, something that was hard to take in and which was made even more impressive by its incredible age. We were looking at amazing and articulate feats engineered 2000 years before the temples of Rome! We were blown away. Later back on the boat, we enjoyed dinner and afterwards, were entertained by a belly dancer who singled Becs out for a dance off. I have to say, I think Becs showed her up!

The next morning we were up bright and early to catch a local flight (all flights within Egypt are controlled by Egypt Air, no one else is allowed in) to a remote temple called Abu Simbel. This temple had been recommended to us by friends and family who had seen it and it was not a disappointment. The flight there however, was something else. We entered through the usual lax security measures (highly armed though, a good security measure in itself!) and waited for our flight. Once it turned up, we boarded the bus and were delivered to our plane, 20 steps away. The plane was something out of the 70's and stunk of cigarettes. It was like climbing into your uncles 1972 Ford Cortina but this thing was meant to take us 30,000 feet into the air!! As we scrambled to find a seat that wasn't broken and had a seat belt, we braced ourselves for take off. The safety procedure consisted of a tubby Egyptian man who looked like someone off the Love Boat but with an attitude problem. He waddled down from the cockpit and unenthusiastically told us where the door was and that if we wanted to know anything else we should read the card in the seat pocket. That was it! We braced ourselves. The flight eventually took off after some crazy taxiing on the runway (no other planes to give way to, why slow down for the corners?) and we landed in Abu Simbel some 30 minutes later.

The temple at Abu Simbel is eye popping. You are met by 4 massive statues of King Ramses and his wife and daughter carved into a mountainside that must be at least 5 or 6 stories high. There was no blocks hauled in to make this temple, it is carved from one solid piece of sandstone mountainside, impressive! We walked beneath the great legs of the seated King and inside where there was room after room of floor to ceiling hieroglyphics and paintings of the battles he had won and gods he had pleased. The stone carving in here was very articulate and densely packed across every possible surface including the roof. The initial corridor had more giant statues of Egyptian gods flanking either side of the entrance and lining the entire length of the hallway. At the very back inside one of the separate rooms were four statues seated facing back out towards the front entrance. Apparently on 2 days of the year, the birthdays of the King and his wife, the sun rises at such an angle as to light up 3 of the statues which are the King, his wife and their Egyptian Sun God. The fourth is the God of Darkness and is not lit by the sun during these 2 days, a staggering piece of engineering considering the whole place is carved into a mountain face and not strategically placed.

Another mind blowing fact we discovered here was that in the 1960's the entire tomb and outside statues were cut up into thousands of pieces, moved 200 metres and reassembled into a fake mountainside to avoid being sunk forever under the newly dammed Nile River. We were astonished. Firstly, you could not tell that they had done this as they had painstakingly cut and moved the stone with millimetre accuracy. And secondly, they reassembled the entire thing cave and all to work just like the original intended, the sun still lights up the 3 statues deep in the back of the temple, only it is 1 day later due to the relocated ground height being 60 metres higher. We couldn't work out which was more amazing, the fact that this was built 4000 years ago by hand, or that it was cut out of a mountain and reassembled without any noticeable difference!

Back on the plane we comforted some Aussies who had initially thought they were going to die after take off. The flight attendant didn't bother with the safety briefing on the return journey as no one in their right mind would be staying in the middle of the desert and they must have figured we heard it the first time. We thought perhaps the life jacket part was left out because of the highly unlikely scenario of landing in water. Back on our cruise boat we settled in to a balmy evening cruising along the Nile back towards Luxor.

We stopped the following morning at a temple right next to the Nile called Kom Ombo. It was one of our favourites. The place had all sorts of interesting elements to it. We saw an ancient Egyptian calender, accurate to 365.25 days. There was a hospital with an operating table and on the walls were hieroglyphics with all the tools they used. Many of them were the same as doctors still use today, pliers, forceps, even a stethoscope! There were even prescriptions written out on the walls. And in the waiting area outside we could see where the patients had scratched the outline of their hands and feet and also saw boardgames scratched into the stone floor while they were waiting. There was a well that was connected to the Nile which they used for tax collection purposes. When the water was high, crops were good and taxes were high, went the water was low, it was dry and crops were poor so taxes were low.

After another day and night cruising and a brief stop to another buried temple, we arrived in Luxor. We were to go and visit the famous Valley of the Kings today where in 1920, the tomb of King Tutankhamen was discovered with all its treasure intact. The valley was very hot and dry, even first thing in the morning. There were about 30 or so tombs up there, many of them royalty but also some that belonged to high members of society. Men were still digging up there looking for the tomb of King Ramses 9 which has still yet to be found. We went down into 3 of the tombs and saw some amazing chambers with highly decorated walls. The tombs went very deep down into the mountain and every nook and cranny was at one stage filled with golden ornaments and prized Royal possessions. We saw one of the granite caskets which we couldn't work out how they got down there, it was so huge. We didn't go into King Tuts tomb as it was very busy and all of his stuff was now at the Cairo Museum which we would be seeing later.

After a brief visit to the Vally of the Queens where we saw a few smaller tombs, we headed to the temple of Queen Hapshetsut. This was another temple carved into a mountainside but with pillar after pillar similar in style to Roman architecture. We saw carvings of lions and giraffes here, evidence of the trading the Egyptians carried out with their neighbouring African countries. It got too hot here and we had to leave before we flaked out in the sun.

The afternoon took us to the temple of Karnak. This is the largest temple of Egypt, 60 acres of obelisks, statues, lakes, columns and buildings. There were hundreds of columns inside which held huge slabs of rock for a roof. The centre columns were the biggest we had ever seen, bigger than anything we had seen in Italy. These guys didn't do things on a budget. But then I guess they did have a few thousand slaves at their disposal. We tried to capture the place with our measly camera but struggled to get it all in. One particular centrepiece was a 750 ton polished granite obelisk. It towered over all the other structures and baffled many as to how it was stood up. We were amazed at the detailed carving on it considering it was such a hard stone, no mistakes were tolerated on this as there was no starting again!

Out return journey on the sleeper train was four times as crazy as the first, we were woken dozens of times during the night when the driver slammed on the brakes at many of the regular crossings. At one point, the ride was so rough, we actually thought we had come off the rails. It all added to our adventure though by this stage we were looking forward to being at home in our nice comfy and solid bed.

Our last day in Cairo was spent at the museum. We were taken straight in to see King Tutankhamen's death mask at the back of the museum before the crowds got to it. Of all the amazing things we had seen so far in Egypt, and there were a lot, the 11kg solid gold death mask of King Tut was just indescribable. We stood in front of it speechless. It was so wonderfully made, gold interwoven with bright blue and white emeralds. The room in which it was encased housed the 4 casks in which the young Kings mummified body was held. The first was 112kg of sold gold which was a replica of the Kings body. That went into another gold cask, then another wooden cask gilded with gold which went into a final gilded gold cask. All of them were richly decorated and filled with jewellery. The amazing part was, that these 4 casks were then put into a further 4 gilded boxes until the final box was the size of a small garage! This was then put deep into the underground tomb which was then filled with richly decorated gold and silver ornaments and furniture. His total treasure was phenomenal, over 5000 pieces taking up and entire floor of the museum. It made us wonder what must have been stolen from the other greater Kings tomb seeing as King Tut was only a King for a very short time.

After our amazing trip across Egypt, we were well and truly burnt, tired and had been attacked by the Egyptian tummy curse. But, the things you can see there are out of this world and like nothing we had ever seen before, truly a fantastic experience.