The Citadel and Old Cairo

After a severe case of achy thighs, caused by all the tomb raiding of the past few days, I have finally managed to pull my finger out and arrange my flight out of Egypt and into Jordan. This is the busy season for the region, as the temperatures are now starting to cool down enough to allow visiting the sites without frying to a crisp.

So, tomorrow I fly out of Cairo and into Amman (the capital of Jordan for a few days visit). I have just not had enough time to do what I wanted and leisurely travel back through Europe, so I am going to catch a flight back out of Cairo on Monday, giving me Tuesday and Wednesday to recover before returning to work.

For my final day in Cairo I decided to go and see the Citadel of Salah-Adin (Saladin), and a sample of the religious buildings in the city. If I am honest, this was a bit of a waste of time, the citadel and old Cairo tour is not really worth doing, although the mosque at the citadel is very impressive.

The first site we visited was called the Hanging church (so named because it is built on top of the Roman water gate). It is a very old church, and is Coptic Christian (those buggers who vandalised all the temples!). Coptics, have a different papacy to Roman Catholics, and on the walls, the tour guide (who was Coptic) delighted in showing us the latest Pope - whose name escapes me. Anyway, the church is very nice, and I usually enjoy visiting churches and castles, but for some reason this place did not hold the same appeal as it once might, having feasted my eyes on ancient temples for the past two weeks.

A token snap of the church, but my heart wasn't in it

After this and only a few yards up the road is the Ben Ezra synagogue. This is a place for Jews to meet and pray. It seems a bit strange that Jews live in such an Islamic city, but there are some, although they are not overt about their Jewry (understandably so I suppose). They really are a small section of the population, as out of the 23 million people living in Cairo, it is estimated only 1,300 are Jewish. We were not allowed to take any photos inside the synagogue, but to be honest I was, once again, not really that enthused in taking pictures of this place anyway.

Finally we moved along to the Citadel, a huge fortress on the top of a mountain looking down over Cairo. On this site is a very impressive mosque, the mosque of Mohammed Ali. Before you ask, no, it is not the mosque of the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, but a completely different fellow, who came here during the Ottoman occupation of Cairo. The mosque is made out of alabaster, and it is a blooming big building, easily competing with the Duomo in Florence, or our own St Paul’s cathedral. The tour guide proudly pronounced that this was the best example of a mosque in the world.

This mosque was actually very impressive, reminded me of Age of Empires

Having not been to many mosques, I can’t comment on the validity of this claim, but I do get a sneaking suspicion that if I went to another Islamic country I could see the best mosque in the world there too!

The view from the citadel down into Cairo

Ok, I am keeping this post short and sweet as I need to be up and out at 4:30am tomorrow in order to get to the airport and over to Jordan. Speak to you all from Jordan.

Cairo at sunset

Dahshur and back to Giza

I was up bright and breezy this morning in order to head out and visit my final set of pyramids. Due to the nature of the climate, all trips start very early in the morning (8:20am is early when you are on holiday!!) so that you get most of the temple hopping done before the midday sun.

Today I did things slightly differently; I booked a private tour, which meant that I hired a taxi and a tour guide for the day on my own. This is a bit more expensive then going on the daily tours which picks up people at every hotel, and is a little bit more anti-social, but it has some very distinct advantages, namely that I could choose how long we stayed at the pyramids, and also ask the driver to stop at something interesting I happened to see on the journey, so I could take a quick snap.

Also, it meant that I did not have to endure any more of those bloody carpet / alabaster / papyrus / aromatherapy / cotton schools which are just a front for selling overpriced merchandise to tourists. Don’t get me wrong, the guide did ask if I wanted to see them, but he was told in no uncertain terms that I was not interested and he knew not to pursue it any further.

Actually my guide was a very nice chap call Wagih. He is a Coptic Christian, and I could tell this without even having to ask him. Most Coptic Christians have a traditionally Christian name, like Mary, Joseph etc. but Wagih sounded more of an Islamic name to me at first. However, a lot of Coptics also have a tattooed cross on the underside of their wrist to signify their faith. It was this I noticed on Wagih.

Our first trip of the day was out of Cairo a few miles to a place called Dahshur. This is a site which was built by the forefathers of the builder of the great Pyramid in Giza, and has some interesting designs. Ironically, this was not too far away from Saqqara, which I visited yesterday, but it is not deemed worthy of being on most companies official tour list, and so joy of joys, upon arrival at the site I was pleased to find it completely devoid of tourists (i think there was maybe four or five other people there). This seems really strange, as these pyramids are the hidden gems of the Cairo pyramid circuit. Giza is packed, but here you can walk around with no people touting for business and no tourists getting into shot.

There are two pyramids of note here; one is called the bent pyramid and the other is called the red pyramid. I visited the bent pyramid first. Why is it bent you might ask? Well it is not because it minces around the Sahara saying “hello sailor” at every passing tour party, it is because halfway through the design, the pharaoh (Djoser) who commissioned it became ill, and so the architect needed to finish the building quickly. In order to do this, the architect decided to change the angle to make the completion date quicker. Put simply, a pyramid needs to be finished in a Pharaoh’s lifetime; otherwise he is quickly forgotten about as all resources are diverted to building the new Pharaoh’s pyramid, akin to “the king is dead, long live the king”.

The bent pyramid mincing in the Saharan sand.......the smooth surface is the best

example of how all the pyramids would have looked had they remained untouched

Unfortunately for the architect though, the Pharaoh recovered, saw what a botched job this pyramid was and jailed him for his troubles. He then moved on to commissioning another pyramid next door to it (the red pyramid)., much to the annoyance of the workers! This is a mighty impressive structure, but the pharaoh never saw it completed, as he died only a few years into the construction and, because the people resented him for making them build two pyramids, they interred him in the bent one as a punishment.

The red pyramid - looks the same colour as all the other pyramids to me...

This pyramid was still finished by the Pharaoh’s son, but no one was ever buried in it, as the new Pharaoh was called Khufu (Cheops), he who built the largest pyramid at Giza. The good news for me was that the red pyramid was open to the public, and you could go down into it and see the would-be tombs of the pyramid. Down into the bowels of the pyramid I went.

The climb up to the entrance of the red pyramid was tiring!!!

The smell of ammonia was pretty stifling, but it was not as bad as the journey into Khafre’s pyramid at Giza, which was a) packed with people making the humidity even worse and b) much more strenuous. Furthermore, at the end of this journey there was something more interesting that just a square stone room, and thanks to an earlier baksheesh payment to the guard at the entrance, I was allowed to take my camera in and take a few pictures. This was simply not possible at Khafre, because of the weight of traffic that goes through it.

This is the tunnel to the Pharoahs tomb, it is only about 3 feet high

The roof to the tomb, pretty bland really

There is one other pyramid at the site, called the collapsed pyramid. This being on account that it has –erm- collapsed. The whole site of Dahshur used to be right in the middle of a massive army base, and so I was left wondering if the collapsing was a natural occurrence, or whether a stray shell had wiped out this massive piece of history. Fortunately, in recent years the Egyptian government have realised that these buildings are actually worth preserving and so they have relocated the army base to border the monuments.

After visiting Dahshur, we moved back on to the Giza plateau to look at the Great Pyramids again. This was an opportunity for me to get a closer look at the smallest of the three pyramids, Menkaure, which has three nice satellite pyramids next to it. Also, I wanted to see the Solar Boat, a recently discovered ship at the foot of the Great Pyramid, which it a fully 40 metres long! The last time I was here, we were not afforded the time to see this, because we needed to rush off and visit the papyrus institute!!

The pyramid of Menkaure from the front

As I was in control of what we did on this trip, I was able to spend a nice amount of time wandering around the pyramids, taking photos at leisure. I even managed to walk out into the desert and get a spectacular 6-pyramids-in-1 photo.

The Giza-n money shot - 6 pyramids in the same picture.

The camel riders offered to take me out further to get a 9 pyramids shot, but looking at the way they treated the animals (lots of whipping), I decided that I was not going to support them with my money, and so I walked, but only as far as getting 6 pyramids in shot. The 9 pyramid shot would have been a further kilometre walk in the desert, and I had no air-con!

So after snapping away furiously, I moved back to the base of the Khufu (Cheops) pyramid to go and visit the sun boat. Because this thing is so old and fragile, upon entry you are ordered to put on some special shoe coverings, to prevent any sand/contaminants into the room. The wood has been preserved, but I suppose they are not taking any chances. Or maybe they don’t want to pay for a cleaner to sweep away all the sand the tourist shoes will bring in. Whatever.

These are not the silliest things i have worn on this trip so far.....

The boat is a mighty impressive ship over 40 metres in length and is completely intact, which can't be said of a lot of monuments here. When the Pharaoh died, they buried this boat along with him. I won’t go in to the details, but it is linked to Ra (Sun god) moving across the sky in a large boat, according to Egyptian mythology.

The solar boat...I wonder what "Just one Cornetto" is in Egyptian....

That is the end of seeing pyramids and ancient temples in Egypt, tomorrow’s trip will involve going to see Old Cairo (mosques, synagogue and Coptic Church) and hopefully the Khan Al Khallili bazaar, which is a sort of Egyptian version of Portobello Road.

One final shot of the Sphinx and Khafre Pyramid

Memphis and Saqqara

Today I have booked myself on a tour of Memphis, the original capital of Egypt and Saqarra, another site just outside of Cairo which was pyramids. The Giza pyramids are the most famous purely because of the size of them, but there are many pyramids scattered along the Nile Valley, and these particular pyramids are some of the earliest known pyramids in Egypt, so it is interesting to go and see how the art of pyramid design began and was slowly perfected over the centuries.

Memphis is all much of a muchness, it is another temple dedicated to the God Ptah, who is the creator god of Egyptian mythology, that has been heavily ruined by people either taking the stones to use in other buildings, or by Macedonian conquerors (aka Alexander the Great) who wanted to crush the people’s belief in these gods and replace them with their own.

Token Sphinx shot at Memphis (not in Tennessee)

Still there was a very impressive statue of Ramses II in the little micro-museum they had on site. I say micro because i estimate that there were only about 10 exhibits in the whole place, this thing being so big it too up most of the room!

Ramses II statue that fills up the micro-Museum

After that, we moved on to the main visit of the day at Saqqara. There are a few pyramids here, but all are significantly smaller than their cousins at Giza (pronounced Geez-ay). The first pyramid we saw was the pyramid of Teti, which from the external shots looks just like a mound of sand in the middle of the desert, with a load of bricks scattered on the top.

No, not just a mound of sand, to the trained eye, this is a pyramid

Shot from the other side, this is the entrance to the pyramid of Teti

Sure enough though, we reached the entrance which led down into the ground and after a few metres walking, I was in the inner chamber of the pyramid. This one was actually much nicer than the ones in Giza for several reasons; it was less humid in there, it was less arduous a trek to reach this pharaohs tomb it was less crowded, and at the end of it there was actually something to see! Yes, this pyramids walls were covered with inscriptions and hieroglyphs, so it made it all the more worthwhile to visit. The sad thing with most of these monuments is that the sheer weight of traffic (which i freely admit i was adding to) is damaging them on an unprecedented scale. My tour guide explained that when he was younger, the roof of this chamber has a blue sky and yellow stars, but the years of accumulated sweat moistening the atmosphere in the place had slowly bleached all the colour of it which seems a real shame.

A quick note about the guides, they are not allowed into the pyramids, as the Egypt Tourist board (or whoever manages the sites), wants to keep the flow of tourists moving quickly through the place, and not getting held up with guides wittering on. Therefore what usually happens is several groups congregate outside the front of the entrance are quickly informed about what to look at, and then all rush to get in there first!

Across from the pyramid of Teti is some tombs to important figures in Egyptian culture at the time, but not worthy of a pyramid (which was reserved only for the pharaohs as far as i can tell). Usually high ranking officials, priests and the like would have tombs near to their kings, the plebs would be just thrown in the Nile for crocodiles to eat presumably.


Anyway, for our tour guide, I give ten out of ten for enthusiasm about his culture, as he delights in showing silly western tourists how Egyptians discovered/invented all manner of inventions thousands of years before the concept of “patent offices” had even been thought of. I have to question some of his interpretations of the pictures though. For example a man with some reeds tied around him was deemed by the guide to be the first example of a life jacket, whereas it looked to me (admittedly i have an untrained eye in such matters) as a man just carrying some reeds. That is an important thing to note, the guides are all good fun, but there are points where I think they tell a story, because it is more exciting, rather than just sticking to the facts. So, these days whenever i go out with a guide, i take a pinch of salt with me (and my lonely planet guide book).

This pyramid was closed to the public, no tomb raiding here.....

After this pyramid we moved on to what i would consider a more impressive structure, in that it looked like a pyramid!! It is called the Step pyramid and was erected in memory of Netjerikhet (Djoser for short). It has a slight Mayan feel to it, but the guide delighted in telling us that those pesky Mayans were only a glint in the milkman’s eye when this monument was being constructed.

Viscious guard dog at the entrance to the Step Pyramid,
he was off duty today though, as it is a national holiday

The step pyramid was designed and its building co-ordinated by a priest called Imhotep (people may remember this name from the film, The Mummy). Alas, to my disappointment, any ideas of a Hollywood style re-emergence of this 4,000 year old dinosaur were soon dispelled when the guide told us that many of the tombs were raided (not by Lara Croft) and the body was, in all likelihood, dumped in the Nile.

The Step Pyramid of Djoser

After a few minutes walking around (it never seems like i have enough time on these trips out) it was time to move on, and we were going to the most interesting place of the day – a carpet school. Yep, that is right they have sneakily added this one in. In truth, it was one of the few visits i have not seen before, so i popped in to get a demonstration on how they use a loom and how many knots are needed to make a square centimetre of fabric, which is all well and good, but i want to be looking at monuments, not haggling over carpets which I couldn’t possibly get into my suitcase anyway! So, after the demonstration i walked almost immediately out and started taking photos of some date trees. Dates grow everywhere around Cairo, and to my surprise, they come in a variety of colours; red, yellow, black are ones i have seen so far.

My sixth sense told me that a visit to a school/shop was looming....

Ok, I need to rush, as i have to get showered and ready for today's adventure - i am returning to the Pyramids at Giza and also going to the necropolis at Dahshur. I will add the photos to this when i get back.

Egyptian Museum - Ground floor

Yesterday, I decided to face the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Egyptian museum for a second time in order to see the ground floor (and to make some purchases in the splendid bookshop there).

Like I said in my earlier communiqué on the Museum, the ground floor is based on Old Kingdom’s artefacts. There being must less trinket based and more large-statue based. As soon as you enter the hall the first thing you see is a plaster reconstruction of the Rosetta Stone. It invariably has hoards of people all around it with tour guides excitedly explaining how scholars used the stone to decipher hieroglyphics. You can almost hear them spitting at the fact they have to admit the original is in the British museum. It never ceases to amaze me though that people will take pictures of anything, and true enough, there were people standing by this plaster reconstruction (which must be all o 20 years old) to pose for a snap.

Still, I wandered around the floor and there are some mighty impressive statues all around the place, including a massive 50ft high 25ft wide statue that, for the life of me, i can't begin to work out how they got the thing into the museum. I am assuming that it must be broken in twain somewhere, but i could not see the join line. Either that or they built the museum around it!!

I have to admit though that by the end of the museum i was full to overflowing with looking at Egypticana. After that i went and arranged a tour for tomorrow to see some of the lesser know pyramids at Saqarra, and see the temple of Ramses II at Memphis. No, not the place in Tennessee, Memphis was the original capital of Egypt many thousands of years ago.

Short post today and no pictures either. I purposely didn't bring my camera this time and typically, there were loads of people all snapping away without a care in the world (maybe i just happened to get a particularly prickly guard the other day!!) with the guards doing next to nothing to stop this from happening

Still, i am hoping that i will be able to make amends on the picture front with the visits tomorrow.......

It's the Pyramids, Geezer

Well, I suppose it would be very remiss of me to come all this way and not manage to see the Pyramids, so last night I dedicated to seeing the laser show they put on, with a tour of the three Pyramids and the Sphinx this morning/afternoon.

The laser (aka sound and light) show is something that I find difficult to describe in words. "Cheesy" would be the one that sums it up best. You arrive at the Pyramids after sunset and they are beautifully lit, showing off their magnificence. You take your seat and wait for the fun to start. Straight away I knew this was going to be bad because as soon as the entry barrier opened, you had fully grown adults behaving like children and sprinting so they could get to the front seats! Still I found a seat in the third row, which was perfectly fine, and I settled down to watch.

Nice lighting, shame about the narration

BOOM!!!BOOM!!!BOOM!!!

An unnecessarily thunderous noise bellowed out of the speakers, followed by an over the top fanfare that would not have been out of place in Ben-Hur. Then, Omar Sharif's voice (I think) booms out a welcome from the Sphinx. For the remainder of the show the impression is given to the audience that it is the Sphinx that is the narrator of the story of Egypt. Interspersed with the BOOMing was a haunting xylophone/chime tune, which was reminiscent of the theme to Tales of the Unexpected. They really need to update their music to something more contemporary, like Eminem (will the Real Slim Sphinx-y please stand up?).

The Sphinx informs us the even Alexander the Great bowed before him (no actual
evidence of this), but forgets to mention that Napoleon's troops used his nose (now
in the British Museum) as target practice...they have no respect those Frenchies;)

Lots of cheesy lines ensue, one classic I can remember is "man fears time, but time fears the Pyramids"[fanfare]. To add a bit of drama to the proceedings, they change the colours of the lighting so that at some points the Sphinx is blue, others he is green, or maybe even red. This was quite a nice series of effects, but my camera is not up to taking meaningful photos in the dark like that, so out of the many I took, only a handful are worth keeping. Personally, I was thankful when the show was over and the noise had stopped, then I could go to the front and take a couple of tasteful shots of the Pyramids and Sphinx at night. Still on the plus side, it is something I can say I have done.

Man fears time, but time fears a piece of crafted limestone
that's been slowly weathering away over the ages (i.e. time)

So, today I arranged a day trip to the Pyramids and Sphinx. Getting there was an ordeal in itself. I got into the tour bus, which stops off at a variety of hotels to pick up people, and we seemed to keep going around in circles for almost an hour. First of all we went back to one hotel to drop a couple off who got on the wrong tour, then we had to cross the city to get back to my hotel and pick someone else up who belatedly decided to go on the tour. Then I found out he was not going on our tour, but we were handing him over to another tour, and just dropping him off. Then we had to switch buses as the bus I was on was for a different tour. Nothing in Egypt is ever straightforward, but as long as you just sit back and go with it, you will be fine.

Finally we got there, and I was not disappointed with what I saw. To see the only remaining wonder of the ancient world is quite a humbling experience if i am honest. The Pyramids as viewed from the sound and light show seemed very small, but that was down to two factors; firstly, there is a large bank of sand between the seats at the sound and light show and the Pyramids, making them look stunted, and secondly, the distance of the seats from the Pyramids must be close to 1km. Now though, up close and personal, these monuments were, well, monumental. Each brick weighs between 10 and 50 tonnes, and most of them were almost as tall as me.

The Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) stands 143 metres high

A view looking straight up Khufu - to give you a sense of scale, I
would estimate that each one of those bricks is almost as tall me!!

Ok, factoid time. for the largest Pyramid (Cheops) it is estimated that 2.3 million of these bricks were used, and the tour guide delighted in telling us that Napoleon had his mathematicians work out that if all the bricks were laid out end-to-end, it would be long enough to completely surround France with a three metre high, half a metre thick wall (seems like a more productive use of the bricks to me ;) )

The second Pyramid, which is known as Khafre (or sometimes Chephren) is one that you can enter, for an additional fee of course. I am not the sort of person that is going to turn down that sort of opportunity, and so I excitedly entered the Pharaoh’s inner sanctum (if you will excuse the term). Once again, no photography is allowed in there, although there is not much to snap in there anyway, it is very bland and could just be any stone room.

The Pyramid of Khafre stands at 138 metres

The entrance into the Pyramid of Khafre

The side of the Pyramid of Khafre with the Pyramid
of Menkaure (which is the smallest) in the distance.

What was noticeable though was a blast of hot stagnant air as you enter the tunnel leading down into the Pyramid. It smells like a 4000 year old mummy's laundry basket, and the further you go into the pyramid, the more stiflingly hot it becomes. This is probably due to a combination of the lighting and the amount of tourist traffic it seems to get. The tunnel itself is not for someone with claustrophobic tendencies (think of all those millions of tonnes of rock that could come crashing down on you at any moment!), or for people with back problems as you have to hunch for a most of the journey. I am suspecting that ancient Egyptians were midgets.

The Pyramid of Menkaure with satellite pyramids (so that
the Pharaoh could watch Sky Sports in the afterlife.....)

After this, we kept moving around the Giza plateau for a variety of different photographic opportunities. At this point, I should mention that I seemed to get paired with some French chap who looked a bit like a young Gerard Depardieu and could speak very little English. He was nice enough, but the language barrier was a bit of an obstacle, and I don’t think he fully understood that I did not want to go out with him later to pick up girls at the nightclub across the river from the hotel (I am honestly not making up this stereotype at all, that is what he wanted to do!).

The Sphinx (in case you had not guessed) with the Pyramid of Khafre

Close up of the Sphinx

After an afternoon snapping, I was looking forward to getting home when, all of a sudden, the tour guide started telling us about how papyrus was made. Regular readers will recognise these classic warning signs, and true enough we were soon parked up outside a shop which was going to show how papyrus is made. The lesson was conducted by a young man who clearly did not have the heart in demonstrating this ancient art to us, as the whole thing lasted under a minute and we were left to browse the shop while the tour-guide was given a Pepsi for her skills in getting us into the shop.

We all left without making a purchase, and got back in the car. Then she mentioned the most evil word in the English language to me at the moment, "aromatherapy", and I quickly piped up with "I have seen that already, so I will wait in the car". Fortunately a couple of others on the tour had seen this too, and so the visit to have a variety of unguents smeared on your body was cancelled (something which I think the guide and the driver had a mini-argument about, as they did not speak to each other on the way back).

So that was today’s adventure. Tomorrow I think I will visit some of the other Pyramids in the area (there are 109 Pyramids in total, the 3 at Giza being the most famous of them), notably at Memphis (not the US one) and Darshur (not Darfur, which is in the Sudan).

Show me the mummies! Show ME the mummies!

This morning I have spent most of my time wandering around the Egyptian museum, which is literally only a stone’s throw away from the hotel.

The building is absolutely massive, and is a bureaucratic nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. First of all you have to queue in a slowly moving line to have your bag checked for any unauthorised materials (i.e. bombs and the like), then you have to queue in another line in order to get your ticket. After getting your ticket, you then have to queue in a line in order to get into the museum, then having gone through the turnstiles, you queue in another line while your bag is X-rayed again, in order to make doubly sure you are not bringing anything in. Finally, after that, you are allowed in, although there is a queue for you to check in bags and cameras too, should you wish (I declined).

Some of the exhibits outside the museum, no cameras
are allowed inside, so I can't show you Tut's headdress

The museum collections are on two floors, the old kingdoms on the ground floor and the new kingdoms on the upper floor. The new kingdom stuff has all the sarcophagi and Egyptian mummies in it, along with the Tutankhamun collection. I knew from the outset that this was too big a job to do in the one day, and so I had already determined to split it into a two day exercise; day one would tackle the upper floor taking in the mummies and Tutankhamun's hoard and on day two I would look at the old kingdom stuff, which is less "pottery" and "trinkety" based and more "large statue" based.

The whole museum is a cornucopia of exhibits arranged higgledy-piggledy wherever there appears to be space for them. They claim that there are over 600,000 exhibits on display, and apparently there are many more in storage that they do not have the space to display (they are building a multi-million pound purpose built museum for all this near the Pyramids, but it is not opening until 2011). Anyway, I expected the museum to be totally heaving, but it was not so, and I could walk around looking at all of the sarcophagi in relative peace and quiet. Further investigation made me conclude that the people visiting the museum can be generalised into 2 groups; those who are with a tour guide and those who are on their own but choose to head straight to the Tutankhamun death mask.

The tour groups all seemed to converge on the same places of the museum at the same time, creating bedlam as the guides all try and outshout each other. I chose not to go with a tour guide, I like to take my time on museum viewing and so I was always viewing different parts of the museum to the tours, which meant I didn’t have to fight to squeeze in and see an exhibit at all.

Like I said, the new kingdom stuff (by which I mean the period from about 1300BC to 400AD) is very trinkety based, and so instead of showing one lapis lazuli figure of Amun, the museum displays several hundred which, while interesting, is a bit of overkill in my opinion. However, that said, with there being so many exhibits, the visitors are given a thorough glimpse into Egyptian life at the time; clothing, weaponry, jewellery, tools, furniture, you name it, it is here.

One of my favourite rooms was the mummified animals, which had mummified crocodiles, similar to the ones I saw in Kom Ombo, only considerably bigger. The Egyptians practiced mummification techniques out on animals in order to perfect the art, when it came to mummifying pharaohs.

At the end of each hall, is a special room which houses the mummified remains of the pharaohs. There was a separate charge to come and see this, and so once again there was a queue! The mummies though are well worth going to see (a trip to the museum without visiting them would be sacrilege). As with inside of the tombs, there was no photography allowed in this museum – and they are very strict about it – I went to get my phone out to check the time and I was pulled over to the side by a plain clothes guard and told in no uncertain terms - “no photos - no camera, no mobile phone”. I appreciate that flash photography could ruin the colouring on some of the exhibits, but I am not sure of the reasoning for stopping non-flash photography, apart from it being an attempt to make you buy the guide books etc.

Anyway, I wandered around the floor in a logical order (which took about 3 hours in total) until I got to the Tutankhamun Room. It was, as I suspected, very busy but not manically so, and in the middle was the signature headdress of the boy-king himself. I have to say that it was a VERY impressive piece of artisanship! Also in the room are two more gold coffins which he was buried in.

Outside this room are all of the other items found during the excavation of his tomb, and there is a massive amount of items there. In terms of historical significance, Tutankhamun is actually quite a minor figure in Egyptian history, it is purely the fact that his tomb was practically untouched by grave robbers (because no one knew it was there!) that made him so special. Looking at the finds in his tomb, it does make you wonder how impressive the finds in the other tombs would have been had they been untouched.

So, that is the upper floor of the museum covered; tomorrow I will go back and tackle the lower floor (and possibly pop back and see the death mask again, as it is such an iconic piece). Tonight I have booked myself on a Sound and Light show for the Pyramids, so I will give an update on how that went (it is another scene from the Spy who Loved Me) later on.

The Road back to Cairo

OK, early this morning I caught a plane back to Cairo. I figured I have done most of what I wanted to do in Luxor, the Valley of the Kings would have been good to explore a bit further, but it is too damned hot there, so I have moved back to (relatively) cooler climes. The weather is pleasantly warm (low 30s), but not boiling like it was in Luxor.

Upon landing I headed straight for my hotel room at the Nile Hilton. I am really lucky, the room I have allows me to see both the Nile from my balcony and the Egyptian museum (where Tutankhamun's death mask et al. is all kept.

The view of the Nile from my balcony

Egyptian museum by day as viewd from my balcony........

...and by night

All in all, I have really not done much today, I walked over to the Egyptian museum (I am so close to it, noone could get lost trying to find this place (with maybe one exception, who shall remain nameless ;) ) but by the time I got there, I was informed that it was closing (shops close early here for Ramadan), so I just snapped a couple of exterior shots of the building.

The first thing you notice about Cairo is that you are not getting constantly pestered on the streets like you would find in Luxor or Aswan. People are too busy going about their daily lives. Don't get me wrong, there are a few taxi drivers trying to get some business, but nothing like on the scale of Luxor.

The second thing you notice about Cairo is that the preferred method of communication appears to be the blowing of a car horn. The laws of the road here are a mystery to me and it seems funny, but they use our road signs. However, in what appears to be a act of defiance against their old imperial masters, these signs are religiously ignored. More than once on the journey from the airport did I think we were going to get dinked by another car that just didn't see us, but the taxi driver knew the dimensions of his car were and somehow managed to carve a path through the chaos, beeping as he went.

The third thing I noticed about Cairo (and more generally, Egypt) is that the main employer must be the police force, as there are so many uniformed men out on the streets. I appreciate and welcome the fact that Egypt is somewhat paranoid of any terrorist threats damaging their tourist economy, and so take a heavy-handed approach to this. Having said that, I walked past a policeman in his car earlier, and he had the seat right back and was fast asleep, with his walkie-talkie blaring out what seemed to be exasperated calls for someone to answer.

Anyway, here I am, safe and sound, enjoying the view of the Nile (again). Tomorrow opens up a range of possibilities. I will probably pop over to the Egyptian museum and have a gawp at some of the trinkets over there, then who knows? Maybe I will pop over and say hello to the pyramids in the afternoon, or perhaps catch one of the evening light shows. I need to speak to my Cairo contact to find out their prices for trips to Jordan. It might be more worthwhile if I spent a couple of days over there, as I don’t want to travel all that way only to have a Karnak-esque experience of a 1 hour whirlwind tour!!

Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment........

Habu, Valley of the Nobles and Ramesseum

This morning I was up, bright and breezy, ready for a trip out to the West bank to see Habu temple, the Valley of the Nobles and the Ramesseum. Once again the weather was scorching, but armed with a bumper big bottle of water, I was ready to take on Ra!!

One thing of note I should point out, that Luxor ruins are separated by the Nile and categorised into two sections; the East bank, and the West bank. The East bank being temples celebrating life, and the West bank (not to be mistaken for the Palestinian West bank) is for tombs and the dead. Interestingly this was symbolic of the rising sun in the East (life) and setting sun in the West (death). OK, that is enough of me pretending to be educational - next I will be sewing leather patches on my tweed jackets!!

The first visit was to Habu temple. Immediately I could see that these temples are not on most travel companies usual Luxor itinerary, as the temple was sparsely populated with tourists, which is always a good thing from a snapping point of view. My tour guide was a local girl called Emmi, who has been training at Luxor University and was giving me a one-to-one tour of the temples. She was friendly and informative, but I did feel sorry for her, as being Ramadan, she has to abstain from food and water from sunrise until sunset. In this particular heat that must be a nightmare to achieve.

An example of Habu temples columns - still with the original colouring

More columns, these ones were cut down and "Copticised" (sounds painful)

Sure enough as we were wending our way through the temple, we crossed paths with people lying down in the shade hiding from the sun, but Ra had managed to fire his nasty rays on some old girl’s head, and she was collapsed on the floor with heat exhaustion, being fanned by one of the Nubians in the temple whose only purpose (as far as I can see) is to collect baksheesh.

The crowd of people in shot are trying to help the heatstroke woman -
I helped as best i could, by taking a photo (how inconsiderate of me!)

As we were going around the temples I realised that quite a bit of the stuff that had been told to me over the past few days had actually sunk in, and I found myself answering a lot of her questions with semi-sensible answers.

After Habu temple, we moved on to the Valley of the Nobles. This is obviously not as grand as Valley of the Kings, but it did have some very nice artistry in the tombs. As with the Valley of the Kings, we could not take any photos in here, but for a bit of baksheesh, I managed to snap a couple while the other tourists were not looking (this is a standard arrangement with the guards).

Valley of the Nobles - look, no queues, the only people were vendors

Those Egyptians were seriously advanced. Here is
an ancient fire extinguisher in the tomb of Ramose

The tombs were a welcome break from the searing heat of the sun at this point, but it was not long enough in the shade, and all too soon we were back out on the road heading towards the Ramesseum.

However, before that I was given the little chat about how papyrus is made and the skill of these people. I knew exactly where this line of conversation was heading, having been subjected to it on 2 occasions before, once prior to the alabaster village and the other prior to the aromatherapy shop. Before she could finish her talk on it, I declared that I was not interested in seeing how it is made, or going to the shop, which seemed to disgruntle her a little bit, but I am the customer, and the customer is always right ;)

Anyway, I watched a whole video of how they made the papyrus scrolls at the Luxor museum yesterday, so did not need them to tell me.

So, we went on to the Ramesseum, which is heavily ruined, but has some lovely columns with the original paint on them. For once the Coptics had not vandalised it and overlaid the designs with their own murals. By the point you could tell it was hot because even Emmi had to stop and rest the heat was so intense (not helped by the fact she couldn’t drink water), so as she sat in the shade telling me about the columns and the history, I moved around snapping away like an American tourist.

The Ramesseum - another temple ticked off the list

A very hot me, trying to look cool at the Ramesseum

We then headed back to the hotel, and I spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding the heat of the day, watching TV and popping out to the shops for 10 minute bursts.

Tomorrow I am booked on an early morning flight to Cairo, where I aim to see the Pyramids. I am booked into the Nile Hilton, which is right next to the Egyptian Museum. I am hoping that Cairo will be considerably cooler than Luxor, and looking at the forecast on the BBC website this seems to hold true, it will be low 30s, whereas it was over 43 degrees here today.

Karnak temple, Luxor temple, Luxor museum and leaving the cruise

Ok, due to tiredness last night I have been a bit remiss on updates, so I will kill two birds with one stone and cover two days.

On Sunday we had the last official day of touring. This was based in Luxor and involved visits to Karnak temple and Luxor temple. I was suppose to have gone on this tour at the very beginning of the trip, but due to some delays I missed it. However, the fact that this cruise is on a permanent loop between touring Luxor and Aswan, I managed to get on the tour at the end of the trip, which was nice.

Karnak Temple
This was, for me, one of the reasons I wanted to go on this cruise, to gaze at the majesty of Karnak temple compound, this was the most important temple in Theban Egypt, and it is easy to see why. The sheer scale of the place makes it magnificent, and it has more columns than an excel spreadsheet!! However, this is the cultural response for why I wanted to see the temple. If i am honest, the real reason I wanted to see it was because this is where a rather suave Roger Moore dodges the hired killer Jaws in the Bond film "The Spy who Loved Me".

Karnak Temple from the front ....

and from the rear....

I was not disappointed by the sheer scale of the temple, but I have to confess to being a bit miffed that we covered the whole temple complex in about an hour. To put this in perspective, the temple is so large, I could have probably spent most of the day there snapping photographs, and yet, we seemed to be route-marched through it by a tour guide more interested in breaking the world record for temple hopping, than for letting the visitors enjoy the buildings.

Avenue of Ram-headed Sphinxes at the entrance to Karnak

Speaking of the tour guide, he was not quite as good as the previous guides we have had on the trip. The English language is a rich and colourful language full of subtle inflections to convey different meanings. This guide sucked all the beauty and colour out of the language with a monotonous drawl which really did nothing to engage the tour party to what he was saying (OK, I admit this might be a bit harsh, as his English is way better than my Arabic). All I can remember of his tour guide patois was his repeated call of "follow me" as he tried to hurry us along the tour.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of Karnak Temple, I have resolved to go back there and try and see it at a more leisurely pace, so hopefully I will get some more snaps at a later date. One of the things that was impressive about Karnak was the Hypostyle hall which, as i alluded to above, is just a hall of columns, hundreds of them.

The columns of the Great hypostile hall...impressive

What is nice about Karnak is that some of the original colouring is still on some of the reliefs, so you can picture how this temple must have looked in its heyday.

One plus of our tour guide was he did know some of the key locations to take us to get our Karnak "money shot" pictures from, and he even took a few photos of me standing against some columns with some obelisks in the background. For info, according to our guide, the obelisk (aka Cleopatra's Needle) near Embankment tube station in London was taken from this temple (in those good old empire days....).

Luxor Temple
We were hastily ushered out of Karnak temple and to Luxor temple a couple of miles down the road. Karnak and Luxor temples were once linked together by an avenue of Sphinxes, which must have been an impressive site to behold, but alas modernity meant that the town of Luxor was built right in the middle of the two, and so much of this avenue is under roads and houses now. However, there is a bit of the avenue left at Luxor Temple, and we were given about 50 nanoseconds to admire it and take photos of it before our tour guide was ushering us down towards the temple proper.

The avenue of Sphinxes that linked Karnak and Luxor temples

In terms of scale, Luxor is not as impressive as Karnak temple, but it has some charm of its own, in that a Coptic church was built on top of part of it and then, when this was submerged under soil at some date I can’t remember, the Fatimid’s (early Islamists) arrived and unwittingly built a Mosque on top of the Church on top of the temple.

The front pylons of Luxor temple (I know, it looks the same as every other temples pylons!!)

The temple also shows signs of Coptic vandalism, with the early Christians painting over the Egyptian murals with murals of their own depicting Evangelists and disciples etc. If there is one thing I have take from this tour it is that Coptic Christians were right gits, ruining all the faces of the gods on the temples as they saw them as idols.

Side view of Luxor temple....more columns!

Luxor Temple is also had the hand of Alexander the Great on it, with some friezes showing Alexander making offerings to the Egyptian Gods. I didn’t get much time to look at this, as once again, we were rushed through the temple, but I am pretty sure that Alexander was declared the descendent of Amun by the Oracle at Siwa (I would like to go to Siwa Oasis, but it is a hell of a distance from Cairo, for very little cultural benefit as far as I can see), so I imagine it would be an offering to Amun.

After that our tour guide took us back towards the boat, having covered two major temples in just over 2 hours, including the travel time!! Is that a record Norris McWhirter?! Before he left us though, he did give us a little talk about the appropriateness of tipping out ship’s staff, which I thought was a little odd, as he is not directly affiliated with the ship. Still, it probably does help to get an idea of the sort of amount he as an Egyptian feels is fair, as to be honest, there are times I feel mean just giving one or two Egyptian pounds for things.

That was all yesterday (or the day before yesterday, if you are reading this tomorrow – or, more realistically, today). Has that confused you?! Good :P

Today (that is to say Monday) was our final day on the cruise and we bagged up and got ready to go. In truth it was a bit sad, as the tour party I was with were a nice group and really friendly, so that will be missed, hopefully I will be lucky and meet people who are as nice on my onward travels.

Prior to leaving (after lunch) though, I popped along to the Luxor Museum, to compare the objet d’art in there with our British Museum. The museum is quite small, but it does have a couple of Mummies for people to have a look at. Considering they are over 4,000 years old, they scrub up pretty well, and I was impressed with them. The other objects are pretty much of a muchness, a few heads of Gods here, a handful of Greco-Roman coins there etc. But the piste de resistance (as far as I was concerned) was the chariot which was buried in Tutankhamun’s tomb with him. That was a really nice bit of kit! And judging by the size of the tomb in the Valley of the Kings would have had to be seriously crammed in there. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed in the museum, so i can't show you the Chariot.

So, after that and a spot of lunch, I finally checked out of the boat and travelled a couple of miles down the road to the Steigenberger. I was not disappointed with what I saw, it is a lovely room with marble throughout, and a lovely Nile view to gaze out on from my balcony in the evening.....that is where I am writing this from. I have not done much for the rest of the afternoon, as I am feeling a bit woozy, and dizzy, possibly due to all the sun, I might have a bit of heat exposure from earlier (I need to be mindful of this!).

My room at the Steigenberger - high living indeed.....

Well, that is all for now, I will write some more tomorrow, when hopefully I am aiming to go to the Valley of the Nobles, Habu temple and the Ramesseum.