Valley of the Whales

Hey! Apologies for the small hiatus in posting but David's parents, Art and Suzy (pictured above), were here for the month of March and almost two weeks of that time, we spent in Israel and the Sinai peninsula. More about that in future entries but I wanted to take this post to document our visit to the Valley of the Whales.

The Valley of the Whales is a UNESCO World Heritage site situated in the northwestern corner of the Fayoum delta. They think that this desert valley was the floor of the ancient Eocene sea which reached far south of the existing Mediterranean today. More than 400 whale skeletons have been found here, making it one of the most important fossil deposits in Egypt.

Here is us walking to the kitchen early in the morning to pick up our box lunches. :)














UNESCO has created a nice site here, laying out walking trails that take the visitor to several embedded fossilized mammals which they think may have been the ancestors to our modern whales. Really quite spectacular.













































































This valley really surprised me as it was unlike anything I'd seen in Egypt. We're hoping to come back soon and camp overnight.

Amarna

Last week, a group of us drove about 4 hours south to the ancient city of Amarna. This was no easy task as we had to get permission from the Embassy to drive in that area of Egypt; we had to secure a police escort, submit paperwork to the Embassy and finally found out the afternoon before that, indeed, we could go to Amarna.....whew!

I didn't know anything about Amarna or Akhenaton before I came to Egypt so, for those who don't know, Akhenaten was a pharoah in the 18th dynasty. He was born as Amenhotep IV, named after the main god of that time Amun. He grew up worshipping Amun in the capital city of Thebes but after he became pharoah, for reasons that Egyptologists can only guess at, Amenhotep changed everything. He decided to take a minor god from the Egyptian pantheon, Aton, and elevate him to monotheistic status. He changed his name to Akhenaton which means "It is well with Aton". He moved the capital city from Thebes to a spot hundreds of miles north, creating a new capital called Amarna. There really isn't much left of this city, but remnants of his palace still are visible. Archaeologists back in the 1800s uncovered a beautiful mosaic palace floor which now is displayed in the Egyptian museum in Cairo.


The main attraction of the day were the tombs up in the nearby cliffs. We walked inside four tombs of court officials and what was so fascinating is how different the art is here compared to earlier ancient Egyptian art. Plants and animals look more realistic and humans are depicted very differently. Rather than the stiff cookie-cutter approach, these people have bellies, full hips, elongated heads, and long faces. We were not allowed to bring our cameras inside the tombs, but here are some photos I found online.

Unfortunately, most of the depictions of Akhenaton and his wife Nefertiti were destroyed by Akhenaton's son, Tutankhaton. Once Akhenaton died and Tutankhaton took over the throne, he moved the capital city back to Thebes, changed his name to Tutankhamun to return worship to Amun, and systematically destroyed all evidence that Amarna or his father ever existed. Tutankhamun lived until the ripe old age of 18, they think....a rather insignificant pharoah except for the fact that somehow looters missed his tomb. We know him as King Tut. :)


Aton is a sun god and is depicted as an orb with rays which end in little hands.

Image from Kurohito (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Amarna-char_royal.jpg)

Image from Kurohito (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Amarna2.jpg)


Here's a view of the city from the tombs up on the cliffs. For decades, the Amarna site has been excavated by a group called the Amarna Project which has its home at University of Cambridge. As you can see, most of the city has been reburied by the ubiquitous sand.