Forty Centuries

Last Day in Egypt

2010-05-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting up in Cairo waiting out the last few hours in country. I finally ran out of excuses to not do this final entry. Wendi has been great doing all the work on this over the past year so I guess the least I could do was one entry. All the goodbyes are finally over and now it is just a matter of heading to the airport and that painful flight back across the pond. It is going to be a little strange being back in the US after a year but I certainly haven't missed that flight. Overall it has been a very good year but I am more than ready to rejoin the U.S. Army even if it means spending a few months at Ft. Rucker trying to avoid injuring myself by falling asleep in class. I have included a few last photos from my goodbyes at both at Beni Suef and Kom Oshiem. Enjoy.

I had to include at least one picture of our compound out at
Kom Oshiem. We have one gardener out there that does an amazing job - he works out there for hours every day and it shows. As with most of my pictures there isn't much perspective and I couldn't figure out how to get on the roof and get a good shot of the whole area to include the basketball court and gazebo.

This is LTC Aziz - the head of their maintenance operations and the man I worked with every day. He took over soon after I arrived and I am so glad he was there. When it came to maintenance more often than not we were in ag reement and he wasn't afraid to work the guys until the job was done. At times he wasn't all that popular with the troops but he commanded a lot of respect because he was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. It would have been a very different year without his support.

This is LTC Khalid who is in charge of all the flight engineers and crew chiefs. It was great to work with him because as with Aziz he was a hard worker and really cared about being a professional in his job. He was the one person I would spend hours discussing everything from politics to religion to family and be able to share ideas without offending anyone. The problem with both these guys is that I fear the system will burn them out within a couple of years - they are both too motivated.

I didn't actually get any photos of my going away party at work because of no camera. There was an incident a few months ago involving a camera on base and one of the contractors so I figured I was way too close to going home to risk any run ins with Egyptian security.

The guys hanging out in the bar before my going away at Beni Suef. What a great place to stay for a year.

Brian giving my farewell speech. He is the test pilot that is taking over from me and he is also an instructor pilot so he gets twice the fun. If that wasn't enough he was also kind enough to take over as team chief after our last one left in March so I didn't have to go through the hassle of doing it for two months before I left. It was great to actually work with another test pilot even for a couple of months.

I decided to leave off with two pictures of food since that is what often seemed to be our focus at Beni Suef. Here I am enjoying my last hamburger and hot dog with Tony and below is my farewell cake. It has been quite an experience. Thanks for following along with us and we look forward to seeing most of you in the next few months. Take care and God bless.

OMC Ball

2010-05-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

On my last night in Egypt, David and I went to the OMC Ball at the Marriott in Zamalek. Formerly known as “Al Gezira” Palace, the building was constructed by the Khedive Ismail Pasha back in 1869 to be a guest palace for the Suez Canal inauguration celebrations. Some pics:

Farewells........

2010-05-07T22:05:00.000-07:00

There's been lots of farewells in this past month...actually our whole team has left and been replaced, save for David and I, and Kevin who got here last August. David's replacement just got here last week and then there's another pilot coming in next week and the transition will be complete. Plus, the contractor team left, both Doc Don and Vinny retired, and Anne and Chris, the site managers here, have left for seven weeks. So these last few weeks have definitely felt different around here....a little quieter and smaller. Here are some pics from the recent farewells.

Yes, that's a martini in one hand and cigar in the other.

Vinny's retirement ceremony:

Linda, me, Dina, and Laila at Joe's farewell. These ladies have been good friends to me this year. Linda's been so generous, taking me around to all of her shopping haunts. Laila's been great to talk to...a very good person to ask questions regarding Egyptian culture, etc.....and Dina, well, Dina's my buddy. :)

Yesterday, I met most of the women on the compound for lunch to say goodbye. From left to right are Linda, me, Dina, Isis, Shana, and Laila.

Last night, I had to say goodbye to Tony. Like so many TAFT members before us, we've spent hours and hours of our time here at the bar talking to Tony and he's one of the people here we're going to miss the most. Plus, he makes killer mojitos!

It's sad to say goodbye to so many who've made this year special. Our lives have so many different chapters, but this year in Egypt will be an especially memorable one. David's farewell party is next week (I'm leaving a week earlier) so he's tasked with adding the last entry!

Beni Suef compound, more photos

2010-05-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

Well, our year here is winding down. I'm heading up to Cairo on May 8th and flying out on the 10th, while David's flying out about a week later. While I am ready to start the next chapter of our lives, I'm going to have many happy memories of this place. :) Some photos from around the compound which Suzy and Art took while they were here:

Camel ride up Mt. Sinai!

2010-05-04T00:34:00.000-07:00

On our way back from Israel, we stopped at St. Catherine's monastery (shown above) which lies at the foot of Mt. Sinai. St. Catherine's was closed to visitors that day which is a shame because I was really hoping to get a tour of their library, famous for its historic documents. David, Suzy, and I did climb Mt. Sinai on camels though! (Art felt more comfortable climbing on his own two feet :) David and I've been wanting to take a camel ride since we've gotten to Egypt but just can't bring ourselves to indulge the guys who harass the tourists at the various pyramid sites. So we thought this would be a good place to do it....a 1.5 hr. trip up for a fairly decent price.

I'm so glad we did...it was a lot of fun and actually much smoother than I had anticipated. The only scary part was when the camel would stand up or sit down. The back legs straighten first so you go from sitting upright to rolling forward 90 degrees, facing the ground; then, the front legs straighten and you pop up to sitting upright again. When the camel sits, the process happens in reverse. I tried to reassure myself that I wouldn't fly forward out of the saddle. The problem with my particular camel (shown above) was that everytime our caravan slowed down, he tried to sit. Either he was tired, lazy, or I was a heavy load!!

We had a rough start due to some mass confusion amongst the Bedouin guides who take the camels up. We guessed that our original guides must have circumvented the pecking order and, after a lot of very loud arguing (between them not us), we finally were asked to get off our camels and get on other ones. Whatever. But once we were on the trail, it was exhilarating!!

Suzy, David, and I en caravane:

Once the trail ends, there around 700 stairs which take you up to the actual summit. Scholars disagree whether this is the Mt. Sinai in the Bible, but it was still neat to stand there and think this could have been the place Moses received the 10 Commandments.

Lunch at Ahmed & Hoodah's house

2010-05-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Ahmed, one of the flight engineers David works with, invited us to his house for dinner along with some of the other Egyptian engineers from the Maintenance section. Actually it was his mother's place, a large two-story house on the premises of a water treatment plant in a region northwest of Cairo. His father used to manage the plant starting in the 1960s and although the plant is mostly automated now and little staff is needed, his mother is still allowed to live in their original house after his father's death. It's quite a nice place to live with lots of grass and fruit trees.

Hoodah, the wife of Ahmed, and his mother joined us out on the porch while we were waiting for the others to come. She was completely silent during her time out there and Ahmed had told David earlier that his wife spoke no English, so I was surprised when I went back to the kitchen to volunteer my services when she said "I do not speak English well, but I understand you". Wow! Between her English and my very broken Arabic, we did just fine. I was amazed at the difference in Hoodah in the kitchen. She was friendly, outgoing, and laughing with her mother-in-law while out with the men, she either stared at the floor or her husband and didn't say a word. I even helped her make kofta, a mixture of ground beef or lamb with onions, flour, and spices, which is then baked. When David came back to check on me, I said "I'm staying back here....I like the atmosphere better" :)

They also made molokhaya, a soup made from duck broth, garlic, and the leaves of the molokhaya plant. Here's Ahmed's mom with a full cutting board of molokhaya....in case you're wondering, the guy in the back is washing his feet in the sink after playing soccer. I like the taste of molokhaya but the consistency is too slimy for me.

They also roasted some duck:

This is Ahmed's mom mashing up the garlic for the molokhaya:

One of the other wives, Rhayda, cutting up vegetables for a salad:

I tried to get a photo of the whole spread, but only captured part of it. It was neat to hang out with the women, but exhausting too as communication past simple sentences like "I like soup" was difficult. But it was apparent we all liked each other so that helped....and we did pretty good. David, in the next room, had it easy....most of the men spoke excellent English.

One last photo of the guys before we left:

And one last photo of the shenanigans with the kids:

That night, we finally stayed at the hotel suite which I had won at an auction....a suite with a view of the pyramids in Giza. We got up early to see the sun rise from our balcony. Always amazing for me to think of all the farmers, royalty, priests, merchants, and statesmen from around the world and throughout the centuries who have watched the sun rise on these pyramids.....

Israel, Last Post! : Dead Sea and Masada

2010-05-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

Our last day in Israel, we drove from Jerusalem back down south to the Egyptian border at Eilat. On the way, we stopped at the Dead Sea which looked both beautiful and other-worldly. On the southern end of the sea, we drove past a plant which processes the salt....that's a huge wall of salt outside David's window.

Next stop was Masada, a mountain fortress where Herod built one of his palaces. About a century later, in 66 AD, the Jewish resistance captured the stronghold and held it as the last bastion of resistance against the Romans. The Romans used captured Jews to build a ramp over a gorge and up the mountainside and, after several months, finally succeeded in breaching the wall. Once inside the walls, as the story goes, the Romans found the residents dead; they had systematically killed themselves with each father killing his immediate family and then each man killed by a group of ten, who then executed themselves. With the destruction of Masada , the Israeli state ceased to exist for the next 1900 years. Masada is a powerful symbol of Jewish identity and we read that new Army recruits swear their allegiance with the oath "Masada shall never fall again!"

Masada:

You can climb up but we didn't have time so took the cable car.

From up on top, we could look down and see the remnants of the Roman encampment as they lay siege on the fortress.

And, from on top looking down, here's a photo of the assault ramp the Romans built....almost 400 ft. high. I found it amazing that it's still there!

That night we crossed back over to the Egyptian side of the border, after some delay and Visa confusion at the border I might add, but it all worked out alright. Very nice border patrol but weird Visa regulations. We stayed the night in the resort town of Taba Heights....everything looked very nice but we were too spent to really take advantage of it all. :) It was a wonderful trip to Israel and we couldn't ask for better travel partners in Art and Suzy, but I think I can safely say that we were exhausted....traveled out....looking forward to getting back home by this point. This was the view from our balcony:

Israel, Part 6: Jerusalem

2010-04-30T07:29:00.001-07:00

Next day, off to Jerusalem. First we stopped at one of the restaurants in Amirim for breakfast and, while we were just expecting to get a danish and coffee, we were treated to a succession of platters of breads, spreads, jams, salads, cannolis. A breakfast feast.

Here, we're sitting out on the veranda, drinking herb tea and eating our apple cake, mustering our energy for our 3 hour drive to Jerusalem. :)

For our two nights in Jerusalem, we stayed in a convent....the convent of the Sisters of the Rosary which we were told was a Middle Eastern order. This was their chapel:

Some sights from our day in the Old City: First stop, the Western Wall, the only remnant of the Temple. Here are the signs at the entrance of the plaza. I didn't realize that Jews believed that the presence of God was still here, dwelling in the vestiges of the Temple. That is not my belief but I was pretty awed by the idea that God once dwelled here, plus it was very interesting to watch others as they rocked back and forth, weeping or chanting the Torah or Mishnah quietly to themselves, and then backing away from the wall by walking backwards....not wanting to turn their backs to the presence of God.

As you can see from the first photo, the men and women are partitioned at the wall. On the men's side, there was a group holding hands in a circle and singing, I'm guessing it was a bar mitzvah. The women's side was less boisterous with each preoccupied with her own thoughts and prayers.

Our next stop was in the Christian quarter of the Old City. We stopped by the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, built by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to dedicate it in person in 1898. We climbed up the bell tower for some wonderful views of the Old City around us. The first photo shows the spartan interior of the church; the second shows a view of the Dome of the Rock, on top of the Temple Mount, with the Mount of Olives and Garden of Gethsamene behind it.

Next stop, just a block away, was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which some people believe was the place Jesus died on the cross and was buried. There are six different denominations who control various sections of the church and there have been so many squabbles that back in the 1800s, there was an agreement on who controlled what and which areas were common areas. It was agreed that nothing could happen in any of the common areas without the agreement of all six parties. This has created a fragile stability, a thinly-veiled status quo which erupts with just the smallest incident. A small example of this happened in 2002 when a Coptic monk moved his chair from the sun into the shade which was in the Ethiopian Orthodox section. This was viewed by the Ethiopians as a hostile encroachment, a fistfight broke out, and eleven were hospitalized.
This photo shows another example. See the ladder under the second-story window?? Someone placed that ladder there before the common areas were established in 1852. Once the doors and windows were deemed common areas, the sects will not agree that the ladder should be moved....a powerful and sad symbol of how religion can be an obstruction to God.

The church is a dark, confusing mishmash of structures and styles, again, a sad human testament to the what is arguably the most important event in human history.

Then Art and I left Suzy and David at an Armenian restaurant in the Armenian quarter and walked up to the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is controlled by Moslems and they only allow non-Moslems on top for a few hours each day. The Dome of the Rock is stunning and, yes, that's real gold. I asked if we could enter but was politely told it wasn't open to non-Moslems. It would have been neat to see the rock, but it was enough to see the dome up close and also to be up on the mount where the temple used to be.

We walked through the Moslem quarter, along the Via Dolorosa, back to join David and Suzy. The first photo is the Via Dolorosa and the second is a remnant of the Tower of David, part of Herod's palace complex. An amazing day.

Israel, part 5: Sea of Galilee

2010-04-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

I now rank the Sea of Galilee as one of the most beautiful lakes I've seen, up there with Buttermere in the English Lake District and Wallowa Lake in northeastern Oregon. We took a day to explore the east and north edges of the lake, starting with the museum in Tiberias which houses a 1st c. fishing boat they discovered in 1986. Buried in mud, the boat began to disintegrate as soon as it was exposed to air, so the story of how they excavated and preserved the boat was very interesting.

The museum for the boat was large and modern, set up for hundreds of tourists at a time. Actually, we saw several sites along the Sea of Galilee which had been built up to accommodate large tour groups being shepherded around the lake in very large tour buses. For example, these photos are from the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, which has been built up into a lush garden and chapel complex, complete with a snack bar.

I was trying to imagine what the area might have originally looked like.....a fruitless task 2000 years later. Although it was neat to look at the water, the cliffs, the general lay of the land and to think that this was much the same way it looked back then. I won't pretend to guess what Art and David were thinking. :)

Next we stopped at the Church of the Fish and Loaves, purportedly at the site of Jesus' feeding of the 5000. For most of these Sea of Galilee tourist sites, there was no evidence other than the remnants of very early churches built in memory of the event. For example, there was a Church of the feeding of the 5000 built at this location as early as 350 AD.

A 4th century pilgrim from Spain described the church:

By the sea is a grassy field with plenty of hay and many palm trees. By them are seven springs (heptapegon), each flowing strongly. And this is the field where the Lord fed the people with the five loaves and two fishes. In fact the stone on which the Lord placed the bread has now been made into an altar. People who go there take away small pieces of the stone to bring them prosperity, and they are very effective.

They still have a stone under the altar, probably not the same stone, but they're not allowing anyone to chip away pieces of it! That would have been a major boon for Suzy's rock collection. :) The beautiful mosaic floors in the church are mostly from the 5th century.

Down the road a little bit was the village of Capernaum, one of my favorite places we visited that day. Here you can see the ruins of the village Jesus lived in for a time, where he performed at least two miracles, and where he spoke in the Synagogue. While a remnant of the 1st c. synagogue still exists, these remnants are from a 4th c. synagogue built on top.

Just a few hundred feet from the synagogue lie the remains of an octagonal church built in the 5th c. to indicate the exact location of Peter's house. In the 1960s, archaeologists found that the foundations of this octagonal church were actually built on the walls of a private house...a private house with inscriptions leading researchers to believe that it was used as a meeting place for Christians in the second half of the 1st c. It was amazing to think that this very likely could have been the place Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law and quite possibly he could have lived here with his disciples Peter and Andrew.

Next, we drove up on to the Golan Heights which rises to the east of the Sea of Galilee. I was surprised by how beautiful it was.....lush pasture land and wildflowers, but peppered with signs warning of landmine danger and other signs of recent warfare such as this abandoned tank.

We stopped at Gamla, famous for its strong defense against the Romans in the 66 AD Jewish revolt. They set up their stronghold on this rock outcropping and and held off the Romans for about 8 months before finally being overrun. About 5000 were killed and another 4000 either fell or jumped to their deaths off the cliff at the far end.

On the way home, we tried to find a place where we could dip our feet into the Jordan river and finally succeeded. :)

After that, we retreated back to our peaceful moshav in the hills. Here are some photos of the sunset over the Sea of Galilee that evening.

Israel, Part 4: Caesarea and Megiddo

2010-04-12T00:28:00.000-07:00

Caesarea was the Roman capital of Palestine, home of one of Herod the Great's many grand building projects. It was the place where Pontius Pilate governed, where Peter converted the Roman, Cornelius, and where Paul was imprisoned for a few years before being sent to Rome.

I can't believe we didn't get a photo of the Roman ampitheater, but here's a side arch with a few of the seats:

A photo of the harbour Herod built here as well as the remnants of his palace complex (in the foreground) and the hippodrome where chariot races were staged (the large empty spot with the shore on its left and the seating on the right).

They think Herod's palace jutted out into the sea as in this diagram. On the right are the remnants:

A piece of the mosaic floor from what archaeologists think was the Judgement hall next to the Palace. If so, this is where Paul would have stood in his hearing before the governor.

Suzy getting ready to dip her hands into the Mediterranean :)

Some vestiges of the mosaic floor and marble from the Roman baths:

This was the amount of sediment washed up on the beach over the centuries. Can you imagine having to clear all that to get to the ruins underneath??

From Caesarea, we turned inland bound for the Sea of Galilee which is in the northeastern part of Israel. Along the way, we stopped at Megiddo, one of the most disputed pieces of land in the world. Archaeologists have uncovered 25 different layers in har (hill in Hebrew) Megiddo, each representing how it was destroyed and rebuilt. John in the book of Revelation even refers to har Megiddo, translated as Armageddon, as the gathering place for the final battleground of the Apocalypse. Here's a photo of the mound from the road:

Egyptians, Assyrians, and Israelites all left their mark here and it was difficult to see where one layer ended and another began!

Megiddo looks out on the Valley of Jezreel. The hill in the center of the photo is Mount Tabor, where some think the Transfiguration took place. We drove between these two hills on our way to the Sea of Galilee region, our destination for the next few days.

We stayed in the village of Amirim. Amirim is a moshav, a cooperative community sort of like a kibbutz with the main difference being the farms and homes are privately owned. Our apartment had a balcony which looked out on to the Sea of Galilee, so this was our view upon arriving that evening.....a beautiful teaser of what we'd be exploring the following day.

More Valley of the Whales

2010-04-08T23:43:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, David and I went back to the Valley of the Whales to camp overnight. We decided to leave the fly off our tent because, you know, it was so warm and we could watch the stars...but we forgot about the sand. The fine gritty ubiquitous sand. I woke up with sand in my hair, my ears, my sleeping bag......everywhere. Desert camping tip #1....don't leave fly off of tent. :)

Here are some photos:

These sediment layers were really interesting.

These are a group of kids from the British school up in Cairo who camped out overnight with us. Super interesting to talk with and they were completely fluent in English....sounded like Americans. Fun group.

Israel, Part 3: Haifa and Akko

2010-04-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

During our stay at Zichron Ya'acov, we took a day to drive about an hour north to visit the ancient port of Akko. On our way, we drove up to have breakfast in Haifa which is perched on the slope of Mount Carmel. It was hard to try to capture Haifa itself on camera, but here's the view from Haifa of the bay. :)

And no photos of the wonderful place we ate at for breakfast but here's a photo of Suzy at the cafe....doesn't she look like she just drank an excellent cup of coffee?? :)

OK, on to Akko. Akko contains layers of history and is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The Egyptian pharoah Thutmose III mentioned it as one of the cities he conquered in 15th c. BC. The book of Judges mentions how the tribe of Asher failed to drive out the Canaanites from Akko in 8th c. BC. Alexander the Great took it in 322 BC, followed by the Syrians, followed by the Romans, then in 635 AD, the Arabs. 400 years later, the Crusaders converted Akko into a major seaport for the Christian kingdom and when Jerusalem fell to Saladin in 1187, Akko became the capital of the Crusader kingdom. The Arabs recaptured it in 1291 and it became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th c. In 1799, Napoleon put Akko under siege for two months but failed to penetrate the fortress. Once the British defeated the Ottoman Empire in World War I, they used this same fortress to hold and even execute members of the Jewish underground movement. The Israelis quickly captured Akko in 1948 in their War of Independence but Akko still maintains its Arab character and I read in my guidebook that it has the highest percentage of Arabs in any Israeli city. Whew....there's the history, here are the photos. :)

The fortress wall:

The Citadel which had been transformed into a prison by the British. Today, it houses a museum and memorial to the Jewish underground resistance movement.

Suzy and I walking down the ramp on the inside of the fortification walls:

Art curiously looking at construction details, I'm guessing. :) This may have been one of the underground Knights' halls from the Crusader era.

Men ritually washing themselves in the fountain before entering the mosque. The mosque was from the Ottoman era.

And then some pics of the picturesque interior of the Old City where many of the Arabs live.

Israel part 2: The Shephelah and Zichron Ya'acov

2010-04-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

The Shephelah is the region of foothills between the coastal plain on the west and the Judean mountains to the east. We drove up through the Shephelah on our way from the southern part of the country up to the northwestern corner near Haifa. The Israelites lived in the Judean mountains while the Philistines occupied the coastal plains so the Shephelah was the site of many Old Testament battles and stories. Here are some photos just to give a feel for the country...I believe this is part of the Valley of Elah where David killed Goliath:

This was the site of Beth Shemesh where the Israelites looked up and saw the ark of the covenant being sent back by the Philistines:

This lush country was about an hour's drive north of the barren Negev desert and we were struck by the stark differences on such a small scale. Then another hour and a half up the coast, we stayed at the small town of Zichron Ya'acov, founded by Baron Edmund de Rothschild in the late 1880s as part of the Zionist movement. We stayed in a renovated horse stable in a family's backyard...isn't it lovely??

Zichron Ya'acov was a very cute town with a neat main street. Here's a photo of the pool Rothschild built in 1891 to provide water for the residents.

Suzy and David sitting at breakfast in a local cafe and then one of the four of us. We're a happy bunch. :)

Israel Part 1: The Negev

2010-04-05T04:16:00.001-07:00

Suzy and I standing guard over the luggage before crossing the border to Israel.

For being such a small country (smaller than New Jersey), we were impressed with the widely diverse landscapes in Israel. We spent our first two nights in the Negev desert. Negev is Hebrew for "south" and indeed makes up the bottom half of the country. This is where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob tended their flocks and where the Israelites waited out their 40 years before entering the promised land. And, folks, this is rugged country. I hadn't realized that when the Bible talks about an area being wilderness, this is what it's referring to.....nary a tree in sight.

We stayed at a hostel called ibike right on the rim of a huge crater called Makhtesh Ramon. The crater wasn't caused by volcanic activity or a meteor but by water erosion. Here's us on the rim at the visitor's center:

We hiked around a few wadis, canyons or riverbeds which provided seasonal water and vegetation, along the ancient Spice Way, a caravan route Nabatean traders used in the 4th bc from Petra to Gaza where their goods were then shipped to Europe. This one was in the crater:

The next day we visited Ein Avdat which is a narrow river canyon in what they think may have been the vast Wilderness of Zin, the area where Moses and the Israelites wandered for forty years (pictured below).

The canyon was beautiful and we even saw some ibex!

We also stopped at the settlement of Avdat which served as a rest stop for the spice caravans, a fortress once the Romans took over, and then as a monastery during the Byzantine era. This is Avdat perched on the hill:

Here's a few pics of the monastery and church. The tomb with the Greek inscription is from the 6th c.

And finally a few photos from the hostel we stayed at. Aviva and Menachem were fun to talk with and I loved Aviva's vegetarian dinner! The following shows Suzy and I chatting over cappucinos, David and Suzy taking a cat nap (I only captured half of Aviva's head in the foreground), and Art and I planning for the next leg of our trip. Stay tuned! :)

Valley of the Whales

2010-03-31T22:35:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-10T23:01:00.000-08:00

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.

Progressive Dinner

2010-02-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, our group here on the compound decided to stage an Italian progressive dinner....six courses in six different villas. The night started off with a nice little sunset as we walked to the first house for drinks.

Two things you may notice in the following photos: 1) All of our villas look the same with the exception that a few have had their walls painted white and 2) I didn't take photos of the food as much as I did the people but you can trust me, the food was wonderful!

First house was Brad's where he served Italian Stallions. A shot of 1/2 Peppermint schnapps, 1/2 Sambuca, a licorice liquor. It was.......interesting.

Next, was bruschetta at Lama's villa:

Then, our house for Italian sausage tortellini soup (by special request, we also played Pavarotti :)

Then, some delicious calamari at Sue's. This is me getting my third plateful. :)

Brian completing the finishing touches on his Shrimp scampi and fettucine alfredo:

Joe's apparently finishing the story he was telling over Calamari :)

Finally, tiramisu and coffee at Anne and Chris's. They have been here for over four years and have seen TAFT teams come and go. Some have a good group dynamic and have fun doing things together and other teams have tended to keep to themselves. Our team comprises one of the former and I'm glad!

Rome!!

2010-02-19T22:09:00.001-08:00

Is it possible to casually say that we went to Rome last weekend?? :) Here are some pics from our 3 days there....I only regret that these don't capture my favorite part of the trip: the cappucinos, gelato, wine, pizza, bread, antipasti.....did I mention the gelato???? :)

We've been to Rome once before, but here are a few things I came away with this time.

1. Now that we're seeing through more informed Egyptian eyes, we've noticed that there are ALOT of obelisks in Rome....thirteen in all. Apparently, the Romans felt no compunction about carting off the monuments from their newly conquered territory, proudly displaying them in their public squares, although some were created in Rome as well. Most of them have been "Christianized" by being topped with a cross or a statue of the pope.

Here's one in St. Peter's square, in front of St. Peter's basilica

This little beauty is a miniature Egyptian obelisk atop a baby elephant sculpted by Bernini....apparently, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Hannibal's war elephants which transported siege towers across the Alps to attack Rome in 2nd c. BC. That's the Pantheon in the background.

2. Speaking of Bernini, I finally saw Baroque in a new light. In Rome, we saw Greek statuary everywhere, a testament to the renewed interest and appreciation of classical ideas and art which we know as the Renaissance. This elegant statue was in the Vatican Museum and embodies the Renaissance focus on the beauty of the individual:

In the 17th c., artists took Renaissance art to a new level, focusing on movement and drama. Bernini's sculptures embodied this new style which became known as Baroque. I've never appreciated the flowery, overly decorated style of Baroque but in the Villa Borghese which we visited during our second day in Rome...I got it. Cardinal Borghese, the papal nephew, wanted to illustrate that present-day artists could compete with the classical greats. In each of the grand galleries, renaissance sculptures, stately and pensive, line the edges of the room...but the the sculpture in the center of each room is the main attraction. Each gallery features a sculpture by Bernini and, wow, talk about drama....take a look at this:

This is the same Apollo as the statue above. This time he's grabbed hold of the nymph Daphne just as she's being turned into a laurel tree. Instead of posing gracefully as portrayed in the Vatican, here he's running in mad pursuit and instead of the blank face above, here he's startled, realizing that something's happening to her. Bernini has been able to capture a dramatic moment in marble.

Anyhow, I want to show more Bernini statues from the Galleria Borghese but I'll stop. :) It was a very impressive art collection and the juxtaposition of the Bernini sculptures with the Renaissance figures around it really illustrated how different the Baroque movement was. I came away with a new appreciation, at least. My apologies to those with a greater understanding of art history for any butchering I may have done! :)

3. David and I drank coffee the way the Italians do, ducking into coffee shops, stepping up to the bar and ordering an espresso, or in my case, a macchiato, which is an espresso "stained" with milk. Ten minutes later, we were on our way.

4. We took a tour of the Palatine hill which, according to legend, is the hill where Rome was founded. In Classical Rome, only the very wealthy lived here, including emperors of which Augustus was the first. You can see part of the hill rising up from the Arch of Constantine, erected in 312 AD to celebrate Constantine's triumph over the city (we're standing at the Colosseum).

Here are some of the remains from Augustus's palace on top of the hill. We saw some of the remains of Nero's palace too, including an excavation site where last year they believe they've unearthed his revolving dining room which had only been alluded to in the sources.

The Palatine hill looks down on the Colosseum and the Forum.

It was a lovely walk....one of many we did over our three days there. For souvenirs, we brought home olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and blistered feet!! :)

Nile Cruise: Day 3, Luxor

2010-02-10T21:59:00.000-08:00

We spent all of our last day in Luxor. Modern Luxor stands on the site of the ancient city of Thebes, which, in turn, is the site of the Karnak temple complex, Luxor temple, Hatshepsut's temple, and Valley of the Kings. We squeezed in all that plus more...a long, thrilling day.

First off, we dragged ourselves out of bed to watch the sunrise during the boat's last stretch on the river before it docked at Luxor.

Then it was off to Karnak. A thousand years after the pyramids were built, Karnak was just a small temple dedicated to the local god, Amun. With the beginning of the 18th dynasty (around 1570 BC), this site became a religious center for the country with each pharoah adding his or her (in the case of Hatshepsut) elaborate homage to Amun. These also served as a tribute to the pharoahs' posterity as well, of course. :) Here's the entrance to Karnak...notice the row of sphinxes on the left:

The photos one always sees from Karnak is the great Hypostyle hall, built by Seti I and completed by his very famous son, Ramses II and I must admit that I couldn't stop taking photos of it. Amelia Edwards, an Englishwoman who traveled through Egypt in the 1870s, describes it perfectly in her memoir "A Thousand Miles up the Nile":

How often has it been written, and how often must it be repeated, that the Great Hall at Karnak is the noblest architectural work ever designed and executed by human hands? One writer tells us that it covers four times the area occupied by the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame in Paris. Another measures it against St. Peter's. All admit their inability to describe it ; yet all attempt the description. To convey a concrete image of the place to one who has not seen it, is, however, as I have already said, impossible. If it could be likened to this place or that, the task would not be so difficult ; but there is, in truth, no building in the wide world to compare with it. The Pyramids are more stupendous. The Colosseum covers more ground. The Parthenon is more beautiful. Yet in nobility of conception, in vastness of detail, in majesty of the highest order, the Hall of Pillars exceeds them every one. This doorway, these columns, are the wonder of the world. How was that lintel-stone raised? How were these capitals lifted? Entering among those mighty pillars, says a recent observer, "you feel that you have shrunk to the dimensions and feebleness of a fly." But I think you feel more than that. You are stupefied by the thought of the mighty men who made them. You say to yourself :--"There were indeed giants in those days."

David, Sara, and Steve letting all that history settle a bit before heading to the next site.

Next was the Luxor temple. A sphinx-lined road once connected Karnak to the Luxor temple, a mile away. A major project has been launched to unbury and restore this road to its former glory. I'm standing on the beginning of this road with Luxor temple behind me:

You can see the statues of Ramses II flanking the entrance. Ramses II was the one who erected the two obelisks as well. As you can see, only one is left, as one was given by Mohammad Ali in the 1800s to King Louis-Philippe in France who erected in the Place de la Concorde. King Louis-Philippe graciously sent a clock to Mohammad Ali, the first electric clock in the Middle East, as a thank you....except it didn't work. It stands today in the Citadel in Cairo....you may remember the whole story from our entry last September here . Doesn't the obelisk look lonely??

In the afternoon, we visited Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, Deir el Bahri. She built this for the purpose of housing her funerary cult as well as a way of strengthening her claim that she was the physical daughter of the god Amun and therefore was fit to be King. Reliefs throughout the temple show Amun claiming her as his offspring as well as other scenes from her twenty-year rule. We were struck by how Greek the temple looked.

No photos from the Valley of the Kings as we were only allowed into three tombs and we weren't allowed to take photos...actually cameras were forbidden on the premises. During the late Kingdom period, pharoahs were realizing that if the goal was to secure their mummy for the afterlife, publicizing their ornate burial chambers filled with treasure with a huge pyramid probably wasn't the best route. They started building their tombs in a valley miles away from Thebes, underground and unmarked. As we know today, this also didn't work, as all the royal tombs were robbed....all except for that of a certain famous pharoah whose name was King Tutankhamun. As I said, I went into three tombs: Seti I, Ramses III, and Ramses V. The colors and scenes painted in the underground chambers were dazzling!

Back at the boat, we ended our night with a wonderful gala dinner. The dessert was Baked Alaska in the form of the Giza pyramids, presented to each table as the rest of the staff played lively music, and then lit on fire....Fabulous!!

Part of the entertainment at the end of the night was a whirling dhervish, who twirls constantly to music for hours. Our whirling dhervish only twirled for about 20 minutes which was enough for me but I liked this photo:

Nile Cruise: Day 2,

2010-01-31T22:21:00.001-08:00

Most of our time on the second day of our cruise looked like this:

We spent the majority of the day moving down the river so we spent a lot of time on the top deck reading, people watching, and just watching the Nile valley drift way. It was wonderful. Here are some scenes viewed from the ship. As you may notice, the villages look quite a bit different than those in Lower Egypt. Not sure if these were Nubian or not, but we agreed they were quite picturesque.

We stopped along the way at two Greco-Roman temples. In the morning, we drifted up to Kom Ombo, a temple dedicated to the Crocodile god Sobek as well as to the god Horus who was characterized by a falcon. It was fascinating to me that the Greeks would simply drop their own dedication to Zeus and Athena and erect temples to their new adopted Egyptian gods. I guess if you're already polytheistic, what's a few more? :)

Then back to the boat for a hearty lunch. At this point, David had termed it as "strapping on the feed sack". :) We ate so much...but everything was so good. :)

In the late afternoon, we stopped at Edfu to visit the Greco-Roman temple dedicated to Horus. This is the best preserved temple in Egypt; it stands much as it did two thousand years ago.

David doing what David does best. :)

Statue of Horus at temple entrance.

Nile cruise: Day 1, Aswan

2010-01-29T03:27:00.001-08:00

We'd been waiting for Steve and Sara to go on a Nile cruise and we're so glad we did! It was fun to share such a special experience with them. The number of operators and boats on the Nile is a bit overwhelming but, on recommendation, we went with Abercrombie & Kent and I think it's safe to say we were wowed....by the service, the accommodations, the food.....oh, and the ancient Egyptian sites we saw along the way too! :)

Getting on the boat:

Some more photos from the boat at its dock in Aswan that first day and night:

During that first afternoon, we visited a few sites in the Aswan area. The first was to the granite quarry where so many of the granite structures in ancient Egypt came from. There is still an obelisk there, unfinished, which was abandoned after a flaw in the stone was discovered. This unfinished obelisk gives archaeologists important clues as to how the ancient Egyptians could possibly carve something so immense out of stone.

Here is the granite bed from which another obelisk had been carved. You can see the trenches which quarrymen pounded out with 10 lb. balls of dolerite. To break the obelisk away from the granite, they believe that quarrymen hammered in pieces of wood on the underside of the obelisk, then soaked them in water; the expansion created cracks. You can see the parallel shafts below where they placed the wood.

Then we went to the island of Philae where a huge temple to Isis was built in the Ptolomaic period and used through Roman times as well. It was a beautiful afternoon.

These were inscriptions from some of the scholars who accompanied Napoleon's expedition in 1798!

This temple was located above the site of the first Aswan dam and so after 1902, it was almost completely covered by water for most of the year. When construction for the new High Dam was being planned, UNESCO along with the Egyptian government launched a campaign to save Philae and other important monuments from being submerged forever. The entire temple site was dismantled and reassembled, stone by stone, on a nearby, higher, island between 1975-1980. Amazing!

After coming back to the boat, we were served afternoon tea in the lounge:

and one photo from dinner that night. We decided we could get used to this life. :)

The Giza Pyramids!

2010-01-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

These are the big ones....the ones everyone sees on postcards. The only one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. A few days into Steve and Sara's visit, we drove up to the Giza plateau, stopping on the way to have coffee at the famous hotel, the Mena House. The Mena House lies at the foot of the plateau and has hosted celebrities and heads of states for over a century, most notably Chiang Kai-shek, Churchill, and Roosevelt at their Cairo Conference in 1943.

Sara and Steve agreed to describe this as our house to the folks back home:

A photo from the coffee shop just off the lobby. It has floor to ceiling windows that look out on the pyramids.

Before we head up to the pyramids, I wanted to backtrack for a paragraph. Now the day before, we had visited the pyramid site of Dahshur where the art of building pyramids had progressed from what we had seen at Saqqara and Meidum. The step pyramid at Saqqara was the first manifestation of the idea of building a tomb with height, then came the step pyramid at Meidum which they had tried to fill in with a limestone casing. This outer shell was built at too steep an angle and collapsed as you may remember from our blog entry last month. Enter Dahshur where again the pyramid was built at too steep an angle so partway up they changed the angle, so it is known as the "Bent Pyramid". Sara's pointing out where you can see how the angle changes:

The Bent Pyramid was built by Snefru...the same Snefru who built Meidum. For reasons we can only guess at, he decided to built a third pyramid. Maybe he just wanted to get it right. :) This time he succeeded. It's called the Red Pyramid, from the reddish limestone used in its construction, and it's right next to the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur. Thank you, Steve, for pointing out the first "true" pyramid:

OK, hopefully that wasn't too confusing. Fast forward to Giza. Snefru's son, Khufu, took the advances made by his father and proceeded to construct the largest pyramid of all: the Great Pyramid of Giza. 2.5 million blocks of stone, averaging 2.5 tons each. Our tour guide (that's him on the left in the picture below) pointed out the irony that while Khufu built the largest pyramid of them all, the only representation we have of him is a tiny statuette in the Egyptian Museum, about 7 cm. tall.

The pyramid in the foreground below was built by Khufu's son, Khafre. This is the sole pyramid which still has a remnant of the white limestone casing, giving us an idea of how these pyramids must have gleamed in the sun.

Khafre's pyramid is also the only one which still has an intact valley temple which was pretty cool to see but no pics unfortunately. But here's the remnant of the causeway connecting the valley temple to the pyramid.

The most famous feature of Khafre's pyramid complex is the Great Sphinx, located next to his valley temple. I think I missed her lips. :)

Oh, and I almost forgot....and it was so fascinating too. In 1954, Egypt's President Nasser was driving the King of Saudi Arabia around Khufu's pyramid and the story is that the King noticed that part of the south side of the pyramid was obstructed by a large pile of debris and said something to the effect of "Why don't you have that removed?" Nasser got his Antiquities Dept. on the task and in removing the pile, they uncovered a large pit which contained an entire boat which had been dismantled into 1,244 cedar pieces. This boat was to carry the pharoah into the afterlife. It took a team 14 years to reassemble the pieces and it is now displayed in a small museum next to the pyramid. Amazing!

Medinet Madi, Attempt #2

2010-01-21T00:25:00.000-08:00

Well, I was a little surprised to see that it's been 3 weeks since my last post!! I slacked off after the New Year and then David's sister Sara and her husband Steve visited from the 9th-19th, so now we're settling back into our relatively normal life and I have a lot of blogging to catch up on! :)

For those regular readers, do you remember the temple site Medinet Madi we were trying to find last July?? We ended up getting caught in a market day traffic jam plus we were completely lost....an interesting day but no temple. Well, Steve and Sara said they were game so we tried again. This time armed with a better map, plus personal directions and Arabic spellings of towns from those Egyptians we know who live in the Fayoum area. We still got lost but this time my Arabic was a bit better and we were at least able to ask for help. Two guys on a motorcycle took us to the site. This was good bc, as it turns out, we would have been hard-pressed to find it on our own!

We were expecting to find the site completely abandoned and was completely surprised to find about twenty guys busily at work, clearing out piles of sand and rocks as well as reconstructing walls and restoring monuments. No one could communicate with us in English so it wasn't until we got home that I looked online to discover that this is part of a UN development program. The Egyptian government and the UNDP along with the Italian government (Pisa University has been excavating here for years) have agreed on a management program for Medinet Madi which will include a visitors' center among other things. I was reading their objectives and one was to track visitor traffic to the site and I thought Good Luck. :)

Anyway, it was nice for us because so much of the site had been unburied from the piles of sand we had seen in photos. Medinet Madi was a temple built in the 12th dynasty by Amenemhat III dedicated, of course, to Sobek the crocodile god as well as Renenutet, a cobra goddess. The Greeks came along, always amenable to new gods to add to their pantheon, and added their own temple, statues, and bas-reliefs. They have evidence that this site housed a Roman military camp and there was a Coptic community here too. It appears that Medinet Madi had been in use for at least 2500 years.

An avenue of sphinxes leading to the entrance of the old temple.

There were several of these lion statues too. They don't look particularly Egyptian or Greek, do they?

A gate to the entrance of the temple with a giant foot, probably of Sobek. You can imagine how big the original gate must have been!

Another Sobek relief on the back wall of the old temple.

David and Steve looking at the hieroglyphics on a papyriform column in the old temple.

We weren't sure what this was. Our guidebooks had told us that recent excavations had uncovered a crocodile nursery and pool along with crocodile eggs but it appeared to be located somewhere else on the site. Adjacent to this, the Pisa team has uncovered some impressive hydraulic engineering built by the Roman military unit stationed here so maybe this is connected with that.

An extremely interesting site. I wish we would have taken more photos, which just means we'll have to go back!! Maybe this time we'll be able to find it on our own. :)

Christmas 2009

2009-12-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

The staff here on our compound expended a tremendous effort in order to make Christmas special for guys here without their families (I'm the only non-staff spouse here).

First, Christmas Eve started with a potluck. That's the back of me slicing up my corned beef:

Anne, and to her right, Chris and Vinnie. The other two guys are new staff either here at Beni Suef or visiting from Cairo.

Then our Bible Study hosted a Christmas Eve program at the Chapel which was followed by homemade rum balls, chocolate truffles, and Irish cream cheesecake by Linda as well as sweet breads from the kitchen:

Here's Linda, Jim, Tony, and the other Dave at the bar afterwards:

The Egyptian staff decorated a few of the trees with lightbulbs, which put off A LOT of light. David's first comment was "How much wattage are those putting out??"

and they even made a giant gingerbread church, except it wasn't gingerbread but slabs of chocolate which they decorated. Quite impressive!

We were laughing about how our sole Christmas decoration in the house was a pine-scented Christmas candle, but we adapted and overcame: stocking caps for stockings and our green chair for holding presents. :)

After opening presents, we ambled on down to the dining facility for a light lunch, recovered in the afternoon, and then 5 pm was Christmas dinner. I took a photo of the posted menus:

Christmas dinner was scrumdillyicious. Here are the chefs taking a bow (well, figuratively, I guess):

Omar explaining how he fashioned the chocolate bark for the Tiramisu Tree:

Two giant bowls of eggnog and, yes, they piped "Merry Christmas" in mashed potatoes:

After dinner, we did our White Elephant gift exchange. We tried hard to get the gumball machine and the sheesha pipe but ended up with a pair of headphones and a baby blanket. Go figure. :)

Pyramids at Meidum and Hawara

2009-12-21T00:13:00.001-08:00

A few days ago, we visited two pyramids that we pass all the time on the road....on our way back and forth to Cairo as well as David's commute to work. The Meidum and Hawara pyramids....each are about a 20 minute drive from our compound.

Remember the step pyramid at Saqqara?? It was the first pyramid, showcasing Imhotep's idea to stack the funerary mastabas on top of one another. Well, Meidum is sort of the next pyramid chronologically along the progression of techniques which climaxed with the perfect pyramid in Giza. Meidum was built in the 4th dynasty by, well they're really not sure by whom. It is commonly attributed to the ruler Snefru due to some graffiti they found on the pyramid from the 18th dynasty (about 1000 BC!!). The graffiti indicates that Snefru was believed to have been the builder.

With Meidum, Snefru took the step pyramid idea from Sazzara but then filled in the steps and smoothed off the sides to create a "true" pyramid. However, the angle was too steep and the limestone slap casing was never attached to the inner structure so the whole outer casing collapsed, leaving the inner step core surrounded by a huge pile of limestone rubble. So only half of the pyramid is visible.

This is the first pyramid I've actually entered. Can you see the small staircase we entered through the north side?? This steep passageway descended for about 200 ft. and then ascended into the uninhabited and unfinished burial chamber. They think this pyramid was simply abandoned and never used after the sudden collapse.

Here's an inside look of the burial chamber. This is the first burial chamber built in the body of the pyramid rather than in an underground shaft covered by a pyramid as in Saqqara.

And here's a photo of the passageway out:

Once outside, here's the causeway which leads out to the valley temple by the river. (I explained these standard features of the pyramid complex here ) None of the valley temple remnants have been found.

Per usual, the pyramid was surrounded by mastabas where family and courtiers were buried. We actually were able to enter this one (seen from the entrance of the pyramid).

This passageway was much more challenging. We had to walk in a crouch and squeeze through that little opening you see in the background:

One last note before I move onto the Hawara pyramid. One of the mastabas at the Meidum site (don't know if it was this one or not) is famous for a painted frieze depicting six geese. It was discovered in 1871 and was so detailed that they were able to identify the species. The frieze has been taken up to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and I happened upon it during my last visit....just tucked away in a side room with little fanfare.

(Photograph by Jon Bodsworth at http://www.egyptarchive.co.uk/html/cairo_museum_08.html )

By the way, we were given another police escort:

The truck full of guards is following us. :) This was actually the most relaxed site we've been to....there were guards at the entrance of the pyramid and mastaba who we followed through the passageway (who expected baksheesh or tips) but other than one guy (unarmed, civilian clothed, with great English) who described the site...we were pretty much left alone. No entourage.

OK, on to Hawara. Hawara was built much much later, in the 12th dynasty, and while you can see Meidum in the progression up the scale towards the perfect pyramid in Giza, Hawara's on the downslope after Giza. Apparently, the pharoahs at that time were expending their efforts elsewhere. Amenemhat III built Hawara and was buried here and my guidebook tells me that Hawara was the last great pyramid to be built here in Egypt; as you can see it's not much to look at. Like Lahun pyramid, Hawara's built with mud bricks and the limestone casing has been stripped so all we're left with is an eroded lump.

While unimpressive as a pyramid, Hawara is the site of one of the most famed tourist destinations in the ancient world. Apparently, the mortuary temple built adjacent to the pyramid was colossal. It was still standing in Greek times and Herodotus and Strabo were lucky enough to visit and write about it (5th c. and 1st c. BC, respectively). Scholars differ on how trustworthy these observations are, but Herodotus called it the Labrynth with no fewer than 3000 rooms and described it as surpassing "all the great works of the Greeks....put together". Unfortunately, there is nothing left except piles of limestone rubble....at least above ground. I read that the Egyptian government may be launching an underground excavation effort in the near future.

Khan el-Khalili

2009-12-18T05:11:00.001-08:00

The Khan el-Khalili (known henceforth as The Khan) is the most famous marketplace in Cairo. It is located in the Islamic quarter (just a few blocks from our first walk in the Islamic district which I blogged about in July) , dates back to the Middle Ages, and its thousands of shops feature everything from tacky brass pyramids to beautiful handmade furniture and jewelry. This is where your blue Muski glass came from, Andrew and Jen and Suzy! Muski glass is recycled glass, usually brown or blue, which is named after the famous Muski street from the Khan.

It is overwhelming to say the least but thankfully I know some women who've taken me past the touristy souvenir shops on the outskirts into the deep nooks and crannies of the market, introducing me to their favorite shops and shopowners. This was my second trip to the Khan and, unlike the first, this time I brought my camera!

Muski Street:

If you look closely, you can see a horse and carriage just barely squeezing through this narrow lane:

Karanis

2009-12-11T00:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back after a very nice month of visiting family and friends. Highlights included a baby shower/afternoon tea for Heidi, a very special visit from my friends Dee and Wendy from Fairbanks, a visit with the Lyons clan in Ellensburg, going to the MLS cup with Krista, Karina, and Kasey, and welcoming baby Maude who made her grand appearance into the world on November 23rd. Thanks for the special memories!!

But now I'm happy to be back reporting on more Egyptian adventures. A few days ago, we visited a Greco-Roman site right next to the base David works at every day (about a 45 minute drive from our compound) called Karanis. Founded by the Ptolomaic Greek settlers in the 3rd c. BC, it continued as a prosperous town once the Romans took over until the 4th c. AD.

Karanis was a site of major archaeological excavations in the 19th and early 20th centuries; all the buildings and streets had painstakingly been cleared of debris. But now, except for the temples and some wall remnants, virtually everything has been buried by sand.

Oh and the uniformed guards are the ever-present Tourism police who take it upon themselves to give you a guided tour for baksheesh (tips). I assume that their mission is to protect the sites, hence the handguns (are they loaded???), but at each site, one guard assumes the role of tour guide, followed by an entourage of at least 4 other guards plus one man in a galabeya (a rural gown worn by the farmer men) and turbin. Why the farmer guy?? Who knows?? But it's extremely annoying because you're not allowed to just wander through the ruins on your own...if you want to veer from the path the tour guide wants to take you, then the whole entourage stops and follows you. I would understand if their main purpose is to protect the site from modern-day looters, but at each site we've been to, it is the tour guide himself who plucks arrowheads, roman pottery, and alabaster from the ruins and gives it to David with the warning to put it in his pocket and not to tell anyone. We have no doubt that if we gave them some serious money, they would let us take about anything home. So we're not impressed with the Tourism police....whether it be their English or their ethics.

Anyway, back to the site. These excavations turned up a considerable number of artifacts and documents which helped archaeologists piece together what life here might have looked like. Roman tax documents indicates different professions such as dyer, barber, registered translator, caravan driver, embalmer, sheepshearer, and flautist. There are also documents hinting at the hostility and mistrust encountered by the Roman newcomers from the Greco-Egyptian inhabitants. It was interesting for me to read that while the Greeks and Egyptians merged well together, particularly through mixed marriages, the Romans saw themselves as a superior and separate culture.

This was a temple which dated to the 1st c. AD. They know this because of the Greek inscription still visible on the lintel above David's head (unfortunately, the camera didn't pick it up). The inscription says that it was dedicated to the emperor Nero, whose name was covered over and replaced by his successor, Vespasian. The temple was used for offerings to the Crocodile god, Sobek. Remember him from other sites?? Apparently, they found a considerable amount of crocodile mummies.

This was the second temple on the site.

And here's the remnant of a bathtub from the public baths which you can find at just about any sizable Roman site. The Romans liked to bathe. :)

When we had started our tour, the head guy asked what our nationality was, where we were from, and what road we were going to take to return....the questions seemed normal (except for the route bit) but he kept talking to someone on the radio, seemingly telling them what our information was, which seemed strange. After the tour, as we were returning to our car, there was a truck full of policeman parked by the car, and one of them hopped out and very nicely asked where we were living. When David answered "Beni Suef", the policeman seemed to not understand him. We always get this response because there are very few foreigners living in the town of Beni Suef and most don't know that there is an American compound on the Egyptian air force base there. So the policeman asked his question again, "Where do you live?", to which David replied "Beni Suef". The policeman asked helpfully "In Maadi, in Cairo??" (Maadi is the expat district in Cairo), "Nope, in Beni Suef". "Sir, where is your second house??" "Beni Suef" to which he finally shrugged his shoulders and asked David for his cell phone number, then returned to the truck.

David turned to me and said "I do believe we are going to get our first police escort". This was exciting. We had heard of this before. Every once in a while, a decision gets made that foreigners, for their own protection, should be escorted back and forth to Cairo when they visit a rural site. These guys had apparently been tasked to do this for us and the fact that we were purportedly living in the neighbouring farm town didn't seem to be of any consequence to them. So they took off and we followed. I think there were two policemen in the front and three in the back:

We couldn't communicate that we lived on the air force base, nor would they be able to get on the base anyhow, so they wouldn't be able to escort us home, but we thought we'd drive with them awhile and then pass them by with a friendly wave. They drove pretty slowly and what was really amusing was that we kept hearing a siren aways off and kept looking for an ambulance but finally realized that the siren was coming from our escort!! So, even if it was for our protection, we felt more like sitting ducks as the escort managed to get everyone's attention as we slowly passed by!

We passed them by at our turn off, they followed us and caught up with us at the next town, asked us to stop and tried to clarify directions. Finally, we were able to convey that we really didn't need an escort and they let us go. I told David that I felt like Obama!! All in all, a very interesting afternoon. :)

October dive trip

2009-11-29T06:45:00.000-08:00

Greetings all, I have been horribly remiss in keeping up with our blog in Wendi's absence. It wasn't even until today that I read her last post and realized she had created expectations for my performance. Just so you know - I experienced strong pangs of guilt for the first couple of weeks but they faded and for the last few weeks I have only occasionally even thought about writing. But then last night Wendi mentioned it during our phone conversation and since I have the next couple of days off (the Egyptians are celebrating the end of Hajj feast Eid al-Adha) I decided my excuses are running a little thin. So here it is - I can think of this as a kind of celebration for Wendi's return (she will be back here Dec 3).

We (our team over here) did our second dive trip the week Wendi left so she wasn't able to join us. Aside from her not being there the whole experience was much more enjoyable than the first one (we didn't have to do all the training dives for one thing). Having already experienced it once, the process of driving there, unloading the cars, loading the boat and getting out of port was a lot more relaxing. What really helped was the temperature - in June it was well over 100 and we had to wait for over an hour on the boat while the Tourism office did an inspection. This time it was only in the 80s, we arrived earlier, and less than an hour after driving in we were pulling out of port.

A couple of views leaving the harbor. As you can see the Sinai peninsula is a pretty desolate place. It was mostly empty except for some nomadic Bedouin tribes until the Israelis captured it during the 1967 war. Over the years they built up resort areas that the Egyptians took over after the Sinai was given back under the Camp David Accords. Even now the area mostly caters to foreigners with areas that are off limits to Egyptians unless they work there. The main resort town of Sharm el-Sheik is a couple of miles to the right of the harbor.

The guys are getting ready for our first dive. It was several hours out of port and on the wreck of the S.S. Dunraven, a British cargo ship that sank in 1867. It was my first wreck dive and it was very interesting being able to swim through hull and see the old boilers. There wasn't really anything left to see cargo wise but it had some beautiful corals.

This is the second wreck we dove - the famous S.S. Thistlegorm. It was built in 1940 in England and used to haul supplies in support of the African campaign. It was sank in 1941 by a lone German bomber that was returning home after an unsuccessful hunt for the Queen Mary (the plane was caught in the blast when its bombs hit the ammunition magazines and crashed a few miles away). What makes it so special is that it sank quickly with a full load of cargo. Some of the items you can still see: two steam locomotives, tenders and rolling stock, rifles, munitions, aircraft parts, Wellington boots, trucks, motor bikes and tunics for the Eighth Army in North Africa. This picture is of Vinny, me, and Rich (L-R) getting ready to head back up. It can getting pretty crowed there but the first day we dove right before sunset, moved a little ways off to spend the night and then again first thing in the morning before the crowds showed up.

This picture is a little dark but if you enlarge you should be able to see the motorcycles and the cases of rifles off to the right. I was amazed at how well preserved some of the stuff was but you can see the effects of so many people being down there. There are big air pockets in all the rooms from SCUBA breathing and it is causes rapid rusting but as with so many things here when it comes to tourist dollars, regulations are almost nonexistent or ignored for a small price.

This is pretty much what we did when we weren't diving. The weather was beautiful for the whole trip and the food was excellent (something about being outside always make food taste better). It was three days of eating, diving and sleeping. If it wasn't such a long drive I can see us doing this more often.

This was my bedroom - we all brought our blankets up from the rooms downstairs and slept on the deck.

These trips have been fun but a little surreal. A weekend diving at Sharm is about like someone coming to America and heli-skiing in Alaska - it's a lot of fun but you certainly can't say you have experienced the culture. It's more of an escape which at times is exactly what is needed. I hope you enjoyed my post and thank goodness for all involved Wendi is back in a couple of days :)

And the winner is................

2009-10-25T21:58:00.000-07:00

Suzy!! I'll bring the box back with me to Seattle and, if we don't see each other, I'll either mail it to you or send it back with Andrew and Jen. Congratulations!!

Thanks to all the guessers....it was fun to read your comments. And, yes, Wendy, that was Chad the Sultan. :)

I'm turning the keyboard over to David for the next month as I'm heading back to Seattle until December 1st. Stay tuned....he may even post some pics from his dive trip! Until then, here are some more pics from our weekend in Istanbul! We were extremely impressed with Istanbul....same size as Cairo but with no piles of trash (even in the poorer areas, we still saw garbage trucks), the cars stopped at traffic lights, there were beautiful public spaces. Apart from the mosques and the calls to prayer, it felt like we were in Germany. By the way, the obelisk shown below was brought up by the Romans to display in the Hippodrome in Constantinople.

Traffic and the concept of Insha 'allah

2009-10-23T22:44:00.001-07:00

You probably knew this post was coming at some point during our year here. :) Egyptian traffic is crazy... not so much due to aggressiveness, though that is a factor, as much as the variety of transport you encounter. On one street, you can simultaneously encounter not only a swarm of cars, microbuses, taxis, and large trucks weaving in and out trying to pass each other, but you'll pass a donkey pulling a cart on your right, and a motorbike on your left running against the traffic, plus there are always people trying to cross the street...and they aren't shy, even when they have their small children with them!

This is normal. The following photos show some of the sights which have made us point and say "Take a look at that!" :)

Sheep:
Water buffalo:

A propane tank...certainly not the largest load we've seen on a motorbike. My favorite was a large pane of glass.

These microbuses serve as taxis, either in a city or between cities. They are virtually always packed full of passengers so all the luggage goes on top.

Camel stop:

I wasn't here for very long before I became aware of the word "Insha 'allah" which means "God willing". Egyptians' everyday speech is peppered with it. I'll tell Samia "Ok, then I'll see you tomorrow"; she always answers "Insha' allah".

To Hamdi, the Gardener: "OK, so you'll come two times a month??"
Hamdi: Insha' allah

To Samia: "I hope your son's school year will be better this year"
Samia: Insha' allah

You get the idea. It's a passive attitude towards life which, as a Christian, I actually agree with to a certain extent....a constant reminder that our lives belong in God's hands, not our own. But it's interesting to me how this concept has created a culture of passivity. David was briefed about this before he came over; it is very difficult to do long-term planning with the Egyptians he works with.....even short-term planning for that matter. He will ask another pilot "So are you going to do a maintenance flight on 179 today?" Answer: "Insha 'allah" It is difficult to work with that bc it's not really an answer. David is left wondering, "Well, is he planning to do it or not?? Because if he's not going to get to it, I need to do it since it's scheduled for tonight's flight." David's also found that, at work, saying "Insha 'allah" is a way around saying no to a question and disappointing the other person.

This mentality of our fate not being in our own hands permeates everything here. How to enforce a mandatory seatbelt law, for example, when the general populous feels that if it's their time to go, then wearing a seatbelt's not going to matter?

Actually in one of our first taxi rides (taxis here deserve their own blog entry! :) we had a driver who wasn't aggressive as much as just clueless. The way he leaned forward, it looked like he couldn't really see and as he drifted aimlessly from lane to lane or simply straddled them, he left a wake of angry honking drivers behind him of whom he seemed completely unaware. I truly thought we were going to have an accident. I leaned over to David, which was easy to do since the seatbelts didn't work, and whispered "Insha 'allah". :)

Where in the World are we???

2009-10-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Can you tell from the photos where we went last weekend??? Here's the deal: For everyone who posts a guess in the comments, correct or incorrect, I'll put their names in a hat. The winner's name I pull out will win this mother-of-pearl inlaid box!!

Interesting story on how we received the box. During the first couple of months we were here one of the Egyptian officers David works with had been talking at with David about Islam. When these conversations started to get more prolonged and David had to be a bit more abrupt with him ("Hey, I'm sorry, but I really need to get to work!"), the officer was very apologetic, which made David feel bad. Then the next day, he brought David this box with more apologies, which made him feel even worse. However, we already have an inlaid box we like, so we're going to send it to one of you!! So guess away, readers!! In a few days I will declare a winner and post an entry on our trip.

Enti Toluk!!

2009-10-13T04:47:00.001-07:00

So a few days ago, I was watching an Egyptian movie and, although I understood virtually nothing that the characters said, the plot was pretty apparent. A woman was going to dance lessons behind her husband's back because she didn't think he'd approve. Sure enough, when he found out, he surely didn't approve. There were several scenes of arguing and yelling, until at one point, he pointed at her and yelled "Enti toluk!!", the woman's eyes grew wide as saucers, the music took a dramatic turn, and the next scene showed her sobbing on the subway. I knew Enti meant "You" so I thought maybe toluk was some sort of slur. He must have called her a floozy or worse. I made a mental note to ask someone what in the world he said!!

When I asked my friend Dina she told me that Enti Toluk means "You are divorced". When a man wishes to divorce his wife, he does not need to go through a court of law, but only says "Enti toluk" three times to formally end his marriage according to the guidelines set out in the Quran. And, according to Dina, he can rescind his decision until he says "Enti toluk" for the third time. At that point, it is final. Women were not allowed to divorce their husbands until a new ruling in 2000. Today, they are allowed to file a divorce without their husband's permission but they give up all financial rights.

Last year, a woman was seeking clarification from the court on her husband's declaration of divorce. He had texted her on her cellphone twice declaring "Enti Toluk" and then later that year, after an argument, he had said it again face to face. The court was trying to decide whether text messages count. I wasn't able to find out how the court ruled, but apparently text-message divorces have been upheld in other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

The movie ended on a happier note. The husband started taking dancing lessons with his wife and they lived happily ever after....provided he doesn't say "Enti toluk" two more times, of course.

Saqqara!

2009-10-11T00:46:00.000-07:00

You're looking at the first pyramid built in Egypt. Before this point, royalty and nobility were buried in mastabas which would look like the bottom level of this step pyramid. About the 27th c. BC, King Djoser's chief architect, a guy named Imhotep, came up with the idea to stack mastabas on top of each other to create a six-step pyramid. Djoser's pyramid sits amongst the ruins of a large funerary complex, surrounded by a wall which featured a frieze of cobras. In the foreground of the photo, can you see a remnant of these cobras?

Saqqara, just south of Cairo, served as a burying ground for Memphis, which was the capital city of Egypt during the Old Kingdom and nobility were still being buried there in the New Kingdom after the capitol had moved to Thebes. It is the largest archaeological site in Egypt and covers about 7 km of desert and is littered with pyramids and mastabas. We were able to enter several of the mastabas and although we weren't allowed to take photos, our guide let me take a few when we were away from the crowds and it was light enough where I wouldn't have to use flash. All of the walls of these tombs were completely covered in reliefs depicting both symbolic scenes as well as scenes from daily life. The details were fascinating. There are people in boats pulling up nets with many different kinds of fish, boys wrestling and playing, butchers slaughtering cattle, marshes with frogs, birds, crocodiles, hippos, and grasshoppers, dwarves depicted as goldsmiths, as well as lots and lots of servants bearing food and drink for the deceased's ka or spirit. Some examples.....unfortunately I wasn't able to capture any pics of hippos. Those were my favorites. :)

One of the many aspects of pyramids which we were completely unaware of before we came to Egypt was that virtually every pyramid is associated with a complex of buildings which are so standard that archaeologists know to look for them. There is always the mortuary temple which is built against the east side of the pyramid where priests present prayers and offerings to sustain the king's ka. There is usually a smaller pyramid in the complex and there is virtually always a wall which encloses the two pyramids. There is also a valley temple. The valley temple is always located on the bank of a river which is how the body of the king was transported and the temple was used for the mummification process. A long causeway connects the valley temple with the entrance of the mortuary temple. This is why pyramids are in the desert but often just on the edge of cultivated land. I hope that makes sense. I'm sure I could figure out how to draw a layout of a pyramid complex on Photoshop and link it here but I'm such a horrible artist, I don't think it would clear things up much. :)

Anybahoo, the only surviving somewhat intact causeway in Egypt is in Saqqara, connecting the pyramid of Unas, a king in the 5th dynasty, with the ruins of its valley temple about 1 km away.
The causeway was walled and roofed at one time but there are only remnants left. I think they reconstructed some of the floor. Here you see the causeway with the pyramid in the background behind two pillars which I think was the entrance to the mortuary temple.

The hieroglyphs on one of the pillars indicating that it indeed belonged to King Unas.

There were parts of the wall still intact along the causeway which had reliefs on them. Here's one which depicts ships:

Another feature found in several pyramid complexes are boat-shaped pits. The ones found in Giza near the Great Pyramid actually contained wooden boats, purportedly to transport the king and family to the Land of the West. Here are some boat pits outside the pyramid of Unas but apparently no boats were found so maybe they were just symbolic?

Finally, I took a photo of the stars in the last remaining section of the causeway ceiling. It blows me away that there is still some blue coloring left after 3000 years! You'll have to click on the photo to open it in another window in order to see the stars. We only saw a small portion of what Saqqara has to offer and we're looking forward to going back to see more!

Coptic Fayoum

2009-10-05T04:40:00.001-07:00

Our bartender, Tony, invited all of us out to see some of the Coptic monasteries in the Fayoum area. He and his family are Coptic. I wish I would have thought to take a photo, but all Christians in Egypt choose to have a cross tattooed on their wrist.... no casual conversions here!! David and I've spent several nights at the bar talking with Tony about what it's like to be a Coptic Christian in Egypt. Copts make up about 10% of Egypt's population. He maintains that discrimination has gotten worse and that there are kidnappings and murders against Copts which are ignored by the police. Personally, he says his family hasn't been affected other than the occasional situation where someone has thrown something at his wife and chided her for not wearing a headscarf while they've been out walking

He took us first to a very old monastery next to the Lahun pyramid just a few miles from where we live. It's thought to date back to the 3rd century. It's neat to think there was a Christian community in the Fayoum area from such an early date. I may have mentioned this before, but there is a bishop from the Fayoum area mentioned as attending the Council of Nicaeain 325 AD.

Here's Tony.

The second monastery was the one where Tony and family go quite a bit. These monasteries seem to act as community centers for the Copts. Tony says that his family will come and just hang out until 1 or 2 in the morning some nights!!

And then Tony's wife, Phoebe, brought lunch for all of us. It was delicious!!

The third monastery is dedicated to the angel Gabriel and it was probably founded in the second half of the 5th century. The church inside is dated to the 10th or 11th century. These paintings were covered over with plaster and apparently their very existence had been forgotten until a team was doing restoration work in 1991 and uncovered them.

When we turned the corner, Tony and his wife gasped and he said "You are lucky! The martyrs are usually not displayed and they are out today". Sure enough, there were two rows of glass coffins each containing a mummified body wrapped in velvet. Also uncovered by that same restoration team in 1991, nobody knows the details of these naturally mummified bodies other than some appear to be monks and they are certain these people were martyred because of the signs of torture, strangulation marks, limbs or heads missing, and blood-stained cloth.

In the back of the monastery are ruins which Tony thought to be the remains of the 5th c. settlement here. The hills in the background purportedly contain caves which were used by various monks....but no time to explore. I took a photo of all the shards of pottery we were walking on.

A photo of the monastery gates looking out over the Fayoum delta:

Which direction to Mecca??

2009-10-02T03:21:00.001-07:00

The secretary for David's team was showing me her prayer rug in the office a few weeks ago and I asked her how she knew which direction Mecca was. (during their five prayer times a day, they are supposed to face the direction of Mecca in Saudi Arabia). She said that her sense of direction was about as bad as mine but she just asked the others in the office when she first started working there to find out. She said that virtually all hotel rooms in the Middle East will have a placard somewhere letting the occupants know which way to Mecca. Sure enough, in Alexandria, we found this on the desk:

If you click on the photo and open it in a new window, you can see that it says Mecca in English and Arabic with an arrow.

She said that her husband actually has a compass which will tell him which direction to point towards Mecca but couldn't explain how something like that would work.

The Bibliotheka IskandRAYa

2009-09-26T05:33:00.001-07:00

An Egyptian corrected me yesterday on my pronounciation of Alexandria. :)

For those who read my previous post on Alexandria and thought maybe we'd forgotten to go visit the new Library, au contraire. I just decided that it deserved its own posting. :)

You probably already know about the great ancient library of Alexandria, which reputedly held the sum total of knowledge available at that time. I don't know if this is true, but I've read that every ship which entered Alexandria's port was required to hand over some manuscripts for copying. Ptolomy I was very interested in translating other cultures' works into Greek. I hadn't realized that one of the first projects was assigning the translation of the Jewish scriptures to seventy rabbis, hence its name Septuagint, which means "Seventy" in Latin.

They aren't certain who was responsible for the library's destruction but it was burnt to the ground in the 4th century. In 1987, Egypt in joint partnership with other Arab countries and UNESCO, undertook the creation of a new library for Alexandria. A Norwegian company won the contract with its design and, $355 million later, the doors opened in 2002.

It's a very cool design.

(photo from http://www.bibalex.gov.eg/English/gallery/images/a01.jpg)

The exterior of the building is engraved with letters, hieroglyphs, and pictograms from all the known languages.

The interior is well-designed, spacious, and uses natural light.

Those pillars remind me of Roman columns. It was an impressive building, but, apart from the many tour groups passing through, the place was dead. There were virtually no patrons and the staff didn't look like they had much to do. I don't know if this was due to the fact that it was Ramadan or maybe the adjoining University wasn't in session or both. I spent some time looking through the stacks and was surprised to find that their collection used the Dewey Decimal system and that it rivalled what you would find in a midsized public library in the States.

From what I've read, the library has mostly relied on donations from around the world. I found a Croatian cookbook as a gift from the government of Croatia, a Harlequin romance from some American women's group in Cairo, an old Sunset magazine book on Bathrooms (like one you'd find at Home Depot), some old Frommer's travel books from the 1990s....it's almost as if Americans just cleaned out their garages and sent their books here to help out the cause. :) I looked at their collection development policy on the website (www.bibalex.gov.eg) and it indicated that due to budget constraints, the library is focusing on building up its sections on Egypt and the Middle East while temporarily collecting at a very basic level in other areas. The library boasts electronic access to 35,000 periodicals and has several digital initiatives. I hope the Bibliotheka Alexandria becomes the beacon of knowledge and dialogue it is striving to become in the Middle East.

A weekend in Alex......

2009-09-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

Alexandria, that is. The city on the Mediterranean which didn't even exist during Pharoanic times but was founded by Alexander the Great in 3rd c. BC in order to create a port on the Mediterranean. Cleopatra was there. The Great Alexandrian Library was there. It even had one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the great Pharos lighthouse which they think may have stood 40-50 stories tall. In the 19th-mid 20th century, Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city with many European communities; there were French patisseries, Greek cafes, British hotels, wide European boulevards, and lots of gardens.

Much of it's gone now. They're almost certain Alexander is buried here but can't find his tomb. Other than textual evidence and a few coins bearing her image, there is nothing left of Cleopatra's palace which was engulfed in a tsunami in 4th c. AD. The lighthouse toppled over into the sea from an earthquake in the 1300s. The great Library with all of its books and scrolls burnt to the ground. In the aftermath of the 1952 revolution, industries were nationalized and much of the expat communities left. Today, Alexandria is as Egyptian of a city as Cairo: the mosques, calls to prayer, coffee shops patronized only by men, Koshary shops, the piles upon piles of trash in the streets, traffic even more dangerous than Cairo, and major pollution, a big problem as the population has grown to 5 million.

But if one looks a little closer, there are hints of the past. Some of the old French street signs are still up. Some of the grand old cafes are still there with wooden interiors, ornate ceilings, and wide picture windows, though they don't serve french or greek pastries anymore. We had dinner at the Cecil Hotel whose guestbook includes writers like Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward and has a lovely antique elevator. The Cecil was where the British Intelligence purportedly hatched their deception plan at El-Alamein. As you walk along the streets and look up, there are still some elegant balconies with ornate iron scrollwork. Plus, from what our guide said, whenever they try to dig up any ground for building or renovation, work has to be stopped because they inevitably find some piece of antiquity.

OK, now for the photos. :) These are from Ramses train station in Cairo (we took the train to Alex). I tried to surreptitiously take a photo of the men praying on a tarp which had been laid out for that purpose. We were in the station for about 45 minutes and people were continually coming up and praying for about 5 minutes and then going on their way.

The view from our hotel room. The Mediterranean and Montazah Gardens. The Montazah Gardens were created by a Sultan in the 1800s who wanted to make his Austrian mistress feel more at home!! You can see the tower of the Haramlik Palace in the background which we then visited the next morning. President Mubarak uses it to host foreign dignitaries.

This was the site of a Greek temple, the Serapeum, dedicated to the city's god Serapis...a god concocted to blend elements of the Egyptian god Osiris with the Greek god Dionysus in order that both peoples in Alexandria could worship it. Apparently, it worked. There are remains from the temple scattered throughout this site, but the two objects in the photo on the left are not from them. The piece with the hieroglyphics had been brought up from ancient Heliopolis and the pillar was erected to the Roman emperor Diocletian.

A side street decorated for Ramadan.

A Roman theater. According to the Arab general who conquered in 641 AD, Alexandria had about 400 at the time.

One photo from the Alexandria National Museum, just because it looks neat: a bust of Akhenaten. Many of the pharoahs blur together for me, but he's one that stands out.

These last two photos are from walks we took the last few nights of Ramadan. We had been warned about the crowds shopping but it was really crazy as people were shopping before Eid. We actually saw clothes flying through the air, vendors had clothes spread out on blankets on the street and were shouting at the top of their lungs. At one point, all the vendors picked up their blankets and ran off, in 30 seconds the street was empty of vendors. We were wondering what was going on until we saw the police car slowly pass through. After the police had passed, the vendors were back, shouting and the crowds gathered round again. We enjoyed the show. :)

Eid Mubarak!!

2009-09-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

or Happy Eid. Eid is the 3 day celebration which ends Ramadan. There are a lot of cultural parallels to Christmas. The streets are crazy with shoppers; everyone gets gussied up in new clothes and visits family, and there's lots and lots of eating. Plus, there are Eid cookies!! 2 Egyptian ladies who work here brought some cookies in for me to try. The cookie which you see everywhere and from what I understand is only baked at Eid is the powdered sugar one which looks like a Russian Teacake. They are filled with dates, or candy, or sugar and nuts. I can't wait until Christmas to repay the favor and make them some of Mom's sugar cookies!!

The Citadel

2009-09-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hello again. This week's adventure was a trip to the Citadel, a fortress built by Salah al-Din (often referred to as Saladin) during the Crusades in the 12th century. The people of Cairo asked for protection against the Crusaders, so the Sultan of Syria sent his Kurdish commander, General Shirkuh. After his death, he was succeeded by his nephew Salah al-Din. Shortly after Salah al-Din became Sultan, he began work on the Citadel, and became yet another builder to strip limestone off the pyramids at Giza.

We don't have a photo of this unfortunately, but the Citadel sits up on a bluff and is a prominent feature on the Cairene horizon. It was the first landmark I saw in Cairo...the fortification itself as well as the domes of the Mohammad Ali mosque in the center of the complex. A picture of a small section of the walls and towers:

And then a view of Cairo from one of the ramparts:

Salah al-Din's original Citadel was reinforced and fortified by just about every ruler and invader who took over after him. I know that some destroyed most of what was there and rebuilt so I don't know if any of the original Citadel still exists! At any rate, although Salah al-Din didn't live there, his nephew al-Kamil who succeeded him moved in and the Citadel served as the royal residence for the next 700 years. One of its last residents was Muhammad Ali who ruled from 1806-1849 and , according to my guidebook, was responsible for much of what the Citadel is today including the mosque he built in 1839.

The Muhammad Ali mosque:

Before entering the mosque, they asked everyone to take off their shoes and then the women who were wearing short-sleeved shirts or shorts were draped in a green smock. Interestingly, they didn't concern themselves with women covering their heads. Some women did and others didn't. Some images of the mosque inside. The man talking with David had offered to be our tour guide and he was actually really informative. We were glad to have taken him up on his offer.

Now I can't find the photo but our tour guide told us a story about the clock tower in the mosque courtyard. It was a gift from King Louis-Philippe from France in exchange for the obelisk from Luxor Muhammad Ali relinquished (the Obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris). The clock was the first electric clock introduced to the Middle East but it was damaged in transport and dead on arrival. There's been a few attempts to repair it to little avail but recently, some bigwig (I couldn't understand who it was from what our guide said) came through and was dismayed at it not working and said his country would send a repairman to come fix it (maybe he was from France?). The repairman came over and said he would start working on it once it was cleaned so the government put him up in a condo in Cairo and has a team at work on it. That was 12 years ago and they still haven't finished....not even close. Our tour guide said they work less than an hour a day. When we were there, there was a man sitting on the scaffolding but he wasn't working! According to our tour guide, the repairman is still living in the condo. :)

Muhammad Ali is infamous for the banquet he gave in 1811 for 470 prominent Mamluk citizens. The Mamluks were out of power but still influential foes of the new ruler. After the feast, he trapped them in the narrow passageway of one of the large Citadel gates and his guards shot and killed all of them. We didn't actually find this gate. It was 104 degrees out so we hit some highlights and will come back when it's cooler!

Muhammad Ali tore down a great many earlier buildings to make room for his own monuments and palaces but one mosque which escaped his demolition was the Al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque which was built in 1335. Apparently, he used it for his stables which is amazing because the columns you see in these photos are from the pharoanic and Roman eras. I guess when you have a wealth of historic treasures you can afford to be casual with the past.

10 observations on Ramadan

2009-09-04T00:58:00.000-07:00

1. Ramadan started August 22nd. For those not familiar with it, Ramadan is a holy month in the Islamic calendar where all Moslems fast during the day......they fast from eating, drinking, and sexual contact from dawn to dusk and devote these energies to spiritual reflection. It's one of the five pillars of Islam along with the confession of faith, praying towards Mecca five times a day, giving alms, and a pilgrimage to Mecca.

2. So they get up before the early morning prayer at 4 AM to eat and drink, then come together with friends and family for iftar which is the meal after sundown...around 6:30 pm. Actually, sunset was 7:30 but Egypt has instituted Daylight Savings time for Ramadan so people don't have to wait so long to eat. :) (Correction: David just told me that actually they've temporarily suspended Daylight Savings Time until after Ramadan....I always forget whether we're in DST or not. The point is that sunset occurs an hour earlier. :)

3. August is a particularly tough time for Ramadan.....imagine not drinking water during the hottest month of the year!! Children, pregnant women, and the elderly are exempt and I guess you can use disgression if you're sick. Last week, Laila, who's the secretary for David's team, had the flu and was talking about how tough it was to recover when she can't drink to keep herself hydrated, but then a few days ago, Samia wasn't feeling well and asked for some juice during our Arabic lesson. She said God would understand. :)

4. I just read an article in today's paper about 155 Egyptians who were just arrested for eating and drinking on purpose during the day. They were arrested as part of a campaign in the Aswan governate,which started at the beginning of Ramadan, to target the disobedient among "those who profess". Human rights activists have complained, stating that there is no law against non-fasting Moslems. Apparently, in more conservative countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, you can be arrested for not fasting and thrown in jail for a month.

5. Last week, we were driving into Cairo right around 6:15 pm, almost sunset, and we saw vendors getting ready at medians in the middle of roads with little sandwich bags filled with sugar water, fruit juice, or soda so drivers can buy a little sugar rush as they drive home to iftar. That's one thing we were warned about by those who've lived here for years: watch out on the roads during Ramadan. There are lots of sleepy and cranky drivers out there!

6. I don't know how common this is, but the Egyptians who work on the compound here as well as those David works with have been working shortened hours,, so there's more time to spend with family and at home. The meal of iftar is a time to eat well and celebrate with family; actually Samia told me that they don't get a whole lot of sleep because they stay up and eat throughout the night (this is also why they don't lose as much weight as one might expect!).

7. Not only do they stay up all night eating but apparently it's a Ramadan tradition to be glued to the boob tube. There are sitcoms, soap operas, and miniseries which only show during the month of Ramadan. Tony, the bartender, said that all Egyptian women are addicted to these shows. :) We went to a outdoor cafe and they had set up projectors and large screens in order to broadcast the television lineup.

8. There's also a tradition of hospitality in Ramadan. Wealthy people offer meals for the poor and you can find banquets set up in the streets or in tents in Cairo with free iftar meals. Many of the hotels have set up tents as well, so I imagine it's conducive to a party atmosphere.

9. From what I've gathered, as oftentimes happens with holidays and traditions, the original intent of Ramadan can get lost in the culture which has risen around it. I've noticed Ramadan sales in stores and I read some criticism in one of the Egyptian newspapers of how commercialized Ramadan has become as well as disapproval of some of the immoral themes featured in Ramadan television shows.

10. It's also a tradition to hang lanterns, like the one in the photo above, from your business or house, though I've mainly seen them perched on the porches of wealthy houses. We were staying the night at the crashpad in Cairo and I couldn't sleep so I went out to the balcony, hoping to see thousands of lit lanterns, but really didn't see any at all. I did see plenty of lights turn on around 4 AM....I'd be up early to eat too!! :)

My Middle Eastern rug

2009-09-01T03:43:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, a group of us went to one of the flagship stores of Oriental Weavers, a rug manufacturer here in Egypt. We looked at wool rugs, acrylic rugs, big rugs, little rugs and I realized that, unlike the others, I really wasn't interested in rugs as a practical floor covering as I was in a piece of ART. Especially since I don't even know what our next house is going to look like. They had silk rugs from Iran and India and I loved those but they were several thousand dollars just for the 5 x 7s so I had to settle with running my hands over them, oohing and awing.

Then right as we were leaving and the others were paying for their purchases, I saw it. It was pink and it was shag, but I loved it! For the pics, I laid it over the bed in our guest bedroom which gets a lot of light, but the photos still do NOT do this rug justice. It's sort of a lavender-muted pink color and there are hundreds of little pieces of satin interwoven throughout the shag which look like little flowers. Oh well, you'll just have to see it next time you visit us.

If someone had told me that morning that by the end of the day, I would have bought a pink shag rug, I would have thought Impossible!! But here I am. I just can't wait for the future conversation where I'll say "Oh....that??? I got that when I lived in the Middle East" :)

P.S. David liked it too!!

A Day in Old Cairo

2009-08-24T02:15:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, we walked around a little area in the middle of Cairo called Old Cairo or Coptic Cairo. Old Cairo consists of the remains of a Roman garrison called Babylon dating from about 110 AD; inside the Roman ruins are about ten churches built by the Coptic community here.

This is one of the towers at the gate. If you looked over the handrail, you'd see that eye-level is really 30 feet above the base of the tower.....we're standing on centuries of mud and debris!! At the base of the tower, excavations have revealed traces of a drawbridge because the tower was built on the bank of the Nile. About 700 years ago, the Nile changed course and you have to walk about a half-mile to see it today. The photo on the right shows some of the Roman wall surrounding the fortress.

Historians don't know when the churches inside this Roman fortress were built. My guidebook said that we don't have any information on the churches in Babylon before the Arab conquest in 641 AD. There is, however, a record of Cyrus, as the bishop of Babylon, attending the Council of Ephesus, held in 449 AD. So we know there was a Christian community here at that point.

I'm not even going to bother posting our photos because they're so awful but the churches were interesting and beautiful. One of the churches is called the Hanging Church because it was built over the South gate of the Roman fortress. Another church, dedicated to St. Sergius, is famous because it was built over the crypt where Jesus, Mary, and Joseph purportedly took refuge when they came to Egypt. (Note: this information isn't found in the Bible but from the writings of Pope Theophilus who saw the route of the Holy Family in a vision). Here's a mosaic at the entrance of the hanging church:

Again, no pictures, but there is also a beautiful synagogue in the complex dating back to the 9th century. In the 19th century, they discovered the synagogue's treasury which included thousands of letters, promissary notes, deeds, and contracts dating back to the 11th century. Apparently, the records were so complete, the collection was compared to the Domesday book. It, of course, like so much of Egypt's treasures was spirited away to institutions abroad.

Egypt does however have a wonderful collection of historical pieces from the Coptic community held in the Coptic Museum. What a wonderful museum!! Great English descriptions, wonderful display cases and layout, even handicapped accessible!! No air conditioning but we survived. :)
It was fascinating to see how Christians used the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian symbols around them for their own purposes. Pharoanic ankhs have been morphed into crosses, the Roman eagle was used as a symbol for Christ, one frieze shows two nude Roman cherubs holding up a laurel wreath which encloses a cross. I was surprised that a good number of items came from the Fayoum area down where we live (about 2 hrs south of Cairo). Actually, there was a Bishop of Heracleopolis, an ancient city down in the Fayoum delta, who was sent to the Council of Nicea in 325 AD!

Curiously, throughout the second floor of the museum, there are many alcoves which don't have windows but instead feature the mashrabiya wooden lattice work. You may remember seeing an example of this in the post about Islamic Cairo about a month back....the wooden lattice work was designed to allow women to look outside without being seen. This is Islamic design and I wasn't sure why they would make a point to build these into the Coptic museum, BUT they were beautiful!! And I finally had a chance to stand behind them and look out. I was surprised by how little you could see!

I am not making this up.......

2009-08-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

Our oven isn't heating up as it should so we called in a service request for someone to look at it. The guy called us back this morning, asked if it was convenient for him to come in 5 minutes. When he looks at it and tests it, he says "The thermostat isn't working on it but because I know you need to cook for the BBQ pool party this afternoon, we will take out this oven and bring in a new oven so you won't be late."

I had a brand spanking new oven in my kitchen 20 minutes later.

How are we going to adjust to normal life again after this place???? But now it's off to the pool for some BBQ and volleyball................................... :)

Deutschland!!

2009-08-13T04:56:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, David took a four day pass and we flew up to Germany. This satisfied my VISA requirements plus we were so excited to see our old stomping grounds in Wuerzburg and our beautiful friend Ingrid. It couldn't have been a more perfect weekend. It was just what we had hoped for: lots of time to chat with Ingrid and her friends as well as become reacquainted with our old friends knodeln, cabbage, bratwurst, cheese, and the wonderful Franconian wines. I announced after one dinner that I wasn't sure but I believed I may have eaten a pound of bread and cheese! :)

Also it rained. Ingrid felt apologetic; we thought it was a gift from God Almighty. :)

Ingrid's apartment is surrounded by vineyards on one side and an orchard on the other....here's some views from her place. Isn't it beautiful and GREEN??

Once again, we were remiss in our picture taking....didn't get a photo of the Residenz palace, the BBQ Ingrid had for us and her other friends, hardly any from the downtown area, not even one of the three of us. These represent a small sample from our happy weekend. :) Hopefully, it won't be another 8 years before we see Ingrid and Germany again!

Even though we've only been in Egypt for 3 months now, we did experience a bit of a culture shock in Germany. I mean, if a country could have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder when it comes to being orderly and clean, Germany is it. I'm not sure where Egypt would fall in the psychoanalysis dept. but let's just say it has other priorities. We instantly noticed how everyone stayed in their own distinct lanes on the autobahn even in a traffic jam and were amused at how people would stand on the street corner of a small little lane, waiting for the crosswalk light to turn, even when there was no traffic!! I don't think I've seen a crosswalk yet in Egypt. :)

Tahrir Bridge

2009-08-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

For you readers of the Christian Science Monitor, do you remember an article about a year or so ago featuring the Tahrir bridge in Cairo?? The article described the bridge as teeming with people at night, groups of teenagers, young married couples strolling along as a romantic cheap date or engaged couples using it as a place outside the watchful eyes of parents or chaperones. Anywho, the Tahrir bridge was next to the hotel we were having dinner so we decided to go have a look.

But first, the views from the deck of the Italian restaurant we went to. Those boats are feluccas where you can book a Nile sunset cruise. In the sunset pic, you're actually looking at the Tahrir bridge over the Nile.

After dinner, we walked over to the bridge. And although our photos don't show it, the article was right. Tons of people, great party atmosphere to walk through. We liked the lion statues too!

Wendi's appt. with the Ophthalmologist

2009-08-03T04:55:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I had a lot of swelling around my eye and it was constantly watering. I went to the PA here on our compound and he thought maybe some antibiotics were in order. I took those for about a week which helped the swelling immensely but didn't really clear up the other symptoms so he referred me to an Egyptian ophthalmologist in Cairo. Our guess was that, while the antibiotics took care of the infection, there was still something lodged in my tear duct.

SO, last week David and I found the clinic, the name was translated as the "Eye Subspecialty Clinic" and I walked up to the check-in counter. The woman spoke pretty good English and asked me to fill out a basic form and pay 80 pounds (about $15). When I brought my form back up, she pointed to the line on which I'd written my name and said "We need both your last names". Huh?? I explained that I didn't have two last names. I pointed out my first name and last name and asked whether she wanted my middle name, though that really falls within the category of first name in my book. She said "No, I need your two last names". I wasn't sure what to tell her so she talked to her colleague in very fast Arabic and then reassured me that it was OK. Later, we were talking to Tony, the bartender, and he explained that Egyptians have two last names. One last name is their father's first name and the other is their grandfather's first name. So apparently they don't have a family name??

Anyway, I was then ushered into two different rooms where they looked at my eye and asked questions. Then I was called a third time, this time, I gathered, to see the eye doctor. He wanted to know how to pronounce my name and where I was from while he was looking at my information. Then he checked my eye and asked what antibiotics I had been taking. I had only been in his office for about 3-4 minutes when he started writing out my prescription and said "I want you to take these eye drops 6 times a day and also apply the ointment 6 times a day, but wait to apply the ointment until 15 minutes after the eyedrops. There's also an ointment you should only apply before bedtime". I was a little befuddled, trying to process what he was saying....more antibiotics was not what I was expecting. I asked "What do you think the problem is?" And he looked up from his writing, looking surprised I'd ask such a question, "you have cellulitis!" Oh, of course, Cellulitis...which is???? I then asked "So there's nothing in my tear duct?" "No" "So, the discharge and eye watering I'm experiencing??" he looked up, a little exasperated, "it's from the infection in your eyelid!" My eyelid???? "I want you to come see me next Wednesday at 11" And that was that....I was quickly ushered out and immediately thought of ten more questions I wished I'd asked. (I did have to go back and ask one more essential one "Where do I pick up my prescription?") I ended up going back and googling Cellulitis and reading up on all the medications I was taking.

I bring this up not as an update on the grisly details of my eye infection but as an example of how different the doctor-patient relationship is from the West. I went to a fertility specialist for several months when we lived in Korea and it was much the same experience. I came to him with a problem, he provided an answer.....no explanation needed. I got the feeling that to ask him questions implied that I didn't trust his expertise. He would tell me what I needed to do and when he needed to see me next and I was ushered out quickly....my appointments rarely lasted more than 5 minutes and that included an ultrasound! There was none of the back-and-forth conversation we expect in Western medicine. I talked to one of the Egyptians here on the compound and she said this is very typical of their doctors. It's interesting.....I wonder if it's because the knowledge gap is larger in these countries?? Or is it that authority is just not questioned?? I think Western patients definitely expect more from their doctors...I mean, I honestly think that the eye doctor wouldn't have told me my diagnosis if I hadn't asked! I'm going back for my follow-up on Wednesday and I'll be better prepared this time. :)

Islamic Cairo Adventure, Part 1

2009-07-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

The Islamic district of Cairo is overwhelming. Basically, it is the sum total of half a dozen cities and consists of a maze of narrow, congested lanes and marketplaces peppered with a mother lode of mosques, madrassas, and mausoleums from its Fatimid, Mamluke, or Ottoman years spanning from the 6th-18th century. It's enormous and confusing and I thought the best way to tackle it would be to carve away at it with short walks. Walk #1 was going to be between the southern gate of Bab Zuweila to the mosque of Al Ghuri along the famous Al Muizz street which used to be the main thoroughfare. What happened next was more than we had hoped but certainly not what we expected!

First off, the taxi driver didn't know where the Bab Zuweila gate was and dropped us off at the Al Ghuri mosque instead which was fine once we figured out where we were. Al Ghuri was the last Mamluke sultan before the Turks took over in 1517. He was both known for his ruthlessness and his love of the arts and architecture. This mosque and madrassa (school) stands as a tribute to the architecture side :) By the way, we had forgotten to bring our nicer camera and the photos show it. These are shots of the prayer hall, still used today. The digital display you see (with the red numbers) indicate the prayer times for the day.

We went up to this minaret and had a look around.

This gives you an idea of what we saw. The mosque on the hill is the Muhammad Ali mosque which is part of the Citadel complex. The street below is Al Muizz street which we would soon be walking along.

A few minutes later, here is that same Al Muizz street close up. Each area of Al Muizz was known for selling something different: fruit, perfumes, gold, spices, etc. This area used to be the Silk Merchants bazaar and there is still some remnant of that today, if not silk at least textiles.

As we were walking along, a man came up behind David and said "Hey, you can walk like an Egyptian, because now you are in Egypt!" He was smiling and said "Welcome to Egypt! I hope you have a wonderful visit" We chatted for a bit and found out his name was Bebo and he was a professor at this Islamic design school just down the way. He was pointing out various lanes he takes his students through and telling us we have to go down there because there's a workshop where they dye silk and down here because there's a workshop where they blow glass and this way they have the best lamb kebabs and if he didn't have a class, he'd show us around. Finally, he looked at David's watch and said "Let's just go". So we followed him around as he pointed out various design features and explained the history of various buildings as well as showing us some workshops. He ended up calling his colleague and asking if he could teach his class.

Here is the workshop where they hand-dye the silk.

This used to be a harem. The mashrabiya woodwork on the second story allowed women to witness the activities on the street below without being seen.

Bebo showed us a very old printing press which still prints Korans for the famous Al Azhar mosque nearby. And then he took us to this workshop where they make mahogany boxes inlaid with very small pieces of camel bone, ebony, turquoise, and mother of pearl. This is the box and backgammon board we bought. I thought they were so beautiful!

Now I can't remember the building on the left! But the one on the right is the Al-Muayyad mosque, complete with sundial to keep track of the time for prayer. Can you see it??

There were several stands of these lamps. Bebo explained that these lamps were for Ramadan (coming up in August) and each night every family hangs it outside their house or apartment.

Finally we came to Bab Zuweila Gate, built around the 1090s. The photo on the right shows where public executions took place, both sultans and commoners have been hanged here.

Bebo asked if we would join him for tea and took us to his regular stop. We've seen these tea shops everywhere with groups of men sitting around talking and smoking their sheeshas, or water pipes. We were honored to sit and chat with Bebo's friends (I tried out my Arabic but mostly Bebo translated :) By the way, he seemed to know everyone as we walked down Al Muizz street, greeting everyone and occasionally shaking hands or kissing their cheeks. Bebo got a sheesha for David to try out and insisted I try his so he could take a picture of us. I was surprised at the tobacco's mild taste...it wasn't that bad at all.
Oh and that brown beverage you see on that vendor's cart behind us is called Soos. Earlier that morning, Bebo insisted we try it. He called it "yellow tea" and said it was a great thirst quencher. A man was walking around with a tub of it on his back and Bebo bought us a glass of it to try. I told David that it tasted like dirt water and mint to me...but it was cold and I have to admit it was refreshing. Bebo downed his with great gusto. What interested us was the fact that our beverage guy only had 3 glasses...when one person finished, he quickly rinsed it out with water and handed it to the next guy!

And here's Bebo. We're constantly amazed at the generosity we're met with here. He seemed to have no other incentive than to make sure we have a good experience here in Egypt and he told us to please call him up next time we'd like to see more of the Islamic quarter and he will "show us things we've never seen before". We can't wait. :)

Tunis and Qasr Qarun

2009-07-22T00:42:00.000-07:00

The other day we visited a local town in the Fayoum area called Tunis. From what our guide said, I understand it's named after a Tunisian caravan which camped out in the area. Tunis still retains an international flavor due to its large expat population....mostly Europeans. Some wealthier Cairenes have second homes here as well. The houses and views do look different here; the lake in the distance is the giant Lake Qarun.

We would pass by walled premises where we could just peek inside. With the house below, our guide told us we could walk around the grounds because this man was his friend. This man was also the manager of both the Four Seasons hotels in Cairo. And yes, that is an Infinity pool.

The actual reason we went to Tunis was for pottery. Back in 1970, a woman from Switzerland, Evelyn, came to the Fayoum area with her father, who I believe was a missionary. He left; she stayed. She started a pottery school in Tunis and for the last 40 years has taught locals how to make pottery. Some of her students have their own studios now and Tunis has become a pottery destination. We visited the school and one of her student's studios. These are where your cups came from, Wendy Z!! :)

And here are two of the bowls we bought. The one on the right features a donkey or HoMAR in Arabic.

Next, we went to a nearby site called Qasr Qarun where a Ptolomaic temple from the 3rd c. BC still stands. Our books told us that it was a temple dedicated to the Crocodile god Sobek (like Medinet Madi):

These headless reliefs are Sobek on the left and a King on the right:

AND the temple stands next to the ruins of the Greco-Roman town of Dionysius. I asked the guards if we could walk out there and found that we were walking on piles of pottery shards. We saw some bones too. I understand that when your whole country sits on centuries of rubble, you just can't protect it all but it still blows me away. Here you can see that there are still some walls and parts of building standing:

I tried to take some close-ups of the pottery shards:

My Birthday cake!

2009-07-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

Samia made me an Egyptian cake for my birthday called Basbousa. It's a semolina cake with almonds which is soaked in a sugar syrup. Delicious!! I just saw that I have a Basbousa recipe in the Egyptian cookbook which Heidi gave me so maybe I'll cook one up for myself one of these days!

And I thought I didn't like daisies........

2009-07-13T23:36:00.000-07:00

So, I don't exactly have a green thumb. Case in point, one of the other ladies here very kindly gave me one of her rosemary plants. I marveled at how perfect it looked and very carefully planted in my flower bed last week. This week, it's not looking good....too much sun? not enough water? Maybe it's just come within my sphere of influence and it KNOWS it's being handled by an amateur. At any rate, my mint plants are also looking dicey and the herb seeds I planted haven't sprouted. This is par for the course for me and plants.

However, I've inherited these wonderful flowers in my garden called Gazania daisies. They are desert plants, have beautiful dark green leaves and constantly produce buds. These buds are closed overnight and then once the heat of the day starts around 10 AM, they open up into gorgeous flowers. When I first got here, I was just spraying them once every 3 days and it didn't take long for most of the leaves to turn yellow. I wasn't sure if I was watering them too much or too little, but one of the housekeepers told me to flood each bed every 3 days and that made all the difference. I have beautiful Gazania daisies!! I'm a little in awe both at the flower itself as well as the fact I've been able to keep them alive and thriving......of course, they are desert plants, but I've been known to kill cactus before so I'm still keeping it as a feather in my cap. :)

I tried to capture what one of my flower beds looks like in midday when the daisies are in full bloom, but it looks much better in person. The other photo David took of me weeding one morning as I was flooding flower bed #1. I actually have a weeding callous on my finger!! If it showed up better, I'd proudly display a photo of that too!!

Monastery of St. Anthony

2009-07-12T00:57:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, we visited the Coptic Christian monastery of St. Anthony. From what we've read, this is the oldest inhabited monastery in the world, built after Anthony's death in 356 AD. Anthony lived as a hermit in a cave and forbade his followers to stay with him so they camped at the foot of the hill which became the settlement of the eventual monastery.

Here's the gate. These are the new walls, built in the 18th c. They still have have remnants of the 6th c. walls inside.

When the gates were closed (the monastery was attacked and plundered several times over the centuries by Bedouins), they used a winch system (behind the wood balcony) to hoist up food and supplies.

It's a beautiful place. They have gardens, a bakery, and a mill and used to be self-sufficient. However, now with the increase in monks, they are supplemented by a farm in Beni Suef and purchase food from Cairo as well. Apparently, the Coptic Pope is very popular and there's been a recent upsurge in new, young would-be monks so the monastery has expanded.

The mill:

The square tower with the bridge was used as a fortress when attacked. The monks would climb over the bridge and then pull it back. The man in black is our tour guide; he's been a monk here for about 6 years.

They have a spring which provides 100 cu. meters of water a day. I looked it up and a cubic meter equals 264 gallons. Our guidebook told us that legend has it that Miriam, Moses' sister, bathed here during the Exodus, but I forgot to ask our tour guide about it. :)

And then the church. Well, there are about 15 chapels throughout the complex but the original church is the Church of St. Anthony. It was built after his death over his tomb in the 4th century and then expanded throughout the centuries. The colorful wall paintings are mostly from the 13th century and, although these photos don't really do them justice, they grab your attention immediately upon walking in. In the late 1990's a conservation team from Italy came and removed all the soot and dirt; they left a small patch to show what it looked like pre-restoration and the difference is dramatic! The inscriptions you see are from notable visitors throughout the centuries.

After we looked through the monastery (I was disappointed to not see the library which our guidebook told us had over 1700 ancient manuscripts, but we had to get special permission to enter), we climbed up to Anthony's cave. Over 2200 steps up and it was 1 pm so it was blazing hot! When we arrived at the cave there was just a very narrow opening and the walls were so smooth, we could imagine thousands of people throughout the centuries brushing their hands against them.

Looking down from the top:

4th of July

2009-07-05T23:31:00.001-07:00

When they came out with the 4th of July agenda: Flag raising, pool volleyball, swimming, horseshoes, BBQ lunch, flag lowering, a baked ham dinner, bingo, fireworks, and dancing, I thought it was a bit ambitious for 15 people. (I told my friend Wendy this is really like living on a stationary cruise ship!) But we gave it our best shot.

The 9 AM flag raising by the pool. You can see a David salute in the second photo (facing the camera):

Lots of volleyball, both in the morning and the evening:

Tony, the bartender, looking out from the bar. Note patriotic decor.

The lunch spread. Have I mentioned that they serve VERY good food here? I think their potato salad is some of the best I've ever had. I haven't figured out how they do it. Do they have a recipe or do they just rely on feedback from Americans?? When I asked yesterday, Omar, one of the chefs, said he has a recipe but doesn't use it. I just think it would be very difficult to make a dish which you're unfamiliar with and don't even know what it's supposed to taste like. In the photo, I think Rob is trying to figure out the problem with the mister.

Bingo in the bar:

And a pretty decent firework display:

Wendi watching fireworks. :) It was a fun day.

Medinet Madi Attempt #1

2009-07-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, we launched off to go find Medinet Madi which is a temple site in the desert outside the Fayoum. The Fayoum area is down where we are and is considered an oasis area even though it relies on Nile river water rather than a true spring. You can think of it as a green island, filled with lots of irrigation and farm land, surrounded by desert. The desert starts right where the irrigation stops - it's quite dramatic, really. Anyway, we've read descriptions and seen pictures of the Medinet Madi; it was a Middle kingdom temple built to Sobek, the Crocodile God, and fairly recently an Italian archaeological team found the remains of what was a crocodile nursery with fossilized crocodile eggs at different stages of maturity. Apparently, it was their practice to hatch these crocodiles, rear them to an appropriate age, and then mummify them for sale to worshipers. Later on this was the site of a Roman town and several early Christian churches as well. The pictures we saw were staggering and, because you have to drive to a village at the edge of the Fayoum and walk into the desert for a couple km to reach it, there are no guards. This in itself seemed incredible to us so we were determined to find it.

We were equipped with a somewhat detailed map, as well as directions from a 1984 guidebook and a 2001 guidebook. Our map made it look pretty straightforward but, as we soon learned, didn't include many of the small villages along the way. This in itself wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that I haven't learned how to read Arabic yet so we had no idea what village we were entering bc we couldn't read the signs! I'm going to have to remedy this soon. But we had our book directions and we were helped out in the beginning with some blue cultural signs which included Medinet Madi in English. So we'd see a sign and think "Oh, we must be in this village.....we're on the right track". Then the signs stopped and then the book directions warned NOT to go to the village of Minya on a Sunday since Sunday is market day and it will be nigh impossible to drive through the town. We entered what we thought was Minya on a Wednesday and it was clearly market day....which in retrospect should have been our first clue we were not on the right road. :)

We got completely trapped in a market logjam. Note: In the following photos, we are not moving:

After spending at least 45 minutes navigating through the market, we meandered through a network of villages until we hit the edge of the Fayoum and encountered a highway which shouldn't have been there.

We finally figured out that we had come out on the southern edge of the Fayoum rather than the western edge and with it nearing noontime temperatures, Medinet Madi would have to wait for another day. But since we now knew where we were, we could see on the map that we were relatively near a couple of manmade lakes. They called this lake area Wadi el-Rayan and the purpose was to divert the excess water from the huge natural lake on the other side of the Fayoum, Lake Qarun, to prevent flooding of the surrounding farm lands (the lake is very salty). Our guidebook said there was a waterfall between the two lakes....the only waterfall in Egypt....so we thought we'd have a look. The sand dunes were amazing and, while here the sand seems to blend in with the sky, I can imagine how beautiful they must be in the late afternoon light.

Soon we saw the lower lake:

Now in our guidebook, there were detailed maps of secondary roads where you could get off the highway and drive on the sand. One of these roads traveled along the lakeshore and actually you could take it to Medinet Madi from an entirely different direction. The sand looked packed down and there were lots of tire tracks so we thought "Why not?". The road was marked out by rocks...can you see them?

We encountered a rise where the sand looked softer. This is David checking it out:

And this is the truck once it got stuck.

I was pretty nervous since at this point, we were about a half mile from the road (which was pretty untrafficked) and it's hard to tell how hot it was at that point but everyday now the temps are between 100-105 degrees in the afternoon. So it was very hot. David, of course, shines in these situations and kicked into gear. We placed a floor board under one tire and a floor mat under the other, would be able to reverse over the mats a few feet before getting stuck again, so we'd dig under the tires, replace the mats, and reverse a few more feet. With an enormous amount of relief, we made it back to the packed sand, cried Uncle, and hightailed it back to the road.

We did end up going to the lakes and seeing the waterfall before heading home to regroup for another Medinet Madi attempt another day. :)

David recovering from our adventure with some Wimbledon and watermelon:

Yes...Wonderful Things

2009-07-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

This was the response Howard Carter purportedly said when, as he was peering into the tomb of King Tutankhamun for the first time, he was asked "Do you see anything?" A few days ago, we went to the Egyptian museum in Cairo and saw most of King Tut's tomb items too, among many other wonderful things. We only spent 4 hours there which was ok since we were with a tour group which included very small children and a disinterested tour guide. David and I knew we'd be back lots of times and this just gave us a feel for the place. We couldn't take any pictures and my guess is we only saw about a fifth of the place but I wanted to give some impressions:

1. First, it's amazing to me how quickly we can normalize something which at first astounds us. I remember experiencing this in so many places....driving through my first quaint German town, going to my first Korean market, seeing the Grand Canyon or the Northern lights, hearing the first call to prayer across Cairo. At first, I hardly could believe my eyes...it was so different than anything I'd ever seen (or heard) before.... and then, after a little bit, I realize I'm talking to others and thinking about eating ice cream. I guess it's impossible for our minds to retain that initial feeling of wonder. When we walked into the Egyptian museum and immediately saw the gigantic statues and sarcophagi, my heart was in my mouth. The guide was describing the first sarcophagus....a 4000 year old gem found in one of the Great Pyramids at Giza covered with hieroglypics....and then wanted to move on and we were like WAIT!! I wanted to look at every hieroglyphic and couldn't believe we could actually TOUCH it. Our tour guide was just skipping from one thing to another, and we thought he was going pretty darn fast, until we looked down and saw a hallway full of sarcophagi. One whole museum wing is devoted to gold, silver, and colorful wooden coffins, hundreds of 4000 year old statues, half a floor holds the tomb items of King Tutankhamun's tomb....this place is absolutely enormous, over 160,000 items on display, and one just can't take it all in!! It was reassuring to know that we'll have the opportunity to come back many times to reexperience that feeling of wonder.

2. Then there was the mummy room. This room holds about 10 mummies of pharoahs (1 queen). They used tar to preserve the skin so most of them were dark brown. I looked a long time at Ramses II, one of the great pharoahs. It was amazing that we could look at the actual man; he had high cheekbones and a narrow nose and he still had his hair!! Menephtah was there; many think he was probably the Pharoah of the biblical Exodus. Stunning in every sense of the word.

3. We spent a lot of time looking at the items found in King Tutankhamun's tomb. The funny thing was that many items seemed familiar. David and I think it's because we've seen so many pictures of the items......the gold mask, the gold coffin, the clay servants, the gold throne.
But in the Egyptian museum, we were looking at the ACTUAL items placed in the tomb to accompany the King in the afterlife. As I said, the items filled half of an entire floor (HUGE) of the museum and Tutankhamun was actually a pretty insignificant pharoah....just a kid. The only reason he's so famous is because his is the only tomb found intact, not looted by grave robbers. Can you imagine the tomb of Ramses II??

4. My archivist instincts perked up when looking at all the papyri. They were just displayed in glass cases in full sunlight, no AC....but I had to remind myself that while paper is preserved best in cold, humid conditions, papyrus needs it to be hot and dry, which it was. I asked the tour guide about the light. Weren't they concerned that the sunlight would fade the papyri? He shrugged his shoulders and said "Yes, it's a concern. they'd like to use UV filtered glass cases, but they have no money, what are you going to do?" Uh...I could think of a few things.... not displaying them at all? At least not displaying them under a glass roof? Who knows what plans the museum has....but hopefully there is a plan for preserving these precious items.

Anyway, we'll be back with more Egyptian Museum reports. Wonderful things indeed. :)

Daily occurrences in the compound

2009-06-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

First, the garbage man comes to empty our trash can around 9 AM and then, around 2 pm, the blue garbage truck comes AGAIN and makes another round.....as if we can generate that much trash! The funny thing is that almost all of the residents are at work all day so the afternoon run is pretty much a futile exercise.

The other twice-daily occurrence we can keep time by is the mosquito truck. It meanders up and down the streets spewing a mix of diesel smoke and some sort of pesticide in an attempt to tamp down the mosquito population. Once at 4:30 am and then again around 7:30. David and I got caught taking a walk on one of our first evenings here....."What's that noise??" "Holy Cow, it's the mosquito truck!" I ran home, trying not to breath (which is very difficult); Mr. Joe Cool just walked home through the fog. He thinks that anything that kills mosquitos is a good thing. :)

A Karkady discovery

2009-06-25T04:15:00.000-07:00

Can you see that gorgeous deep red hue?? This tea is brewed from dried hibiscus flowers (shown below), sweetened with a little sugar, and then iced and the result is a sweet/tart combo akin to cranberry or pomegranate juice. Egyptians call it karkady and I just made my first of many batches. Love it!!