Sharm el Sheikh and Luxor

November 21 – Saturday – Sharm el Sheikh Egypt

A ‘do-nothing’day on board. We took a few pictures of the harbor and that was as much all we saw. We were not in the mood to get off and scuba dive, or snorkel, and that was pretty much the goal of being in this elegant Egyptian resort… so we read, relaxed and enjoyed the sunshine from the pool deck.

November 22 – Sunday - Luxor (Port of Safaga)

An early start to what was promising to be an exciting day. In a very groggy state, we boarded our bus where we were greeted by our Egyptian guide Rita. She was delightful, amusing and very knowledgeable about the antiquities of her country. Like Mohammed Ali, who had guided us in Cairo, Rita had a degree in antiquities and used every minute of our three hour bus ride to fill us with knowledge about the history of Luxor. Having almost no previous knowledge about the various kingdoms, their sequence, their important pharaohs or the time period, much of it just flew into our brains for a brief moment in time, and disappeared the next day. That is why while I’m typing this blog on the 26th, most of the information Rita imparted has disappeared in a haze. Luckily I bought a brochure of the Valley of the Kings, and had a guide book for Egypt on my Kindle. Otherwise this would be a very short entry indeed.

As always in Egypt, we were going to be part of a large bus convoy from the time we left the secured harbor until we returned. Like all ports we’ve seen in the Middle East, these are primarily working industrial ports rather than cruise-specific harbors. Here the specific country’s goods and materials are off loaded ,and our docking space in Safaga was next to large gray behemoth cranes used to take cargo off of the ships. With passports in hand, and armed security guard in the front seat, we boarded our fairly elegant bus – complete with en suite toilet. (Desperate times would call for desperate measures since our convoy would not be allowed to stop until we reached our destination). Leaving the port of Safaga, where men sat outside in coffee shops staring at our bus, and we staring back at the men, we quickly started climbing into the desert. Large sandstone structures against a brilliant blue sky. At each border of a unique ‘county’ we were forced to go through a phalanx of guards in towers with their guns facing us, weave our way between cement barriers to slow us down while huge photos of Hosni Mubarak stared down at us looking very serious. This is truly as close to a police state as I’ve ever been in. While they declare that all these guards and safety procedures are to make us feel safe, it seems to have the opposite effect.

As we headed west towards the Nile, the land gradually became less barren and sandy and started to have fields which were obviously being used for agriculture. The closer we got to the river, the more one could see irrigation. Sometimes it was nothing more than a large pole with a bucket at the end hanging over the water with a simple lever that allowed a farmer to get water directly from the Nile and its side canals. In other cases one saw a large ‘spigot’ allowing water to gush into a particular field, and of course some had more elaborate means of irrigation similar to that we would see in the USA. No matter where we looked there were date palms, banana trees, mango, sugar cane fields and olive trees. Other than the cars on the main paved road we could just have easily been moving down a road in the time of the bible: mules and camels acting as modes of land transportation; simple flat bottomed punts, being dragged by a rope and guided with a pole, to get people from one side of a wide stream to the other (to cut down the commute of getting to the next closest bridge); houses made of mud adobe at best; simple tents or huts with grass woven roofs. It was beautiful and yet sadly primitive. Somehow I expected that if I looked behind a bed of reeds along the water I’d find Moses tucked into his little basket. For the most part, people along the way were as curious about us as we were about them, but I’m guessing that the volume of tour buses to Luxor probably makes them inured to our passing. I kept wanting to take pictures, but the bus was moving too quickly and as we knew, there was no slowing the convoy for sociological photo taking.

Our first stop – most critical to the happiness of the tour bus – was lunch at the Sheraton located right on the Eastern side of the Nile. (“The East is for the living, the West is for the Dead”). Luxor is an obvious tourist destination and it is probably the nicest town we saw in Egypt. The small horse-drawn carriages, the men in their Galabeiah (long caftans), the one-sail feluccas on the water, the many tourist ferries, and the large and elegant hotels along the shore speak to a town that knows where it makes its revenues. These lunch stops associated with our tours are a bit frustrating because it takes at least an hour out of every trip and the food is not particularly exotic since they want to please the palate of tourists – and not necessarily that of natives. But we now know the drill: walk into a large dining area, sit at the allotted tables, go through the buffet line, visit the toilets and pile back on the bus. If there is a ‘next time’, I think we will do far more private tours where we’re in control of our environment and not dependant on the slowest member of the tour to gather at the allotted spot. (A slight bit of whinging going on here).

Our first stop was the Valley of the Kings – on the West bank. Nothing prepares you for the arrival at this amazing spot hidden from civilization for hundreds of years. In the crevices and nooks of the surrounding innocuous mountains on either side of the valley, the most important kings/pharaohs and their families were buried with all their worldly goods, and with the whole story of their lives written in hieroglyphics on the corridors leading into their burial chambers. To go into finite detail would bore most readers, but let’s just say that Bob and I were amazed, in awe, and left totally speechless. Until now I’ve always looked with awe at the ancient Greek temples of a few hundred years BC, but these tombs went back thousands of years and had sophistication and complexity that is amazing to consider. What was truly astounding is that so many of these tombs are pretty much still intact -barring the treasures which were stolen. In beautiful colors, made from native herbs and minerals, one could see written on walls the story of a particular pharaoh, his entourage, the crafts and skills of his people and his departure to heaven with all its symbolism. And all of it was there for us to see up close with no plexiglas to protect these ancient artifacts from our modern backpacks, fingers and purses which could rub against them. The only prohibition seemed to be the use of cameras. At the entry of the valley we all went through detectors and if stupid enough NOT to have listened to our tour guide, who had told us to leave the camera behind, the camera would be confiscated. At least they understand the impact of flash cameras on these tombs.

Our entrance ticket allowed us into any three tombs – of which of which we could have chosen from at least twelve. There are actually over 60 tombs in this valley. The only two for which we would have had to pay extra were that of Tutankhamen and the most recent find of Ramses VI. The Egyptians understand how to make money, and know that most tourists want to see the famous tomb of King Tut even though there is absolutely nothing much to see …AND the newest find needs revenue to continue its dig, so they charged more here as well. Our guide made it quite clear that King Tut wasn’t such an important ‘guy’. What made him famous was that his tomb which, when found by Carter in 1920, was completely intact. Otherwise he would be just another pharaoh. With a little less than two hours to wander in this vast necropolis, Bob and I happily went to three other of the tombs.

Each one was entered through the ‘original’ but newly reinforced door past the door-keeper who punched your ticket – god forbid you try to enter more than the three allotted tombs! Then we proceeded down a long corridor which told (in hieroglyphics) the story of the death and resurrection of the pharaoh. The air became more leaden and ‘dead’ the deeper one went into the tomb but everything on the walls and ceilings was quite visible thanks to indirect fluorescent lighting. To protect the painted walls from dust, the corridors were lined with wooden planks to keep our modern feet from scuffing up too much dirt and slowly destroying the walls. It is my bet that in another 20 years we won’t even be doing this. (Daddy remembers being led into the dark tombs with a simple phosphor-lit flare.) Once one had progressed through the long corridors which continued to slope downwards you came to series of large rooms – one which would hold the sarcophagus, another which would have held all the worldly goods the dead took with them to start their new lives in the next world. In these larger rooms the walls were absolutely coated with ‘stories’, pictures, columns and bas relief images which related the story of the pharaoh. No words can do this justice - it was plain amazing. Thank god that someone found the Rosetta Stone, or we still wouldn’t know what all that hieroglyphic writing meant.

Our only regret was that we knew so little about the religions of these ancient people, didn’t understand all the hieroglyphics, hardly understood the history and therefore could simply stare like dumb but admiring tourists. What a magical experience! I would come back here again armed with more information and really try to understand what I was seeing. To think that this was here for over two thousand years, with almost no one detecting it. Those old pharaohs, and their acolytes, certainly did a fine job of ‘covering their tracks’, and while tomb robbers may have stolen artifacts over the centuries it is quite obvious that there are hundreds of tombs still to be discovered. After all, this was only the Valley of the Kings -where there continue to be discoveries. There were also other necropolis valleys in the area meant for the artisans and scholars as well. In fact some of these tombs weren’t ‘discovered’ until recently because very entrepreneurial residents of the area had found them earlier and had surreptitiously built their 18th and 19th century homes to encompass the front of the tomb entrances, thereby allowing them to rob in the privacy of their homes and to sell the artifacts in the markets. We’re told that that was stopped by the government which tore down most of these houses, but who knows. In some ways the Egyptians seem quite cavalier about their treasures except as they are a source of revenue.

What was most amazing was that in mid November, on a warm sunny day there were really very few tourists. Going down the long tomb corridors which were no more than 3-4 feet wide, you could imagine real human traffic jams in the midst of summer. But there were none, and at only a few places did we have to wait to look into a little nook or cranny to see something special. Nor were there many guards considering the significance of these tombs. I saw at best only one guard, in his galabeah, in each of the large rooms within each tomb.

Brain-exhausted from too many new sights, we headed next to the Colossi of Memnon (not Greek) . Here were two huge faceless statues of Amenhotep III at the entry of what was once a temple site. At this point there is little of the temple to be seen, and so we took what was called a photo opportunity and moved on. Next we came to the tomb of Hapshetsut (pronounced, said Rita, as Hat+Ship+Suit). She was the one and only woman Pharaoh. Her father - Tuthomosis I - had been a pharaoh, she married a gentleman who thereby became a pharaoh – Tuthomosis II – but unfortunately he died shortly thereafter. He had a young son by a prior wife who became – Tuthomosis III. It was decided that Hapshetsut would reign until he was able to take on responsibilities. She co-reigned for 22 years dressing and behaving like a man. When she died her step-son now became pharaoh, defaced most of her monuments leaving only this one major monument to her.

Our last stop as the afternoon was drawing to a close was the Temple of Luxor on the East Bank. Here was what I had been waiting to see since it was here that Daddy and Walter walked around and took so many photographs. But by the time we arrived it was actually dark so all our photographs were taken by flash. This did not diminish the grandeur of the site and the lighting was really quite dramatic, but I had wanted to see this in daylight so felt a bit gypped. It is a wonderful temple made up of structures started by Tuthomosis III, continued by Amenhotep, Ramses II, Tutankhamen and Alexander the Great. In front of the main entry is one of two large obelisks – the other is in Paris at the Place de la Concorde. We walked quickly from one end to the other and got back on the bus. We drove past the Temple of Karnak, but took no pictures. (Another site Daddy loved, but which was not on our tour). Connecting these two major temples in ‘days of yore’ was a two kilometer long avenue lined with human-headed Sphinxes, of which only a few remain.

Thoroughly exhausted, both mentally and physically, we began the long drive ‘home’. Because there is not much development in this area of Egypt the stars were amazing. I saw full constellations I had never seen before – not even in Peacham. Absolutely beautiful. At 9:00 pm, a mere thirteen hours later, we arrived back at the port and were greeted by the ship’s crew, cold towels, cold drinks and the band playing from the 5th deck. We may have been exhausted, but we suddenly felt peppy enough for a quick shower and dinner.

Some people took an overnight tour which would have allowed us to see Karnak the next day, but we hadn’t chosen that, so I’ll just have to come back to Luxor again.

One amusing joke told by Rita: “You know why Moses was lost in the desert for all those years? He had a Jordanian tour guide.” As she admitted, were this same joke to be told in Jordan it would be the reverse.

November 23 – Monday – Safaga

A relaxing, do-nothing day on board the ship. A day of rest, after a thirteen hour tour yesterday, and a thirteen hour tour tomorrow.