Au Revoir Luxor

Journal: Sunday 24 November 1996

I was sad. This was my last day in Egypt. I had been in the country for two weeks and it felt like months. Time in Egypt has a strange quality, the days rush by in a flurry of activity but seem at the same time to stretch on for eternity. I could not imagine leaving behind these endlessly bright sunny days (well – apart from the rain) and going back to a cold, wet, English winter and to work. I sat by the edge of the river looking across to the West Bank, a scene which will forever be etched in my heart, and thought about this trip. I had so enjoyed the cruise, lazy days watching the timeless countryside as we drifted by, interspersed with exciting visits to the Nile temples between Luxor and Aswan. I had learned a lot. This time I had known more about the monuments I was seeing, I could remember at least some of the names of the powerful gods and kings who once populated this land and I could recognise some of the recurring themes of architecture and hieroglyphic writing. I had been introduced to the god Seth and his violent storms, to Isis, Sekhmet and all their families. I had witnessed the horrors that storms in Egypt can bring with the sinking of the cruise boat at Esna. I had watched the rising waters of the Nile, still a red-brown muddy torrent the colour of blood. I had sailed peacefully a couple of times in a felucca on the river. They say that anyone who drinks Nile water will always return. Well, the closest I came was to cup my hands and wash my face in it, but maybe I drank it too, as the purified tap water must originally come from the Nile.

Most of all, this trip introduced me to the marvellous Egyptian people, always full of kindness and generosity and I had made several friends, who I would miss when I got home. I would miss the beautiful sound of the Arabic language, a few more words of which I had learned. I would miss the chattering children who magically appeared wherever we went, shouting ‘Hello, what’s your name?’ ‘Where you from?’. I would even miss the touts and felucca guys on Luxor or Aswan Corniche, with their twinkling eyes shouting, ‘Very beautiful, I love your smile, come for a sail on my boat?. I tried to imagine these felucca captains standing on the sea-front at home trying the same line of patter with the tourists. It made me laugh.

I had finished my packing and said goodbye to my hotel room at the Isis which had been a superbly comfortable home for the past week. I wished I could take the balcony home with me so that I could continue to wake up at dawn to a view of the Theban Hills and the sonorous sound of the early morning muzzein’s call to prayer from minarets all across town. It was time for my airport pick-up. What made it worse was that I was leaving, but my two friends who had come a week later, were staying on. I hated Luxor departure lounge which had not been modernised at that time. The waiting was endless on the rows of hard red plastic chairs, hundreds of tourists enclosed in the hall like cattle with no fresh air. I could see that the sun was setting but could not be out there to bid it goodnight. The plane was late and I knew that I had to spend the night at Gatwick Airport at the other end before I could continue my journey on to Cornwall next day. I wondered why we who love Egypt put ourselves through this. But I knew the answer – that every second of my trip had been worth it – and I knew I would do it again.

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Dendera by Convoy

Journal: Friday 22 November 1996

Last year the taxi ride to Dendera Temple was a nice trip and we thought we’d like to do it again, so booked our friendly taxi-driver Tayib for a 6.30am start. What we (or Tayib) hadn’t realised was that the police convoy had recently been introduced for journeys to Dendera. We all had to line up at a meeting point in Luxor and wait around until 8.00am. There were many coaches and taxis as we headed north towards Qena, but most of them turned off on the road to Hurghada and the Red Sea resorts.

The idea of the convoy was that all foreign tourists should travel together under the protection of armed police in case of any trouble. What this trouble was in 1996 was undefined. What it meant in reality was that there was a police truck, with sirens blaring, at the head and tail of a long line of vehicles all travelling at over 100km an hour. The convoy left at regular times each day, which to my mind meant that any sniper with half a brain would know exactly where and when to wait and be able to pick off as many tourists as he could. Just like a fairground shooting gallery. That’s if we didn’t have a high-speed traffic pile-up first. Any other traffic on the road had to quickly pull over to avoid being mown down. It was an uncomfortable journey and I know our driver was just hating it.

Another problem with the convoy was that we were limited to the time we could spend in the temple. We were allowed exactly two hours and anyone not back by the designated leaving time was in serious trouble with the police. Robin, Lucy and I tore around Dendera Temple like we were on a mission. Most of our time was spent in the rooftop Osiris suite, which was very similar to the structure at Philae Temple in Aswan. I also wanted to look at the carvings in the Ptolomaic birth-house as there were reliefs of the hippopotamus goddess Tauret I had read about. I did enjoy seeing it again but it would have been nice to spend quality time there like we had last year. On a positive note, it meant that the temple was once more officially open to tourists (though not many at that time) and the café and bazaar were open, enabling a few of the local people to scratch a living again. We left Dendera on time, only to sit in our taxi at the Qena checkpoint for an hour waiting for the Hurghada convoy to catch us up. All we could think about was the extra time we could have spent in the temple, had we been allowed.

The Moulid of Abu l’Haggag

Journal: Thursday 21 November 1996

‘Come to the festival’, Abdu said one evening.
‘Where?’
‘Karnak!’
Well, that was the magic word. How could we resist? We could also do with some light relief. My friends and I had spent the day in Luxor Temple, especially studying the Opet reliefs of Tutankhamun in the Amenhotep Court. These reliefs depict the most important of the ancient festivals of Thebes – and there were many. Opet was celebrated every year with great revelry, a festival in which the image of the god Amun was taken from Karnak to Luxor Temple in his sacred barque to meet with his consort, the goddess Mut and consummate their marriage in a festival of regeneration and renewal. It also symbolised the necessary annual regeneration of the ruling pharaoh. At some periods Amun was taken to Luxor overland, on a route between the avenue of sphinxes which once stretched all the way from Karnak to Luxor. At other times the god travelled by river in a procession of ceremonial boats. The festival took place in the second month of Akhet (inundation, or spring), and lasted for between ten days and a month, depending on the period. Tutankhamun’s delicately carved reliefs give a lot detail about the Opet festival procession, with it’s lines of ceremonial boats leaving Karnak, it’s offering tables piled with produce, vintners and butchers, musicians, clappers, dancing girls, acrobats and soldiers with horses and chariots. The reliefs are very well preserved because for centuries Luxor Temple was completely buried by sand.

As the level of the ground above Luxor Temple was high, a mosque was built on top of the temple for the patron of Luxor, Sheikh Sidi Youssef Abu l’Haggag. When later, the houses were cleared away and the temple was excavated out of the silt and accumulated sand of a millennia, the mosque was allowed to remain, where it still stands precariously overhanging the temple walls. I was impressed by how many layers Luxor is composed from, both architecturally and spiritually. This mosque, built in the 11th century, symbolises perfectly the transition from ancient pharaonic to Islamic Egypt and more recently to the ‘touristic era’. Egypt is a land where everything is preserved in some form or other. The mosque’s western door may now open into thin air, high above the temple, but it is still considered to be the most important place of worship in the town.

Every year there is a moulid, a celebration of the birthday of Sheikh Abu l’Haggag. It is a carnival lasting for two days when natives of Luxor will travel from all over Egypt to be there. There are many street stalls selling snacks, children’s toys and a special sort of doll made from bright pink solid sugar. The dolls come in the form of either horsemen or ladies with large breasts and conical skirts which look like ancient fertility symbols. There are horse races with spectacular gleaming Arabian horses and a procession of carnival floats populated by men, women and children in outrageous costumes. I have seen different parts of the festival during my various stays in Luxor, but the part which impresses me most is the procession of large wooden boats with square sails, carried high on poles above the crowds. This is surely left over from Opet in an unconscious folk memory, an instance when the thin veneer of history is dissolved.

The night we went to Karnak with Abdu, I knew nothing of the Abu l’Haggag moulid and I’m still not sure if what we saw was part of this festival or another moulid for a different holy man. Every town and village has it’s own celebrations of local sheikhs and saints. We walked up Karnak Temple Street all the way to the bridge which crosses over the excavations of the avenue of sphinxes near the Temple of Mut. Beyond the bridge the street was closed off and stalls lined either side of the crowded road below criss-crossed strings of brightly coloured light bulbs and banners. We walked along looking at the stalls, trying to avoid the snake of children we were attracting like a pied piper. Suddenly I was aware of a deep rhythmic beat of drums, melodic reedy notes of a pipe and deep male voices chanting Koranic verses. To my left a tent had been constructed from poles draped with colourfully dyed sheeting and someone had just come out and had left a gap in it’s doorway. Inside I could see men dancing, shaking their heads and bowing their bodies in a frenzied trance of religious fervour. I was strongly aware that as a foreign tourist I should not be standing gawping at this scene, felt that I shouldn’t be there, but I was rooted to the spot. The drum-beat and the chanting was flowing through my body and I was entranced. It had a great affect on me. All the frantic movement I was seeing seemed to create a stillness deep within me. After a few moments I realised that the others had carried on up the street and there was a bit of a commotion going on. Apparently we had been asked to leave – this was a private religious festival and not a spectacle for tourists.

Abdu was very quiet on the way back. When I asked about the dancing he would say nothing. I think he realised it had been his mistake to take us there and he had been reprimanded for doing so. I could not get the image of the worshippers out of my head, the thud of the drum and the hypnotic chanting. What I had seen, I later saw carved on the walls of the Theban tombs, the ritual dancing of ancient Egypt. What I believe it actually was, after later research, was a Sufi ritual. I have tried to find out more about this in Egypt, but many Muslims I have asked tell me that it is haram, or forbidden, and I have never been able to get beyond the whirling dervish performances like the one I saw on my cruise boat, which are an entertainment-based form of Sufism.

Village Children

Journal: Thursday 21 November 1996

At the end of our felucca trip, Abdu invited myself, Robin and Lucy to visit his home in the West Bank village of Esba. We were keen to see more of ‘the real Egypt’. The felucca pulled up against the riverbank and we all climbed down the precarious wooden plank onto the shore, a reedy muddy patch of ground leading to a dirt track across the fields. Esba was about a mile from the river and as we followed our guide Abdu between the green rows of crops and irrigation ditches, we hoped we would not be abandoned here as we had no idea of where we were.

Eventually arriving at the village we saw a picture-book image of the sort of place you imagine in bible stories, small flat-roofed mud brick houses in narrow, winding streets, barefoot children rushing to meet us, yelling in delight while narrowly avoiding donkeys loaded with fodder and tradesmen with hand carts selling unrecognisable items. Women in colourful galabeyas stood in the shadows of doorways watching us curiously, shouting at their children to stay close, they obviously didn’t get many foreigners here. As Abdu invited us into his house to meet his mother, chickens in the courtyard clucked and scattered and I could smell the wonderful aroma of newly baked bread. Abdu appeared to have many brothers and sisters and we must have been introduced to half a dozen of the elder siblings, while the little ones followed us everywhere with their eyes. We were invited inside the house, into a reception room with a hard-packed dirt floor. There was little furniture except for two wooden benches with long flowered cushions and a small table where a tray of tea magically appeared. Egyptian tea is served in small glasses and is very strong and very sweet as sugar is usually added in the brewing stage. Abdu had told us that most of his village worked on the land, a farming community where money and luxuries were apparently scarce. Hospitality however was not scarce and we were made to feel very welcome. Abdu spoke good English as he had worked for many years with tourists on his felucca and we had a translated conversation with his mother who was very sweet. She kept disappearing into a back room and coming out with photographs and small precious objects which she would proudly show us. We didn’t want to intrude for too long so we made a small donation for the tea and hospitality and said our goodbyes to Abdu’s family.

Next we were taken to visit the local school. Lucy is a teacher and she was eager to see an Egyptian school. Again we were greeted very warmly by the principle and taken into a classroom, shown the blackboard and books and encouraged to have simple conversations with the children so that they could show off their skills in English. They were all extremely polite and well behaved and the whole experience was very enjoyable. Between us we managed to collect up a bundle of pens to leave at the school for the children and we left as the school day finished, the children pouring out on their way home. We had also bought a box of sweets to hand out to them, but found this task a bit daunting, so Abdu did it for us. It was a like feeding the wild animals, but great fun as they all shouted and laughed with us.

Esba was obviously a very poor community and the villagers had little in the way of modern amenities, but I will never forget the generosity and welcome shown to three strangers, foreign women, who to the people there, must have seemed very wealthy.

Banana Island

Journal: Thursday 21 November 1996

My friends and I had arranged to spend this morning on a felucca trip. We’d met Abdu a couple of days before and we had promised we’d go sailing sometime on his felucca, Titi, so today was the day. Everyone visiting Egypt should experience a felucca trip. The felucca is a sailing boat, traditionally made of wood, with a very tall mast and huge lateen sail to catch the smallest breeze, but they are also light enough to be rowed when no wind is available. In Aswan the boats are often large and take a dozen or more passengers, but the smaller ones in Luxor can be hired by individuals for short trips. They have a heavy centre plate, used as the keel, which can be raised or lowered depending on the depth of the water. This means that they can drift into the shallows close to the river banks or more easily negotiate sand banks. On board there are benches along the sides of the boat, usually spread with flowered cushions and an awning overhead to keep off the sun in the hottest part of the day.

This morning there was very little wind, so we had to wait to be towed 4 km upriver against the current, by a motor boat. We were going to Banana Island, perhaps the only island in Egypt which is attached to the land! Banana Island, or Gezira el-Mozh, was a small, lush plantation of fruit trees (mostly banana) and sugar cane. The owner, Mr Lovely, made a landing charge of LE5 each person and ran a shaded café and bazaar in the middle of the peninsular. He was obviously an entrepreneur, subsidising his agricultural enterprise with tourism, but the fee did include a bunch of the small delicious bananas grown on the island. Stepping off the felucca into the trees was like stepping into a hot and humid jungle – complete with mosquitoes! The track wound around through the trees and shrubs, vibrant with colour, huge wide banana leaves forming a canopy overhead and creating a tunnel effect. We took a tour of the plantation, accompanied by several indigent dogs, the guide pointing out the bright pendants of banana flowers as well as fat clumps of ripening bunches. There were also many colourful birds I hadn’t seen before in Egypt. The trail ended at a café in a clearing and we all had a cold drink while we were fed endless bananas by the staff. We met Mr Lovely himself, who insisted we went into his bazaar – which was actually quite interesting with lots of more unusual crafts and all rather dusty and neglected. There was no a hassle policy and as we were told, it was all ‘Asda price’.

Back on the felucca an hour or so later and we were able to sail back downriver towards Luxor. It is so peaceful to sail the river with no noise except the wind in the sails and the gently lapping water against the bow. We reclined on the cushions and I trailed my hand in the water. The traditional boats have largely been replaced by faster, reliable, motor boats – even some of the feluccas have engines now, but that morning, lying relaxing in the sun and drifting slowly down river, I thought it was the perfect way to travel. I became hooked on felucca sailing. The three hour trip had cost us LE15 each.

A Lazy Day in Luxor

Journal: Wednesday 20 November 1996

Robin, Lucy and I were all set to go to Abydos today – on the local train. At breakfast we mentioned this to our tour rep, Gillian, and she was horrified, strongly advising us not to attempt the trip. She gave us all the reasons we shouldn’t go and pointed out that neither the tour company or the British Embassy would help us if we got into difficulties as it was a restricted zone and tourists were strongly discouraged from going there. We had to think carefully about this and in the end decided to take the advice we had been given, giving up on the trip. We all spent the rest of the day feeling wimpish! We had also wanted to visit the tombs at el-Kab, which is to the south between Edfu and Esna, but were told the town was cut off after the rain, with no water or electricity and the army was having to take in food supplies.

Making excuses to ourselves – we’d all had shaky stomachs for the past couple of days anyway – we went into Luxor and bought Antinal from the pharmacy (the best cure for pharaoh’s revenge!). We walked through the bazaar and did some serious shopping, gifts to take home and the sort of souvenirs everyone buys on early trips Egypt.

In the evening we went to Luxor Museum and spent a couple of hours having a good look around. There are some beautiful objects and I took lots of pictures (unfortunately when they were developed they were all fuzzy because of the dark conditions).

The museum is very modern and the artefacts are well displayed with good spot-lighting. My favourite piece in the whole museum is a black granite statue of Amehotep, son of Hapu, Advisor to Amenhotep III, Scribe, Architect and Director of all the Royal Works. After his death he was deified and worshipped as a god of medicine. The statue represents Amenhotep as a scribe sitting cross-legged, his left hand unrolling a papyrus scroll. This statue is so beautiful that whenever I go to visit him in the museum I feel I want to reach out and touch him (which of course is not allowed). I also love the statue dyad of Amenhotep III with the crocodile god, Sobek, from the Temple of Sobek at Dahamsha. Sobek has his arm around the king’s shoulder in such a protective and affectionate way. It was later usurped by Rameses II who carved his own name on the statue. I particularly liked the Akhenaten heads which had been found in his temple at Karnak. I was standing in front of one of the wonderful elongated stylized heads, wondering if the king really did have some strange medical condition, when a young Egyptian guy came and stood beside the head, pointing to it and then to his own face. He grinned and said ‘This is my Grandfather!’. I had to admit that the likeness was astonishing – the elongated face, the almond eyes and the full lips were just the same when you really looked and I realised that these facial characteristics were seen in many Upper Egyptian men. From that time on I have believed that the strange statues were not showing any abnormal deformity, but were merely stylized versions of the king, a modern form of art of the time.  At closing time I went into the museum book shop and saw a large fabulous statue of Sekhmet, which I just had to buy. These replicas were made by a local village cooperative from a kind of resin. They looked exactly like others I had seen carved from stone, but when I picked one up it was very lightweight. Great for taking back on the plane! She was a perfect copy of the statue of the goddess I had seen in the Temple of Ptah at Karnak. I was so pleased with my purchase, it really made my day. Unfortunately I’ve never found any more of these light resin statues since that time, though I’ve looked everywhere. Guess they stopped producing them.

Our next port of call was to Gaddis bookshop, but by the time we got there it was closed. What a pity…. I couldn’t spend any more money today!

The Workman’s Village

Journal: Tuesday 19 November 1996

My friends Robin and Lucy, who had been in Egypt with me the previous year, had arrived at last and we decided we would try to get to Abydos. In 1996 this was not an easy journey and we were told that we would need special permission from the Antiquities Office in Luxor because the temple was officially closed. We spent a whole morning going from office to office, having some difficulty because nobody was able to understand what we wanted as they didn’t speak English. We eventually found someone who made a call to the antiquities office on the West Bank and we were told that we didn’t need a permit but would have to get permission from the tourist police. Off on our rounds again, sitting in an office waiting around until someone finally dealt with our request, only to be told that the road between Qena and Balyana was closed. The only alternative was to take the train. Well, so be it – by this time we were even more determined to get to Abydos.

By lunchtime we were in the vicinity of the local ferry so we decided not to waste any more of the day and crossed the river to the West Bank. It was on this occasion that I met Tayib, a West Bank taxi driver, who I have continued to use frequently in the decade since then. Today, I rarely use taxis, but Tayib will always stop for me when I’m out on the West Bank and give me a lift, always very friendly and a delightful person to know. On the day we first met Tayib, he took us to Deir el-Medina, the village of the ancient artisans who had worked on the construction and decoration of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

Deir el-Medina is a rare site in Egypt. One of the few discoveries of a community of common people, it has yielded a tremendous amount of archaeological knowledge and textural material detailing everyday life in ancient Egypt, about families and relationships, disputes and social organisation in the new Kingdom.

The village, which dates to the beginning of the New Kingdom, probably from the time of Tuthmose I, consisted of the houses of the families of workers and craftsmen who were employed in the King’s Valley. They probably led quite an insular life and had their own local deities, the deified Queen Ahmose-Nefertari and her son Amenhotep I, as well as Ptah, god of craftsmen and Meretseger, goddess of the Theban necropolis. The village occupied an area of around two hectares, with a total of one hundred and twenty dwellings. The walls of many of these buildings have been preserved, or restored and show that they were all built from mud bricks to a similar plan, usually with four small rooms, a staircase leading to a terrace or upper room and sometimes a cellar. The flat roofs were made from planks of palm trees, internal walls were plastered with gypsum and painted white and floors were of stone. There was a large brick structure in the corner of the entrance hall, entered by a short flight of steps – thought to be either a domestic shrine or a bed-platform used in childbirth (or perhaps both combined). The platform would often be decorated with depictions of the god Bes, who was associated with childbirth as well as being a household god. The main room was lit by windows high in the walls and this room had a low raised platform and stelae dedicated to ancestor cults and to Meretseger. A storage area was also used as sleeping quarters and a kitchen with an oven was in an open area at the rear of the house. The dwellings were not unlike some of the traditional houses on the West Bank today.

Robin, Lucy and I walked along the main street, admiring the houses on either side and trying to picture what life would have been like for the inhabitants. At the northern end of the village there was a temple, originally a cult temple for Amenhotep I, which was later replaced by other pharaohs until the Ptolemaic structure which remains there today. It is well preserved and the beautiful Hathor-headed columns and softly painted wall-reliefs inside are well worth a special visit. We were very pleased to have ‘discovered’ it.

Our tickets included entrance to the two tombs which were open at that time, the first belonging to Sennedjem of the nineteenth dynasty, whose title was ‘Servant in the Place of Truth’. This tomb had a very steep stone staircase descending a long way down into the hillside and was very hot and cramped inside, but felt very intimate and so unlike the bigger private tombs I had seen. The second tomb we entered belonged to Inherkau, who lived during the twentieth dynasty and was ‘Foreman of the Two Lands in the Place of Truth’ – in other words, a foreman of the King’s Valley workmen. A staircase led down into the burial chamber, which still contained colourful paintings, though not as well preserved as those in Sennedjen‘s tomb.

When we had finished at Deir el-Medina, Tayib took us round into the Valley of the Queens, which is close by. Here we saw the tomb of Khaemwaset, a young son of Rameses III, which was very beautifully painted. Next was the colourful tomb of Amunherkhopshep, also a son of Rameses III. He is depicted throughout wearing the side-lock of youth and accompanied by his father. Lastly we visited the tomb of Queen Titi, a small and damaged tomb but also beautifully painted.

It was late in the afternoon when Tayib took us back in his taxi to the ferry. The whole afternoon’s excursion of five hours had cost us only LE40, which worked out at less that £3 each at the exchange rate as it was then, which was only LE5 to £1. We decided then that it was certainly better to do things on our own than to take organised, expensive (and very rushed) tours. And the spirit of discovery was much more fun!