Heartache in Luxor

Once more it was with great sadness that I left Luxor on October 20th 1997 to travel back to England. Part of me had been left behind in Egypt, as it always was, in what had become my ‘home from home’. This wonderful country had got under my skin and I would miss so much all of the lovely people I had met during the past few weeks.

Almost a month later, on November 17th, I was at work when I heard a newsflash on the radio announcing that there had been shooting on the West Bank of Luxor and many people had been killed by unidentified gunmen in Hatshepsut’s Deir el-Bahri Temple. Immediately I remembered my feeling of impending disaster and the heightened security when I was there and I was stunned and horrified by the news. I listened to the radio news throughout the day but it seemed very confused and it was not until much later that the whole tragic event was clarified. The attack had happened early in the morning, the busiest time at Deir el-Bahri, when six gunmen from the Islamic terrorist group al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, who were disguised as members of security, opened fire with automatic weapons and committed terrible atrocities on tourists in the temple, killing a total of 62 people. The terrorists escaped into the Theban hills, chased by tourist police and military forces and were eventually caught and killed. I later learned that many men from the West Bank had also taken to the hills in pursuit of the gunmen and many had been injured, including my friend Haga’s son Ahmed. The people of Luxor were both devastated and angry at what became known as the Deir el-Bahri ‘Incident’.

The Egyptian authorities had been certain that they had gained the upper hand in their five-year-old battle against Islamic extremists after a series of heavy crackdowns by the security forces. Tourist groups in Egypt were tightly guarded and it was thought that the problem had been contained. It was hard to see what more could have been done. But this attack was by far the worst Egypt had seen. I knew it would have a devastating effect on the livelihoods of many of the Luxor people as the tourists left and the reputation of one of the most popular holiday destinations was shattered. My heart went out to the families of the dead and to the Egyptian people.

Dr. W. Raymond Johnson, director of the Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, wrote afterwards:
On the evening of December 10, 1997, a memorial service was held at the candle-lighted Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, to honor the fifty-eight foreign tourists and four Egyptians massacred during the terrorist attack there in November.. More than 2,000 persons were invited to the service and hundreds more marched to the Deir el Bahari site, carrying banners denouncing terrorism. Egyptian President Mubarek and numerous other government ministers were in attendence, and the program was highlighted by Egyptian actor Omar Sharif reading a state-sponsored message written by 86-year-old Nobel prize winning author Negib Mahfouz, which in part said that the massacre was “a stab inflicted on the body of all the people of egypt…[who] now wish to express to the world their deepest apologies and sincere condolences.” The Cairo Opera Orchestra played “Tears of Anger” from Verdi’s Requiem, and the Bulgarian National Choir sang. A Nubian troup, wearing white turbans and robes, beat drums in mourning.)

Soon afterwards, my friend Robin and I began to organise our next trip to Egypt, in an effort to show support for the country we loved. We would not be beaten by these madmen!

Saidi Wedding

Journal: Saturday 18 October 1997

In the evening my friend and guide Hassan invited me to go with him to part of the wedding celebrations of a friend of his in the village of Kom on the West Bank. I’m not sure how long the celebration had been going on already but this evening, he told me, there was to be music and dancing, which he knew I couldn‘t resist.

I was getting used to crossing the river on my own at night on the local ferry. I had even become accustomed to the gun-toting police launch alongside and the helicopter flying overhead. I had so hated these when I first got to Luxor earlier this month but they were no longer present now that Aida had finished. There were a few curious glances by men on the ferry who must have wondered where a tourist was going at this time of night, but nobody paid me much heed or bothered me at all. Hassan met me on the other side and we took a service taxi to Kom. When we reached the village there were a lot of arabeyas with horns honking loudly and crowds of people in the narrow streets, all going in the same direction, congregating in a little square in front of some of the houses. I could hear the music as soon as I got out of the car.

We walked down an alley and when we arrived at the square Hassan was made welcome by his friends while I, as a foreign guest, was given a place of honour at the front of the crowd and was provided with a bottle of Pepsi. This was very different to the urban wedding I had attended in Luxor two years ago, which had taken place in a street with loud amplified music. This time there was a small group of  musicians playing rababa and drums which sounded fantastic. A young man in a galabeya was dancing alone in the small space before the band, with his arms in the air holding a scarf and his hips swaying and swirling in slow motion in time to the beat of the drum. This was a true Saidi (Upper Egyptian) wedding, with little influence from western culture. The bride wore no fancy wedding dress, but a colourful galabeya and headscarf, just like the rest of the younger women around her. The married ladies covered their galabeyas with a black outer garment and a wore a black head scarf or hijab  over their hair to show their status.

In Upper Egypt, most of the marriages are arranged, often between cousins or other members of the same family. The Saidi culture does not allow boys and girls to mix freely, so it is difficult for young people to meet prospective partners without the intervention of their families. There is often an elder woman in the villages known as el-Khatba, who knows all the village families and will arrange suitable marriages between them. In the past, it was not uncommon for the groom to have never even met his bride before the wedding ceremony. Also, girls as young as ten may have been already spoken for, although the legal marriage age is not before fifteen years of age. The dowry, known as el-Mahr, has always been required in Egypt and a father must be able to afford quite large sums of money for his daughter’s marriage as wealth and status are considered important. Recently even more money is required from the bride’s family for both the wedding party and the dowry (sometimes as much as LE2000 and much more in the cities) as well as all of the linen and furnishings for the home. The groom must provide the living accommodation (often in his parent’s home) and a certain quantity of gold jewellery must be bought for the bride. This is her insurance against divorce or widowhood. With rising prices and poorly paid work in the rural areas this has become difficult for young men, who simply can’t afford to be married and must often go away to work in the tourist industry or to Saudi Arabia as a means of earning more money.

One of the traditional Saidi wedding customs for the bride, consists of a ‘henna-day‘, when her hands and feet are decorated with the red dye and intricate ‘tattoos’ of henna and she is pampered, fussed over and prepared for her wedding by her women friends and family. The ceremony itself is merely a formality, the signing of forms, but the celebrations may carry on for several days. The marriage contract is signed and registered by the maazon, a man who has an official licence to do this, either at a mosque or the bride’s family home, with the couple and their families and friends in attendance.

The wedding I attended was a later part of these celebrations and everyone seemed to be having a good time. After a while two men got up to perform a stick-dance, known as Tahtib, which was very lively and earthy. The poles, each over a metre long, were swung through the air in graceful but wild figure-of-eight patterns and over each other’s heads at great speed. The dance is traditional custom, a way for the men to show their manliness and prowess and once used as a martial art. Indeed, I had seen depictions of the origins of this dance in the tomb of Kheruef at Asasif, where men fighting with long sticks appear to be using exactly the same movements. Afterwards it was the turn of the women to dance and several of the younger girls got up and began swaying to the music. Saidi women’s baladi dance is very special, the movements are not wild or gyrating but controlled and very graceful and I would imagine also symbolic. After a while they pulled me up into their circle and taught me some of the dance movements. It was great fun.

It was quite late when we left. Hassan walked me back to the ferry, about 5km, as there were no service cars to be seen and as we walked through the darkened deserted fields he explained many of the traditional Saidi wedding customs to me. This still remains in my memory as one of the most enjoyable evenings I have spent in Egypt and a wonderful way to remember the last night of my holiday.

Birket Habu, Malqata

Journal: Saturday 18 October 1997

This was my last full day in Egypt and most of it had been spent on Luxor West Bank. We were going there again today. Robin and I had visited Malqata earlier this year and I had fallen in love with this remote site on the edge of the desert, once the palace and town of Amenhotep III but now deserted, the ruins mostly devoured by the blowing sand and the natural destruction of the centuries. The area was first excavated in 1888 and later much of the remaining monument was removed by Metropolitan Museum excavations during the early years of the 20th century. Most of the palace and town was constructed from mud brick and wood, which doesn’t often survive the ravages of time and which is why there is little left of the buildings. There were originally four palaces with service areas plus several large villas for the elite of Amenhotep’s court, as well as homes for the local population. There was also a Temple of Amun here.

We wanted to see the site again and perhaps walk over the area of Birket Habu where Amenhotep had constructed an artificial lake for the entertainment of his queen, the Great Royal Wife, Tiye. Birket, in Arabic, means ‘lake’, and this was part of a T-shaped harbour, connected to the River Nile by a canal. The excavation of the harbour left huge earthworks, mounds of sand up to 14m high in a line which are now part of the natural landscape at the edge of the cultivation. These high mounds are populated by a few small villages, whose children (and dogs) ran over the hills to meet us. They had curious home-made toys which were fascinating, made of a tin can on a long pole which they would push along in front of them. No Gameboys for these children! Robin and I wandered along the base of the Birket Habu mounds towards the southern end of Malqata, followed by our inquisitive tribe of children. Amenhotep’s palace was given the name ‘The Dazzling Aten’ and a great golden barge was said to have been housed on the lake. A commemorative scarab of Amenhotep III dated to year 11 of his reign states that:

‘….His majesty commanded a lake to be built for the Great Royal Wife Tiye…. His majesty celebrated the festival of the opening of the lake on day 16 of the third month of Akhet (Season of inundation)….His majesty sailed on it the royal barge, named “The Aten Gleams”….’

The name Malqata, in Arabic, means ‘place of debris’ and there was plenty of this. The mounds were covered in red clay pottery sherds, mostly modern, but quite a few pieces of pottery that looked quite ancient too. More recent debris consists of tin cans and windblown plastic water bottles and carrier bags. But the romance of the site will always remain in my imagination.

Ladies Who Lunch

Journal: Friday 17 October 1997

The next morning I had a message to say I had been summoned to the West Bank by my friend Haga Omm Mohammed who lived at Kom Lolla, near the temple of Medinet Habu. She had a gift for me. I was greeted with the usual smiles of welcome and invited to stay for lunch with the family, an informal meal with the women and children that took place in the kitchen at the back of the little house. We sat on mats on the floor around a big metal tray and shared delicious dishes of rice and vegetables, salads and freshly baked bread. It took me a while to get used to eating Egyptian style. The dishes were set out in the centre of a circle and everyone helps themselves. There were no separate plates and no knives and forks. The food was scooped up in folded pieces of bread – a technique which takes a bit of practice and a lot of mine was lost before it reached my mouth. The ladies thought this was hilarious! One Egyptian speciality dish which Haga is famous for, was molokhiya, something I usually try to avoid, but this time could not politely refuse. It is made from a green leafy plant which is stewed with spices until it becomes a sort of green soup with a rather slimy viscous texture. It is not my favourite Egyptian food but I had to admit that this was tastier than I’d had before. It is the texture that is off-putting. We ended the meal as usual with glasses of sweet tea and Haga brought out my present all wrapped up in tissue paper and tied with string. It was one of her beautiful brightly coloured crochet cloths. I was very touched, knowing the work that goes into producing these.

Afterwards I went with Haga’s son Nubi to see his new house which he was building himself near the canal by Medinet Habu. It was almost finished and Nubi and his wife Zeinab were working on getting the garden in order, planting rows of vegetable seeds in the red sandy soil. I sat with Nubi for a while in the shade of a tree talking about his archaeological work. It had been a lovely afternoon.

A Trip to the Seaside

Journal: Tuesday 14 – Thursday 16 October 1997

An Australian couple from our hotel were going to Hurghada so we arranged that I would share a taxi with them for the journey. Apparently the road was still intact after yesterday’s rain, which sometimes can make it impassable, so we left Luxor with a long line of other taxis and coaches on the 5.30am convoy. By the time we were a few kilometres south of Luxor, the convoy of vehicles was quite spread out and it was an almost leisurely drive through the Nile valley as far as Qena. There, the convoy split up, some going to Dendera, some to Assyut, but the majority to Safaga on the Red Sea coast. We turned right towards the coast and suddenly  we were in an entirely different landscape, now desert, with the long straight road enclosed on each side by high, strange-looking jagged mountains, bisected by deeply cut wadis. Although the rain hadn’t affected the road, it did disappear for a few kilometres where a new section was being constructed and we bumped along over a rough sandy track, deeply pitted from the huge wheels of bulldozers, the sand swirling up around us in the wind. We could see the old road running alongside, the tarmac broken up into large black chunks as it does, I was told, every five years or so. We had seen no habitation of any sort – no evidence of life at all apart from the odd straggling acacia tree for an hour or more. Suddenly there was a cafeteria, little more than a wooden shack, where the convoy stopped for a break and as I drank a most welcome cup of Turkish coffee I wondered how they get water out here in the middle of nowhere. By 10.00am we were on the outskirts of Hurghada, known as el-Ghadaga to Egyptians and to the rest of the world as the ‘Las Vegas of Egypt’. There were miles and miles of half-built holiday villages, seemingly self-contained in their own little world. I marvelled at the extent of this rash of construction work, much of which seemed to consist of little more than large heaps of rubble, as we drove down the wide new road into the town. I hadn’t booked a hotel and I was looking for something very cheap as I hadn’t budgeted for this trip. After looking at a few bleak and run-down hostels in the area of the Old Town I settled for a small Egyptian hotel near the beach, little better than the hostels but only LE25 a night.

Hurghada was at one time a small fishing village that has been taken over by tourism in the past few decades. I spent the afternoon looking around the old town, though as far as I was concerned, all it had to offer were cafeterias and souvenir shops. I had a look in the Aquarium which contained some very weird fish. In the evening I met my Australian friends and we ate in a fish restaurant – the Red Sea is famous for its wonderful fish. Being vegetarian I don’t eat fish but it seemed that this was all there was on offer. I settled for a plate of plain rice feeling rather gloomy and already ‘homesick’ for Luxor. The clear jade water and coral reefs of the Red Sea and the teaming marine life found there has made Hurghada into a tourist paradise, a popular destination for divers and beach-lovers from all over the world, but the only beach I saw was covered in concrete blocks and oil drums and didn’t look at all inviting. I was desperately missing the ancient monuments and Hurghada had little to interest me. I was just as gloomy back at the hotel. My room was sparsely furnished with a lumpy double bed, one blanket covering the mattress and a grubby uncovered bolster pillow, which felt like sleeping on a stone door lintel. In the bathroom down the hall, someone had been unpleasantly ill and it wasn’t any better the next morning as there was no water for a shower. I decided to go back to Luxor on the bus later that afternoon.

I didn’t bother with breakfast, but went into town where I met my Australian friends and together we arranged a trip to a coral island on a glass-bottomed boat through a local agent. This at least was a pleasant interlude. I was told that we would see dolphins and sharks, though there were none about. My friends loved to swim, so we borrowed some equipment and went snorkelling off the island where the clear, warm water was like blue-tinted glass sparking in the mid-day sun. Shoals of tiny colourful fish caressed my face and legs as I floated on the surface and swam over the coral. I’m not a natural ‘water-baby’ but I enjoyed it as another ‘experience’, another side of Egypt.

I had to rush back to the hotel to collect my bag to be at the bus station by 2.30pm, though the bus was late and didn’t leave until 5.00pm. I took the ‘Kul’, or Superjet, the air-conditioned bus, but it was very crowded and Egyptian videos played on overhead screens at full volume as we drove back through Safaga and out on the desert road to Qena. Still, the five and a half hour journey cost me only LE15, so I couldn’t really complain. The relief and joy at being back in Luxor, even though it was late at night and I was very tired, made me forget why I had ever wanted to leave.

The Tombs of Menna and Nakht

Journal: Monday 13 October 1997

Because of the feeling of tension in Luxor at the moment, I wanted to take a break and decided I would like to go to Hurghada on the Red Sea coast for a day or two. The idea was that my friends and I would take a bus from Luxor, but everyone said it was going to rain – and you don’t go to Hurghada in the rain as the road was likely to be washed away! Sure enough, in the aftenoon the sky began to cloud over, a rare occurrence here. Later that afternoon Robin and I went over to the West Bank to see more tombs, this time we visited Menna and Nakht at Sheikh ‘Abd el-Qurna.

Menna was a ‘Scribe in the fields of the Lord of the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt’ during Dynasty XVIII, and his job was probably to document the records of land ownership. His tomb was well-known for its superb wall-paintings of scenes of daily life and the agricultural methods of the Theban people, depicted in bright colours. The wall of the long inner funerary chapel shows the funeral procession with traditional scenes of offering-bringers carrying food and burial equipment to the tomb. Menna’s sarcophagus is transported on the river Nile in a barque which is towing another boat containing mourners, and later the sarcophagus can be seen dragged on a sledge towards the Western Goddess and Anubis. The far end of the wall depicts a judgement scene, in which Menna must account for his earthly actions and have his heart weighed. Here it is Horus rather than Anubis who is in charge of the scales and Thoth, god of writing and wisdom, who records the verdict. Osiris, as usual presides over the scene. The other side of the chapel shows boats in the ‘Abydos Pilgrimage’ with Menna and his wife depicted as statues being taken towards Abydos, with burial goods in another boat. This is the final pilgrimage to which all people aspired, either actually or symbolically and is often portrayed in the Theban tombs. Another scene shows the return from Abydos. The remaining scenes depict the ‘Opening of the Mouth Ritual’, with a priest supporting Menna’s sarcophagus.

The tomb of Nakht is just a little way to the east of Menna’s tomb. He was an 18th Dynasty scribe who held the title of ‘Astronomer of Amun’ or ‘Observer of the Hours’ (of the night). At the end of the 1980s this tomb underwent an experimental restoration in the hope of finding a satisfactory technique for the preservation of tomb paintings and its walls were covered with glass – something which was still quite unusual in 1997. The wall to the left side of the entrance to the burial chamber depicts the famous banquet scenes from this tomb. A naked maidservant helps three ladies to prepare themselves for the occasion. Behind this is a blind harpist is sitting with his legs crossed before the festivities. One of the most famous pictures from any Egyptian tomb is in the centre of the banquet scene where a group of three female musicians entertain the guests with flute, lute and harp. The girl in the centre whose head is turned to look behind, is depicted richly jewelled but almost naked for the first time in Egyptian painting. The grace and harmony and the colours of this composition are beautiful.

It was late afternoon and the guards were wanting to lock up the tombs and go home – so no cups of tea were offered today. We walked along the Qurna road to the Hatshepsut Restaurant, one of our favourites because we could sit on the rooftop terrace and watch the sun setting behind the mountains of Deir el-Bahri. This evening however, the sky was black and threatening. Before long, some English friends we had met arrived unexpectedly and we all decided to stay and have a meal together. It was lovely to look out towards Deir el-Bahri and although we couldn’t see the temple from here we could see the floodlights from the stage for tonight’s performance of Aida. Later we could even hear snatches of the music drifting on the wind. I would have loved to go and see the opera but tickets were very expensive and pretty well sold out. This was the next best thing. And later in the evening we had our own special light show when it began to thunder and streaks of lightning flashed across the sky. The predicted rain was heavy, but didn’t last long. People will say it doesn’t rain in Egypt, but I had seen my fair share of dramatic storms over the past couple of years and especially at this time of year.