Back to the Metropolis

Journal: Friday 14 November 2003

The pale golden sun had just risen and the air was clear and sharp as we left Bahariya early this morning for the drive to Cairo, the last leg of our oasis trip.

Passing the checkpoint at the entrance to the oasis we followed the ancient caravan route from Bahariya to Cairo on a road that was first paved only as recently as 1978. To our right a raised railway line also followed the route, built to serve the Managim iron mines at the edge of the oasis. These mines are the main source of iron for the Egyptian steel industry. We saw no trains today, but passed at least two overturned and abandoned goods-wagons on the line. The road is long and winds lazily over the plateau, but there is little to look at. Apparently the remains of a petrified forest are scattered near the roadside at one point – but we missed it!

We were all pretty quiet and sleepy for most of the four and a half hour journey. Our week in the desert was over and we would shortly be back in civilization. I wasn’t sure that was such a good thing because I have loved being in the desert. The only one of us who chattered on the journey was Tom, who at last would be able to fulfil his dream of Cairo. I think this was the first time he’d spoken more than a few words to any of us. As we hit the traffic at the edge of Cairo it was like driving into a brick wall. All the open space and vast skies of the past week vanished and we were suddenly confronted with bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks, steep-sided buildings and the Cairo yellow smog that hangs in a permanent cloud over the city. And the incessant noise. Even those of us who knew what to expect experienced a culture shock.

One of the main reasons Tom wanted to visit Cairo was to see the Nag Hammadi Gospels. Thirteen of these 4th century Coptic books or codices were discovered by a farmer in the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945, bound in leather and buried in large pottery jars. Written on papyrus in the Coptic language, they are said to be the primary source of Gnostic Christianity. The Coptic Museum in Cairo has two pages of the manuscripts on display and so this was our first stop in Cairo today. Mohammed drove us straight to Old Cairo and parked near the museum. I was looking forward to seeing it again, but Tom was like an excited little boy. You can imagine his disappointment when we arrived outside the beautiful old building only to discover that it was closed for one month. We all felt really sorry for him.

After wandering around Old Cairo for a while, looking at the Babylon Gate and the Hanging Church, we drove on to our hotel on the eastern edge of Cairo. We were staying in the Ciao, near Rameses Station, where Sam and I have stayed several times before. By the time we had all got our rooms sorted out to our satisfaction (which involved several changes again), it was time for dinner. Again we were eating early because of Ramadan and today is Friday, the holy day. It seemed like the whole city was out to eat tonight and there was a celebratory feeling everywhere we went. Families young and old were parading up and down in their best clothes. Bright Ramadan lamps hung in the markets and coffee shops and there were colourful decorations everywhere. We had decided to have dinner at Felfella, the famous vegetarian restaurant, but it was packed and we had to wait quite a long time for a table. Abdul and Mohammed were with us and they were starving by the time we were seated – their Iftar delayed by the long wait. But the meal was good as always here and turned into quite a celebration of a successful trip – except maybe for Tom, who was now quite subdued again.

The Sites of Bahariya

Journal: Thursday 13 November 2003

We only have one full day in Bahariya and we wanted to try to see all the ancient sites that are open – and there aren’t that many, so our first stop this morning was at the antiquities office in the centre of Bawiti where we bought our tickets for all the monuments. There is also a magazine housed in a warehouse here where we saw some of the mummies that had recently been excavated from tombs in the famous Valley of the Golden Mummies. There were four glass cases on display containing mummies that had golden masks as well as a few other objects found in the oasis.

Our tickets took us next to Qarat Qasr Salim, on the northern edge of Bawiti where there are four well-decorated Dynasty XXVI tombs belonging to wealthy members of the community. We climbed down the newly-installed and locally-made iron steps which the gafir seemed to be very proud of. The first tomb was identified as the burial place of the Governor of the Oasis, Djedamun-ef-ankh, whose large tomb has beautiful squat round painted pillars, unusual in oasis tombs, several painted false doors and extensive religious scenes depicting the owner offering to the deities. On the ceiling of the burial chamber the goddess Nekhbet is shown as a vulture in a starry sky. It really is a lovely tomb with gorgeous earthy muted colours. Bannentiu, the son of Djedamun-ef-ankh, was also a wealthy business owner and his recently restored tomb is even larger and more elaborate that that of his father. The paintings were stunningly bright and fresh, though somewhat damaged by tomb-robbers in recent years. Unfortunately, photography was not officially allowed here, though the gafir permitted one picture. The other two tombs were not open.

Back in the minibus for the short drive to Ain el-Muftilla, the area of the ancient town of Psobthis. There are few remains now of the settlement that once existed here, thought to have been the capital of the oasis and its main source of water. Four chapels or shrines have recently been restored and were found to be part of a larger temple complex dating to the reign of Dynasty XXVI King Ahmose II (Amasis). Photography was a definite no-no here and much to my disappointment we couldn’t persuade the gafir otherwise. Parts of the chapel walls had some lovely painted scenes and one of them was built by Djedkhonsu-ef-ankh whose tomb we had just seen. This chapel was dedicated to the little god Bes, whose cult monuments are quite rare. The chapels, now under protective wooden roofs, had some unusual deities and cult standards. I would have loved to take pictures here but we were closely watched the whole time.

Our next port of call was the Temple of Alexander at Qasr el-Migysbah. This area was the beginning of the old caravan route from Bahariya to Siwa Oasis and the temple here is the only known temple in the whole of the Western Desert to be built in the name of the Greek conqueror Alexander ‘The Great’, whose images and cartouches were found by Ahmed Fakhry when he excavated the monument between 1939 and 1942. Though we searched for a cartouche, the reliefs in the largest chamber are so damaged and worn that little can be made out at all and the low walls of the smaller square chamber were quite bare. A lot of consolidation has taken place here recently and the walls of the main building are built up and roofed, but there is really little to see of interest. The surrounding area which is comprised of mudbrick walls of priests’ houses is strewn with pottery. The guards here were quite unfriendly and couldn’t make up their minds whether to allow photography or not so in the end we gave up and after stopping a while to admire the view over the palm and grass-covered landscape, we went back to the hotel.

The most interesting part of the day came later in the afternoon when I went for a walk with Kevin and Tim, up the mountain behind our hotel to Gebel el-Maysarah. We were just going to climb to the top and look at the view, but the amazing landscape kept leading us on further. This is called the ‘Black Mountain’ for good reason because it is covered in a very strange black residue – a thick layer of ferruginous quartzite and dolomite rock that felt like we could be walking on the surface of some alien planet. Once on the flat top of the mountain, gentle slopes led to steep gorges as we wound our way around the edges of the hills until we came eventually to some dark disused stone buildings with a story that I heard later in the Bawiti coffee shop. Locally known as ‘English Mountain’, Gebel Maysarah’s peak was the location of a fortress built by a Captain Williams during the second world war. This housed British troops and was a lookout post to keep an eye open for Sanusi raids from Libya. Situated in such a wild and remote place, the fortress gave a view over the whole of Baharia Oasis to the north and south and to the west, but must have been a lonely spot for the soldiers. We could see groves of palm trees and cultivated agricultural areas far below us and in the distance there were two large lakes, all bounded by the gentle escarpment that surrounds the oasis. By the time we came down off the mountain it was already quite dark.

The Road to Bahariya

Journal: Wednesday 12 November 2003

Leaving the Farafra hotel after breakfast this morning we set off in the minibus to drive to our next destination and the last oasis in the New Valley, Bahariya. We climbed up over the high chalky-white Farafra escarpment and onto the plateau, past the solitary hill called ‘Twin Peaks’ that is a Farafra landmark. At a point about 65km from Farafra, we found Gebel el-Izaz, also known as Crystal Mountain.

Stopping at the side of the road we all got out to have a walk around this area where many lumps of sparkling quartz crystal are lying about on the sand. The main feature here is a large rock with a hole through its centre like an arch and all the surrounding rocks contain a large proportion of quartz – a geologists heaven!

After spending last night in the White Desert, we now approached the Black Desert, an large area of desert that is covered with black stones, and it reminded me a little of the drive from Aswan to Abu Simbel. It also reminded me of the slag-heaps littering the mining areas of north-east England half a century ago. We were aiming for el-Hayz, but Sam wasn’t sure if the road to the little oasis would be passable in our minibus as it was in poor condition last time she was there. When we reached the turnoff however, we found that the road had been re-made. We were in luck.

El-Hayz, the collective name for several small hamlets, is an important area of mostly Roman remains that has been under excavation by the Czech Institute of Egyptology at Prague’s Charles University, for the past few seasons. It is possibly the ‘Fourth Oasis’ of the seven that are mentioned at Edfu Temple, lying on the main ancient caravan route between Farafra and Bahariya. There are springs, ancient settlements with elaborate underground irrigation systems, old orchards and remnants of agriculture. The largest settlement was at Ain el-Ris, where remains of a Roman mudbrick fortress can still be seen and this was probably once a major and wealthy Roman camp and an important stopping place on the desert trade routes. There is also a large and well-preserved early Christian church which was described by Belzoni and Cailliaud in the early 19th century, but the paintings and frescos have deteriorated even since Ahmed Fakhry wrote about it in the 1930s. The now-roofless church is a basilica type, constructed in two stories of mudbrick and was probably dedicated to St George, suggested by descriptions of a man riding a horse in the paintings, he was a popular saint in the oases. Fakhry suggested that the date of the church was no later than the 5th to 6th century and it is the only well-preserved early Christian Church in the Western Desert.

Eventually in the late afternoon we arrived in Bawiti, the main town in Bahariya Oasis and checked into the Oasis Panorama Hotel where we had pre-booked rooms. This was a big new hotel described in the Rough Guide as ‘… a Red Sea hotel half-way up the Black Mountain’. It is indeed nestled into the side of a mountain that looms up behind it. I was not very impressed however as it is large, basic and anonymous with lots of concrete and could not be called picturesque. Kevin dubbed it the ‘Tacky Hilton’ because of its big neon sign that showed up for miles. We had an early dinner in the hotel and some of us then went to a coffee shop in town where we sat and chatted to the friendly locals.