A Long Long Drive

Journal: Friday 21 January 2011

Around 11.00am, showered and somewhat refreshed but with amazing images of the White Desert still in our heads, Fiona, Malcolm and I joined Sam and Abdul at the minibus, all loaded up ready for the long drive from Qasr el-Farafra all the way back to Kharga. Our policeman Basim had mysteriously re-appeared to join us too. Some protection that was!

The journey in reverse was no more interesting than on the way. I was listening for several hours to a Paul Sussman narrated e-book on my Kindle, ‘The Last Secrets of the Temple’. This allowed me to watch the road for any possible excitement on route and not to miss anything. We saw several mirages towards the distant hills, giving the impression of vast lakes in the desert, but quite illusive to photograph. Half way to Dakhla we saw a guy on a bicycle pushing his way up a hill, laden with side panniers and looking very hot. Wow, that’s some ride!

After 300km we reached Dakhla and looked for somewhere in Mut to stop for a coffee break. Nowhere seemed quite right to Abdul. The reason for this was because we also needed to find a toilet, more of a difficult proposition in Egypt where coffee shops are populated only by men. Eventually we pulled up on a street and Basim got out and disappeared down the road, coming back and saying he had found us a toilet. Fiona Malcolm and I followed him to a small Egyptian hotel where the manager showed us upstairs to his ‘best suite’ which had a huge bathroom we could have held a party in. Though I hate putting people to so much trouble, Basim had his uses after all!

After a quick coffee on one of Mut’s main streets we were back on the road and arrived at the Pioneer Hotel in Kharga City just in time for dinner. Abdul was relieved that he didn’t have to drive too far on the desert road in the dark as there are many potholes and hidden obstacles. We were all tired and travel-weary and the five-course meal we were presented with in the dining room was mostly untouched. An early night for all.

Advertisements

The Old and the Very Old

Journal: Wednesday 19 January 2011

The modern town of Mut is the main centre of population in Dakhla and was built up around an earlier Medieval town, also called Mut. Then there is Mut el-Kharab (Mut the Ruined) earlier still. Leaving our hotel this morning – the Mut 3 – we went off to explore, yes, Mut!

Named after the Goddess Mut, Mut el-Kharab was the original settlement in the centre of Dakhla Oasis, said to date back to Dynasty XVIII, though its high mudbrick enclosing walls and the remains visible today are Roman. We pulled up by an entrance and began to climb a sandy slope towards the high point of the site. There seemed to be nobody about as we stopped to examine an interesting circular mudbrick structure with a deep cavity below, but within a minute we were spotted and shouted at by a guard. Apparently the site is closed and a team from the Dakhla Oasis Project  were working. We got no further and were not even allowed to take a photograph of the site. I had wanted to see the remains of a temple of Seth which has been found here, but walking around the outside of the site there was a high wall or bushes with little opportunity to even take a peak. You win some, you lose some.

The Medieval town of Mut was accessible however and Fiona, Malcolm and I walked a little way into the warren of narrow crumbling shaded streets with Basim, our minder. Few people actually live there today and the old town has a very neglected feel, with buildings in various states of decay, but I could imagine how beautiful it must have been in its prime.

Mut the modern town is quite charming with wide streets and well-kept buildings and has a feeling of quiet rural prosperity. It’s quite a contrast to Kharga City which, though busy and bustling, looks quite run-down in some parts. I think the goddess herself would be pleased with her town today. By mid-morning we were near the medieval town outside a coffee-shop for the first strong Egyptian coffee of the day, surrounded by cats and enjoying the sunshine – something we hadn’t seen much of until today.

We took the loop road to Qasr Dakhla, our next stop on today’s itinerary and for me one of the high-points of the Oasis. We passed by the ancient sites of Galamun and Amheida, both of which are under excavation, past fields, cemeteries and Sheikh’s tombs, then around to the north-western edge of the depression. Nestled under the ever-present apricot-pink escarpment, el-Qasr is said to be the longest continuously inhabited town in the oasis.

No tickets were necessary for the guided tour of the medieval fortified town of Qasr Dakhla. We began at the mosque of Sheikh Nasr el-Din, which is a 19th century restoration of an older building that was destroyed, leaving only the original and very distinctive Ayyubid minaret. Leaving the mosque we wound our way through the narrow streets and alleyways,  dark and mysterious, where the tall narrow three-storied mudbrick houses almost touched above our heads. Some of the wooden doors were below the current ground level and elaborate wooden windows high on the upper stories of houses were almost falling out in places. Most of the buildings were numbered and had the owner’s name painted or carved on a sign. Intricately carved lintels illustrated quotations from the Quran and we even saw a few pharaonic blocks that had been built into walls. The old town, though fairly neglected, is still populated by around 700 people but we only caught a fleeting glance of any inhabitants – here and there, a colourfully-dressed lady throwing out a pan of water to settle the dust or a couple of girls balancing baskets on their heads disappear around a corner.

The guide showed us the olive press, made from the wood of an old olive tree and a mill for grinding grain that would once have been turned by an ox, then a blacksmith’s shop complete with forge and bellows from which strange giant iron nails were produced for sale – all preserved for tourists of course. We saw the madrasa, a school where boys went to learn Quranic scriptures and which was the largest building in the town. The whole place is seeped in history and the atmosphere is one of a bygone time. Most of all it is very photogenic and I must have taken hundreds of pictures on our tour. We ended up by the Ethnographic Museum where traditional crafts and costumes are displayed and sold and photographs on the wall tell of the history of el-Qasr. Ladies outside sat on the ground surrounded by their colourful woven palm-leaf baskets for sale. But it was time to move on. Sam and Abdul had stayed in a coffee shop outside the town and we went to meet up with them and have another coffee. From the roof there was a fabulous view of el-Qasr.

Further to the north-west Dakhla’s only mountain, Mount Edmonstone, named after the first western traveller to Dakhla (by whom, I wondered), rose high above the desert, marked by its distinctive flat top. We drove towards the mountain and turned off down a track past remains of several Roman farmsteads to the Temple of Deir el-Hagar, literally ‘the Stone Monastery’. It was Sir Archibald Edmondstone who first began to clear the sand-filled interior of the temple in 1819. When he and other early explorers first encountered this Roman temple it must have been a romantic sight, in reasonable condition but with an air of decay. Today it has been thoroughly restored by the Dakhla Oasis Project and the story and photographs illustrating the temple’s restoration can be seen in a small visitor centre at the site. There are many interesting elements at Deir el-Hagar including a single intact papyrus column at the entrance to the sanctuary which bears the names in carved graffiti of nineteenth century explorers of the Rohlfs expedition. A huge ceiling block with an astronomical motif has been pieced together and displayed upright for easier viewing on the south side of the temple – a unique scene for a sanctuary ceiling apparently. The original temple was built by the Emperor Nero, added to by Vespasian, Titus and finally Domitian in the first century AD.

This was an area of agricultural importance and the temple would have served the Roman soldiers and the farmers who lived in the area. A stone gate was the main entrance through a large mudbrick enclosure wall and a processional way was defined by 20 mudbrick columns leading to the temple. Inside there are six chambers, including a staircase to the roof. It gives the impression of a miniature version of the Ptloemaic temples seen in the Nile Valley and is similar in style to other Roman temples we had seen in Kharga. This was the only place in Dakhla we saw other tourists as a coach of around a dozen people was just leaving as we arrived.

El-Muzzawaka means ‘the Painted Rock’ and here, not far from Deir el-Hagar, are hundreds of robbed tombs that honeycomb the flat-topped gebel. The most famous are the colourful painted tombs of Padiosiris and Petubastis which combine typical Egyptian funerary art with un-Egyptian classical figures. These tombs were closed last time I was here in 2003 and though we were told the restoration has been completed, we were still not allowed inside. Instead, after we had bought tickets, the gafir took us on a walk-about of the hill urgently insisting we look at the mummies. I remembered from my last visit, the various undecorated tombs with quite a number of mummified corpses lying about haphazardly so I was just as insistent about not seeing them. I did have a look at some kind of extensive water feature and there was a great view of yardangs scattered about on the slope below. A big new visitor centre has been built here since my last visit but this too was not yet open.

When we got back to the hotel late in the afternoon we found the hot spring was now running. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring my swimsuit, but Malcolm and Fiona were soon having a dip in the warm muddy water while I sat on the edge and dangled my legs in, watching them slowly turn brown from the minerals. It’s been a long but very enjoyable day.

To Dakhla Oasis

Tuesday 18 January 2011

The drive from Kharga to Dakhla Oasis is perhaps the most varied and interesting stretch of the New Valley road. We left Kharga City this morning for the long drive, only after discovering that Basim, the policeman who had accompanied us around the Kharga sites, was to travel with us in the mini-bus all the way to Dakhla. There didn’t seem to be any explanation for this extra security, if that’s what it was, it was just the way it had to be. We also had a police truck escorting us out of the city as far as Dakhla Governorate.

The Arabic name Dakhla means the ‘inner’ oasis, being further west and deeper into the desert than Kharga. We drove along the road that follows the ancient route of the Darb el-Ghabari, past sickle-shaped sand dunes, yardangs that look like sleeping sandstone lions, then fields of black conical hills that seem to extend deep into the desert. These strange natural hills look like prototypes for the pyramids and I’m sure this is where the pharaohs got the idea from. The road follows the distant slopes of the Abu Tartur plateau which rises steeply to the east.

Our first stop, about 140km from Kharga, was at the rock inscriptions just before the village of Tineida, at the entrance to Dakhla Oasis. Here, large outcrops of sandstone rocks rise on either side of the road, one especially notable as being shaped like a camel. Many faces of the rocks are covered in inscriptions and graffiti. I have seen drawings of prehistoric figures on these rocks and when I first visited the site in 2003 I’m sure there were at least a few surviving ancient carvings that we could identify. Today we could find nothing that we could be sure was old. The four of us covered every inch of the largest of the rocks but could see nothing but modern graffiti. It was very disappointing. Admittedly, the sky had clouded over and the hammered and bruised inscriptions that we did find, looked very shallow without the sun to define them. The dry harsh wind that is invariably blowing at Dakhla may have eventually destroyed them, but I cannot believe that rock inscriptions which have survived thousands of years could disappear in a few decades. It is more likely that modern graffiti has obliterated much of the original prehistoric art. This is pure vandalism!

Driving onwards into the oasis we began to see vibrant green fields of rice, wheat and animal fodder and of course date palms. We passed the village of Bashendi and the site of a recently discovered temple of Amun-Nakht at Ain Birbiya, knowing that it has now been back-filled to preserve it so we didn’t stop. We took a detour up the sandy track to Ismant el-Kharab, the ancient town of Kellis. The gafir here told us that a team was working at the site and though he offered to let us look around we didn’t feel it right to disturb the archaeologists.

The escarpment to the east of the road looked amazing as we contnued our journey. The palest apricot sand-covered slopes reflect dark, constantly-moving cloud patterns and look like they have been airbrushed in above lush green fields. We began to see men and women wearing the distinctive conical woven sun-hats traditional to Dakhla who were driving donkey-carts along the road, at last suggesting that we were nearing civilization. Dakhla has a totally individual flavour unlike any of the other oases and a wonderful feeling of tranquility.

Our next stop was near the village of Balat at the Old Kingdom necropolis of Qila el-Dab’a. It was only early afternoon but the clouds were thickening and the wind was raw and cutting as we left the parked minibus to meet the gafir. We bought our tickets for 25 LE and were shown around the site by a guard. There are remains of seven or eight large stepped mastabas here, most belonging to Dynasty VI governors of the oasis. When we reached the mastaba of Khentika, who governed the oasis during the reign of Pepi II, we descended a steep flight of stone steps into the beautifully painted and restored subterranean burial chamber. We also visited another restored tomb, or at least the sarcophagus, of a man named Bitsu which I hadn’t seen on my last visit. Some of the other mastabas can be seen only as low walls that mark out the area of the superstructures.

We would have liked to visit Ain Asil, the town site associated with the necropolis, but the track from Qila el-Dab’a was covered with sand and none of us especially felt like walking the few kilometres to the site as we were freezing by this time. Back in the minibus we drove on to our destination, the town of Mut, capital of Dakhla Oasis, and to the Mut 3 Hotel. Last time I stayed here a friend had dubbed it the ‘Mudhole Hilton’ because of its hot spring, one of several in Dakhla. At the hotel we were given chalets around the spring, which is in the form of a circular pool, though the brown sludgy colour could easily put anyone off going for a dip. Today however, the water from the spring was turned off so no-one was allowed to use it anyway. We were told that there had been rain in the oasis in recent days and the farmers who controlled the spring had turned it off to conserve the water as it was not needed for the fields.

We all had dinner in the main hotel building which is a short walk down the road. It didn’t look like there were any other guests today. Later, in the darkness, Sam and I sat muffled in our coats near the pool and watched giant bats sweeping over the water after insects and piercing the otherwise silent night with their high-pitched peeping noises.

Temples Tombs and Medieval Dakhla

Journal: Monday 10 November 2003

This morning we set off to explore the western end of Dakhla Oasis, the road bounded all along its northern edge by the distant line of pale hills that forms the escarpment. Beyond the cultivation and right at the edge of the desert we came to one of the best-preserved Roman monuments of the Oasis – the temple at Deir el-Hagar, whose name means ‘Monastery of Stone’.

This is another temple, like Hibis, that had been buried by sand for many centuries and has recently been restored, with quite a bit of reconstruction. The original building work dates to the reign of the Emperor Nero and was dedicated to the Theban Triad of Amun, Mut and Khons, though other emperors have also left their names on its walls. A lovely temple, with a long paved processional way leading from a large gateway in the thick mudbrick enclosure wall. Near the gate we saw remains of brightly painted plaster with decorations and inscriptions in Greek. Travellers have left graffiti here since very early times, even on the round rough columns in the hypostyle hall. The sanctuary once contained a magnificent and unique astronomical ceiling with the arching figure of the sky-goddess Nut and her consort, the earth-god Geb and this has now been set up outside the temple for easy viewing. Many deities are depicted in the sanctuary and I saw again the oasis gods, Amun-nakht and his consort Hathor and Thoth with his desert consort Nehmetaway. Outside the temple there was a small building that displayed plans and information on the temple restoration, including many photographs and in the distance on rising ground to the north-west of the temple I could see the Roman Period cemetery where, we were told, crude human-headed terracotta coffins have been uncovered.

Our next stop was the site of  el-Muzzawaka, whose name means ‘The Decorated Hill’ because of the many painted Roman Period tombs found here. Once part of the settlement of Amheida on the edge of the Oasis, the tombs here were cut into the soft ridges of high ground. The two most interesting tombs, belonging to Petubastis and Petosiris which are said to be outstanding for their colourful frescos, were unfortunately locked up and we were not able to go inside because they are collapsing. The guards did offer to show us other tombs, which they assured us had many mummies and skeletons, but were undecorated. I’m not squeamish but I really don’t feel comfortable looking at disregarded human limbs and skulls sticking up out of the sand, so I declined their offer. One thing I did notice here was how small most of the tomb openings were, as though built for tiny people.

Back in the minibus we drove the short distance to Qasr Dakhla, the fortified medieval town of Dakhla that is still inhabited, unlike Mut, which is now crumbling and deserted. History was all around us as we began to walk through the narrow partly-covered alleys and dirt-tracks of the village. El-Qasr was occupied from the Roman period onwards, but what remains today is medieval Islamic architecture, a maze of elaborately carved wooden lintels over dark intriguing doorways and crumbling walls. At least two of the houses that have been restored were quite large and must have belonged to wealthy families. We went into one of the houses where an ancient crooked staircase led up to sleeping quarters with shuttered windows on an upper floor and tried to imagine what it would have been like to live there. Many of the carved door-lintels had verses from the Quran and the names of the occupying family but I noticed in a couple of places there were stone lintels with hieroglyphs, upside-down and obviously recycled from some nearby temple or tomb.

A local guide showed us around el-Qasr because we would have quickly lost ourselves among the narrow interlinking streets. We were shown an ancient olive press and given a demonstration of grinding grain. I have to say it really was a photographer’s paradise and given enough film I could have stayed all day. Coming out of the village we had a look at the mosque with its 12th century Ayyubid minaret, the only original part of the building still standing. The rest was destroyed to build the mausoleum of Sheikh Nasr el-Din. We ended our visit with a look around the Museum of Ethnology where many old photographs adorn the walls and examples of crafts and clothing are exhibited.

Our return journey to our hotel took us past the site of the settlement of Amheida, which an American team has been excavating. Here at the edge of the desert the wind was so strong that dust and sand filled the air and we didn’t even get out of the bus to look at the site from the edge of the road. On the loop road back to Mut we passed the hundreds of blue-domed tombs in the huge Muslim cemetery at Qalamun, several of the tall distinctive oasis pigeon houses and a few areas of mudbrick ruins that we couldn’t identify. It was a lovely day.

Back at the hotel, Elizabeth, Val, Judy and I went for a bob-around the hotspring, which must be about a metre and a half deep as the water reaches up to my chin when I stand on tiptoe. We ate again at our ‘usual’ restaurant and had coffee in the same place as last night. We’re creatures of habit if we find a good place to eat.

Dakhla Monuments

Journal: Sunday 9 November 2003

When we left our hotel this morning at 9.00am there were no police waiting around to accompany us. Fantastic, we thought – and left without them to drive in the minibus to Tineida on the edge of the oasis. After passing through a green, richly cultivated area, we stopped by some large red rock formations at the side of the road and all piled out of the minibus to wander around the rocks.

On the back of the largest rock there are many ancient carvings, some worn and some better preserved. It was difficult to tell the date of the depictions of giraffes, camels and men on horses as well as old graffiti that were mostly bruised into the soft surface of the sandstone but archaeologists suggest that at least some of them may predate the pharaonic era. There are also many obviously modern Arabic graffiti left by more recent travellers who have passed this way. Smaller rocks here seem to grow out of the desert and moulded by the wind and sand they have formed curious shapes, one of which looks like a camel sitting down.

Back along the road towards Mut we stopped at Ismant el-Kharab, the ancient town of Kellis. We weren’t sure if it would be possible to go onto the site as it is currently being excavated, but when we asked the gafir he said it would be OK to have a look around as long as we kept to the tracks that criss-crossed the area. Sam and I had both met Tony Mills, director of the Dakhla Oasis Project in England and he had told us to give him a call when we were in Dakhla and he would show us around. However, when Sam phoned him yesterday he was away in Cairo, so we were not able to meet up.

Kellis is a huge town site that was inhabited for seven centuries from around 300 BC to 300 AD, when it was suddenly deserted. There are many mudbrick dwellings, four churches, wells, a bath-house, storage buildings, aqueducts and a cemetery of free-standing tombs that have given archaeologists a great deal of information about life during Roman and Coptic times in the oasis. The excavators have also found an enormous amount of papyrus fragments and texts written in Greek and Coptic that they have been able to piece together, which show a great diversity of beliefs here. It is Kellis where the famous wooden notebooks we saw in Kharga museum were found – these illustrate the transition from papyrus scrolls to books and are the best-preserved books known from this period. The most interesting monuments I found here were the two stone temples of Kellis. Although fairly destroyed and now backfilled with sand after excavation so that there was little to see, they were temples and shrines dedicated to the little-known and obscure god Tutu and the goddesses Neith and Tapsais. Tutu was revered in Graeco-Roman times, a son of Neith who was given the intriguing title ‘Master of Demons’ or ‘he who keeps enemies at a distance’ and he was believed to provide protection from hostile forces and evil demons. He was depicted in the form of a walking lion or a sphinx, sometimes with a human head, the wings of a bird and the tail of a snake and Kellis is the only known cult-centre for this deity. It was just a pity there where no reliefs visible here that depicted the strange god.

After driving west again for a few kilometres we came to the modern village of Balat and beyond this, the Old Kingdom necropolis of Qila el-Daba. It was here that the tourist police caught up with us and they were not amused at us for going off without them. More trouble for Abdul and Mohammed! The modern name of the settlement associated with Qila el-Daba is Ain Asil, built on an important junction on the ancient trade routes through the oasis and it is said to be the best example in Egypt of an Old Kingdom town. The French IFAO have been excavating both sites for several years and have found many well-preserved buildings, including a governor’s palace, houses and workshops. The earliest part, once the administrative centre of Dakhla, dates to the reigns of Pepi I and Pepi II.

We were not allowed to go to Ain Asil today however so we concentrated on the huge mudbrick mastabas at Qila el-Daba a couple of kilometres away. The seven large mastabas belonged to governors of the oasis, important and wealthy men in their time, and one of the most recently discovered tombs found by the French team still contained the mummy of a Dynasty VI ruler. Other mastabas have already been restored and we were able to enter the subterranean chambers of Khentika and have a look at his small painted burial chamber. Many of the mastabas of the governors were found to contain rich burial equipment with wooden or ceramic coffins, but further cemeteries containing more modest burials have been found to the south and east of the mastabas. The area is also covered with pit-graves where the more humble population were laid to rest wrapped only in layers of matting. I remembered seeing some of the stelae and several items of pottery from Qila el-Daba in Kharga Museum yesterday.

Our visit to Qila el-Daba was spoilt not only by the angry shouting of the police when they caught up with us but also because my Nikon has broken. As my main camera I rely totally on the SLR which now has no metering or frame numbers. Thank goodness I still have my little Pentax compact as a back-up, but I’m feeling pretty upset because this is a trip I won’t be able to repeat for a long time.

When we arrived back at the hotel we were told that there had been a mix-up with bookings and we all had to shuffle around. Kevin and I ended up in rooms in the annex while the others were all given rooms in the main building. It seems that the chalets around the hot-spring had been double booked, but a few of us walked along the road to the pool to wallow in the mud for a short time in the late afternoon. Our early evening meal – Iftar – was a repeat of last night. It wasn’t worth trying anywhere else as the food was so good in the little restaurant. Sam, Val, Elizabeth and I sat in a coffee shop and played Jenga for the rest of the evening until we felt quite cold and walked back to the hotel around Midnight.

To the ‘Mudhole Hilton’

Journal: Saturday 8 November 2003

Kharga City is flanked on its northern edge by the Gebel el-Teir and it was here that we found the early Christian cemetery of Bagawat this morning, about five minutes drive from the town centre. The cemetery, said to be one of the oldest Christian burial places in the world, sprawls up the sandy hill-slopes of the gebel and I wondered whether it was like the old Muslim cemeteries, built on the site of more ancient tombs and later found that it was.

The cemetery of 263 chapels is like a little mudbrick city with streets of domed-roof tombs, each having a tall arched doorway. We walked along a couple of the ‘streets’ and went inside two of the most elaborately decorated. These were named the ‘Chapel of the Exodus’ and ‘Chapel of Peace’ and are well-preserved with beautiful frescos and painted ceilings depicting scenes from the Old Testament in a mixture of Pharaonic, Greek and Byzantine styles. Similar to ancient Egyptian tombs, the chapels were constructed over a deep burial pit which usually contained several burials and their purpose was to revere the deceased. Many of the chapels date from the 4th century onwards and we were told by the guide that the cemetery was in use until the 11th century. The Christians of Kharga embalmed their dead long after the tradition had been discontinued in other areas of Egypt. We walked as far as the mudbrick church in the centre of the cemetery on higher ground.

A few minutes back towards town we arrived at Hibis Temple, the largest and best preserved temple of the oasis and I had been really looking forward to this visit. Sam had been here before and I had seen her photographs of some unique reliefs, so it was a little disappointing that we were not allowed to go inside today. The large stone structure is covered in wooden scaffolding because restorations are taking place. The limestone temple was once part of Hebet, the pharaonic capital of Kharga Oasis and dates to the Persian ruler Darius I, though decorated and enlarged by successive kings. Dedicated to the Theban Triad, we could see some of the lovely colourful reliefs of offering scenes on the large stone gateway and could peek through an iron grill into the courtyard which still has 12 palm columns of an early composite style. I couldn’t see the relief I had wanted to see however, which is in one of the rear chambers and depicts an unusual winged figure of Seth, god of the desert oases, with the head of a falcon and painted blue. The noticeable colour of paint predominant here is a distinctive kind of pale blue-green that Sam calls ‘Kharga green’ and which isn’t seen anywhere else. We walked all around the outer temple walls and saw some very fine hieroglyphs and reliefs from the Persian era – a period that is not well represented in other temples – preserved by the sand that had buried the temple for centuries.

Time to move on and back into Kharga to visit the Cultural Museum, one of the Ministry of Culture’s new wave of museums in a newly constructed building. The building itself is quite special, constructed to echo the style of the chapels at Bagawat. Inside there are two floors of artefacts, mostly from the oases of Kharga and Dakhla and ranging in date from the prehistoric through to Christian and Islamic eras. It would take more time than we had to look at everything properly, but one of the highlights for me were the Kellis Codices, very early wooden books written in Greek and Coptic that were found at Kellis. These important documents contain lists of accounts and payments in kind by tenant farmers during Roman times. They also give details of marriage contracts and letters and have given archaeologists tremendous insight into productivity and everyday life in the oases. I was very impressed by the museum with its modern lighting and beautifully-displayed objects.

When we were all settled back on the bus we set off on the longest single journey of our trip, leaving Kharga for Dakhla Oasis, a distance of 216km. The desert scenery was fascinating with long stretches of deep apricot-coloured undulating sand punctuated now and then by clusters of dark pyramid-shaped rocky outcrops. I wondered if this was where the Egyptian kings first came across the pyramid shape before making the decision to construct their own from stone. The drive was magical.

It had already seemed like a very long day by the time we arrived in the town of Mut, Dakhla’s capital, at 3.30pm and pulled into the Mut Talata Hotel. We had been more than happy to leave our previous hostelry but this really seemed like paradise. The hotel comprises three areas: the main hotel building, a villa and five chalets set in gardens around a hot-spring. When we went to check in we were told that the room prices had almost doubled since we first booked. Oh well, it looks like it’s worth the extra. Most of us were housed in the chalets, where I shared a room with Elizabeth. The room was basic with only two mattresses on wooden plinths, a small table and a bathroom, but at least it was very clean. Dakhla is famous for its hot-springs of which there are several, but the one in the hotel here was intriguing. The large circular pool was filled to the brim with deep brown bubbling muddy water – it certainly didn’t look inviting but is supposed to be full of iron and very therapeutic. Kevin instantly dubbed the hotel the ‘Mudhole Hilton’ and refused to be tempted to try it, though several of us spent an hour in the pool before dinner. The warm sulphur-smelling water felt wonderful! Unfortunately my new swimsuit will never be the same again.

We all ate early in a little restaurant not far from the hotel so that Abdul and Mohammed could break their fast and the food was very good. The rest of the evening we sat around the hot-spring chatting in the garden, enjoying the mild evening air while Abdul wallowed alone in the dark pool. Mohammed had again disappeared off to bed, tired from the drive. It must be a very long day for them after getting up at 5.00am for Suhoor.