Farewell, Egypt

Cairo Museum

Our last day in Egypt we visited the museum of Cairo, a crowded repository of much that came from the tombs and temples we'd been visiting. It is located practically on Tahrir Square, where not much could be seen besides heavy traffic, although everyone--cops, kids, street people-- was eager to point it out to us. (My father stayed at the Nile Hilton 10 years ago, and remembers that people crossed the street at Tahrir Square by climbing over the tops of cars.) On the other side of the museum stands a government building that was burned and left as a charred monument to the revolution.

Burnt memorial to the revolution

The Cairo Museum, built in 1901, is pink with blithe spirits of gods in stone, and plaques commemorating the succeeding empires of Egypt, with a garden of monumental granite and sandstone pharoahs and gods. Inside, Egyptians in ordinary scruffy dress tend and guard the monumental contents of Egypt's temples and tombs.

A mythic Tutankhamen (wiki)

Howard Carter discovering the boy king (wiki)

Where his vital organs were stored (wiki)

In these Canopic jars (wiki)

His throne, with his wife

Adel took us through the endless treasure of Tutankamen, the boy king, whose late discovery has been the most spectacular of all the tombs. Somehow overlooked, buried beneath workers' homes, it contains for example several thousand pieces of jewelry, thrones encrusted with precious stones, and three enormous sarcophagi extensively engraved in gold leaf, elaborating the journey after death. His 413 wood-carved attendants to help him in the years after death are still lively, his various beds and chairs custom-made for his leg ailment are still intact, as is his retinue of bejeweled canes, symbols of authority. It is not known how the young king died, but it is known that as the son of the famous heretic Akhenaten, who remade Egypt in devotion to the cult of Aten instead of Amun, Tutankhamen (who used to be TutankATEN, as is engraved on some of the furniture) was persuaded back to the old religious fold by the powerful priests and must have received the benefit of their great wealth. Some of the jewelry has recently been repatriated from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the other hand, most believe that since Tutankhamen was a very minor Pharoah, his splendours probably pale next to the treasures (long ago looted and gone) of the great pharoahs.

The inner sarcophagus

We also saw the oldest art, figures of the Old Kingdom, amazingly like life in all its imperfections, the beautiful dark green diorite statue of the ruthless Pharoah Kephren, the tiny statue of the great Cheops, the only likeness we have, and elegant jewelry unearthed from the tomb of Cheops' mother, their designs still breathtaking. We saw wide-eyed couples facing the afterlife, and anecdotes from forgotten Egypt, and monumental statuary. We saw the touching art of Akhenaten, the sweet hermaphroditic idealist. On and on, we traveled through the faces of a peoples whose art and refinement outdo anything we know. We denizens of a Faustian universe, for us exalted beauty exists mainly in advertising.

Tahrir Square

As we rode through Cairo, Adel talked about his native city. Said to be the most densely populated city in the world, in some areas 700,000 people fill a square mile. Adel is a Coptic Christian who acquired flawless French through his Jesuit education. But we asked him about Muslims. Twenty years ago, he said, few women wore veils (now they are everywhere). Since 9/11 people have reacted to the negative image of Islam by adopting symbols of Arab identity. Much of the pressure to do so comes from surrounding Arab countries, said Adel, who resent Egypt's past, her grandeur and achievements.

But the Al-Azhar Mosque, of supreme importance in the Arab world since 970 AD, is in Cairo. Its chief imam, a kind of Pope of the Arab world, once met with a classroom of girls, one of whom was wearing a burka. He told her (said Adel) to take it off, because it was not truly Muslim. When Nicholas Sarkozy visited him before becoming president, he asked the imam if he could, as president, outlaw headscarves. The imam told him he could do what he wished.

Adel told us a story about a famous singer, who had given a concert 10 or 20 years ago, and wished to repeat the performance. The people of Cairo asked her to simply perform on TV. If they came to a concert with their grandmothers who did not wear headscarves, people would talk. They would prefer to sit in the comfort of their homes.

Al-Azhar Mosque

Our hotel was in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo, a kitschy (very comfortable) and interesting place where wedding parties brought many every day Egyptians, many in Islamic garb, others in track suits, others in ordinary suits and high heels. Across the heavy traffic (crossing the street Egyptian-style is a game of high risk, there aren't cross walks) was a dusty, crowded poor village of crumbling buildings and unpaved streets--something from another century. Across another street was a strip of modern shops including MacDo's, as we say in France. Adjacent to the hotel was a horse stable where in the early mornings small men worked their beautiful beasts on a track. The terrible traffic meant that we might take 3 hours, the length of the trip to Alexandria, to cross Cairo.

After years of graft and corruption, the view from the bus was desolate: crumbling cement structures, gutted and unfinished under layers of soot where laundry yet hung. The canals where aging garbage covered the banks and waters were nonetheless frequented by the most blazingly white graceful birds, that flew in flashes of brilliance, their long legs trailing. Roofs are almost unheard of, rather, crumbling cement floors missing their upper levels form the landscape, broken like decayed teeth. Below, however, is a certain sense of order, in marketplaces and souks, despite the chaotic traffic. Bolts of gorgeous fabric, curtains, abundant and bright wares flare out into the jammed side streets.

In the center of Cairo and Alexandria (said Adel), many apartments let for 5 euros a month, while new apartments sell for 100,000 euros. A quarter of Egypt lives in Cairo, and (said Adel) everyone needs an apartment in Cairo, where all necessary services (like hospitals) are located. There is incessant building, as in Alexandria, but even when a building is properly demolished, the rubble is simply left on the site.

The souk

We visited Khan Al-Khalili, the most famous souk, where merchants have been trading since the 14th c. Its narrow streets are lined with dilapidated Islamic mosques and madrasas, and 15th c. arches, and old schools of perfumes and spices. Slaves are no longer traded, and very little in the way of silks, but many of the wares have been the same for 7 centuries.

Looking for chamomile tea, I chatted with a clever Egyptian who insisted that he loved Americans. His old dream was to move to America, but that was before 9/11. Now it would be impossible. When Jacques started bargaining for my tea, he exclaimed, "I am a psychology professor, and I can see he is so worried about money that his heart is jumping from one side of his chest to the other! But you," he said to me, "you want the whole souk!"

The souk

A quick young man who was evidently gay, tried to bargain with Jacques and finally said despairingly, "It's not that important, money! You are making yourself into a different person worrying about money so much! But your wife is beautiful." I found it striking how Egyptians can take over the dialogue.  In Aswan the caleche drivers called after us: "You're not listening! You're not listening to me!"

One of the most stunning sights from the bus was the City of the Dead, an enormous cemetery 4 miles long. A grid of mausoleum and mosque-like structures, it houses not only the dead but also thousands of living, displaced by renewal or escaping the countryside. After the 1992 earthquake, people were forced to move into their families' tombs. The poorest live in the slums of the City of the Dead which is also used for garbage and recycling.The silhouette of the City of the Dead at sunset is striking, the minarets and turrets against the sky.

We left Cairo on a cool, bright morning. We would never be herded together again, nor be taunted by dark Arab eyes over our coffee habit, nor be followed down hotel hallways by silent men. We would not see Adel's broad, easy smile, his girlish lashes in a rough brown face, nor hear his verbal flourishes. Nor watch people dart across this hellish traffic a la Egyptian, nor be crushed by the sight of a little white donkey or horse being treated abysmally, head bowed, trudging among these volatile drivers in their antique vehicles, nor look down on peoples' vans crammed with all of Egypt, women with their sharp, knowing eyes, nor the lively quick smiles of men.

On entering the airport, at the ticket counter, you are immediately facing improvised men's and women's prayer sections, delineated by carpets. Downstairs by the less than clean bathrooms puddled with water, are the official prayer sections. Above, the airy light modern waiting rooms are divided by European and American nationalities.

We are so sated and overstuffed with impressions from a world long past and its spell. It is a spell that captured the ancient Egyptians themselves, the spell of the afterlife and its 700 gods. Visions of beauty, power, protection, perhaps all that was missing in their daily lives. But who knows what their lives were truly like? Even the Pharoahs lived in mud brick palaces, residing in immaculate stone only at death.

Life is still hard on the banks of the Nile, where brilliant green binds the senses in an illusion of tranquility, and men work in long robes under the unrelenting sun, their beasts faring much worse, the long battle against the odds. But in their visions, in their skill and artistry, with their engineering feats they surpassed all, with the works of their small, brown hands.

The Great Pyramids, Saqqara and Memphis

Giza's plain stretches from hectic suburbs out to the empty horizon, where the last of the Seven Wonders of the World stands, Cheop's Pyramid. Now badly scarred, the pyramids were once cased in glittering white limestone, three prisms lined up on the desert. The casing has been stripped long ago, for use in building later empires, usually those of foreign rulers.

Khefren's Pyramid

The statistics overwhelm the senses: built in the 26th c BC, Cheop's pyramid contains 2.3 million limestone blocks, each weighing an average of 2.5 tons. The precision with which these gigantic blocks were placed is breathtaking--there is no margin of error greater than 0.2% in its symmetry. Napoleon calculated that its stones, piled in a 3 ft wall, could surround all of France. Built over the course of only (according to one estimate) 30 years, it employed 100,000 workers, who (according to our guide) wanted to join Cheops in Paradise. But the stories are legion--there are still advocates of the theory that only aliens from outer space could have built them--and the facts difficult to ascertain. Was it an astronomical observatory, a kind of almanac, a prism to concentrate energy? Was it a center of initiation? Napoleon reputedly was searching for its Masonic Brotherhood connection, when he slept inside the burial chamber and emerged in the morning, shaken.

Now rough exteriors

The second pyramid, of Cheop's son Khefren, retains some of its limestone veneer and has a more composed appearance. The three great pyramids are perfectly aligned, astounding for such ponderous creations, each block unimaginably heavy.

We climbed inside the burial chamber of Cheop's pyramic, a steep ascent on a narrow ramp which requires a certain amount of acrobatics, especially as crowds pass each other going in different directions. The chamber itself was spare, but neither stuffy or claustrophobic--somehow the air seems purified inside. It was a profound experience, but we were hurried along by the guard whose job it is to keep damage at a minimum.

Omar of the secret police, trying to get baksheesh

Tourism is down some 70% in Egypt, hence we were always magnets for every vendor and would-be guide. A boy thrust his wares at Jacques--try it!-and suddenly his fingers were in Jacques' breast pocket where he kept some cash. Meanwhile we were being accompanied by a hefty man who had ridden on our bus with us and claimed to be "security"--but who did nothing about the boy. Turned out our friend, Omar, was with the secret police, but that didn't stop him from desperately trying to hit us up for baksheesh!

Immortal Sphinx

Before Khefren's pyramid is the iconic Sphinx---to reach this splendid creature we rode the bus around the vast monuments. Terribly damaged, apparently by water seepage, the Sphinx is also subject to much speculation of origins, one theory makes it 10,000 years old. It was also damaged by Turkish rifle practice. It is carved of a single block of stone, 2558-1532 BC, dates on which most Egyptologists agree. It is the earliest colossus.

Goddess Ma'at at the Louvre

Below is the funerary temple where Khefren's body was mummified--for a pharoah, the process took 3 months. The brain was extracted through the nose, the organs were extracted and preserved each in their own funerary urn, sometimes in different tombs, and most importantly the heart was extracted, desiccated and then replaced, for it would be weighed by the goddess Ma'at, after the long journey to the other world, against her feather. If the balance was perfect, the Pharoah would join the Immortals. Ma'at is often depicted on sarcophagi with vast, graceful wings, which signify protection in Egyptian art. Originally--before 3,000 BC--Egyptians were buried in the sand and perfectly preserved by the dry climate. When sarcophagi were adopted, so was mummification, to duplicate the perfect preservation that had been accomplished by the elements of Egypt.

The first Pyramid, by Imhotep

Pyramids are actually strewn throughout Egypt, the earliest at Saqqara, where the great architect Imhotep developed the Step Pyramid for his Pharoah Djoser (2667-2648 BC). The temple that Imhotep built there was the first stone building ever built, and remains elegant, its architecture still imitated. Nearby is a small but exquisite museum in honor of Imhotep, his matchless sense of beauty and engineering ingenuity.

World's first stone building

Saqqara was the great Necropolis for the Old Kingdom, beginning in 3100 BC. Smaller pyramids, mastabas and other tombs are everywhere. We visited the small, crumbling pyramid of Teti (2345-2323 BC) whose subterranean walls are covered with hieroglyphics--hymns, litanies and magical spells. This was the beginning of tomb decorations which would flower into majestic reliefs in later times. The tomb guardian, a toothless old man in a jellabah, showed us the name "Teti" over and over again in the endless engravings.

More beautiful is the mastaba of Mereruka, a son-in-law of Teti, with its colorful painted reliefs of hunting the exquisite wildlife, perfectly carved ducks and hippos. The entire tomb of Mereruka has some 33 rooms, of which we visited about 4. Many of the monuments in Egypt are closed for work, or open on rotational bases to avoid too much damage from the breath of tourists.

A blind man in our group, discovering Ramses II

While kings were buried at Saqqara, the center of power was old Memphis, the world's first capitol, 4,000 years before Cairo was built (using Memphis' stones). Even in Herodotus' time (5th c. BC) Memphis was a bustling, gleaming metropolis, but now it is buried beneath a sleepy village where plastic bags blow and garbage remains uncollected. A small museum has managed to retain what statuary has not been spirited to other countries, most impressively an enormous Ramses II, now lying on the ground.

Leaving the South for Alexandria

Luxor

Quiet smooth departure, farewell to the Temple of Luxor, massive columns against the sunrise, the alley of the Sphinxes and the spare Temple of Karnak.

The evening before we had disembarked at Esna, its typically dusty streets and crumbled concrete, to a famous temple which had just closed. The venders ran after us with their wares, as an exhausted white ass crumbled in the dust, her large eyes wary, her ears twitching back and forth. We decided to bargain for a jellabah. Four men and a boy ruffled through their huge store of jellabahs till I chose a beautifully embroidered one, and Jacques began his aggressive, impassive bargaining. The men were shocked, and pleaded with me (trapped as I was among the heavy male shouting) why don't you help us? Il est dur, I said. We get it for 10 euros, quite a deal, and the men are fuming.  And I am ready to leave behind all the badly abused horses and burros, their exhausted, traumatized eyes.

Pyramids beyond the city

Our flight from Luxor descends to Cairo's rosy beige sand and we board our bus for Alexandria. Cairo is working hard on making the desert bloom, but construction is halted everywhere. Endless unfinished buildings have no rooftops, but upper story brick floors bristle with steel struts, or simply crumble while still uninhabited. Since the revolution, everything from garbage collection to postal service has suffered.

Cairo's contrasts

Contrasts: gated communities of nouveau riche villas sit next to dusty tin and concrete enclaves. Roads of corrugated tin stores with beasts of burden trudging in the dust adjoin sudden fields of green crops with sheep, oxen and asses. People came to live on the outskirts of Cairo for the fertile Nile, but their construction has buried all the greenery under crumbling brick and plaster bidonvilles. Where units have been stuccoed and painted they have an attractive Moorish style, but more often bright laundry hangs from battered, unfinished concrete. And lo, the Pyramids can be seen, topping all the dust and smog and dilapidated buildings.

Raising pigeons

Out on the Desert Road to Alexandria are acres of vegetables tended by squatting men in jellabas and their livestock. Palm trees whose lower dry branches still cover the trunk border long-needled pines, orchards and vineyards. On the side of the road, selling their wares, vendors sit in tents of sticks and plastic. The canal has stretched up from Abu Simbel to yield crops and flowering pink fruit trees. I smile at a pickup truck of teenagers and they have quick smiles to return, waving two hands in the air. The pickups have ornately covered headboards in the back, and personalized mottos (Trust No One, Rambo, etc.). Everywhere are pigeon towers, for Egyptian feasts. They look like beehives, meters high and aerated with holes and nooks. Oranges are spilled frequently in piles on the sides of the road.

1930's Alexandria

Three hours later we are in Alexandria, which is freezing, a fierce wind blowing on the rough Mediterranean. We arrive at Athenios, a Greek restaurant still looking like 1930, still gaudy and golden with an ersatz Nike at the entrance, though the tablecloths were stained and a box of Kleenex serves as napkins. Still, the tomato fish soup is superb. We stroll around the dusty décor, nostalgic for Alexandria' golden ages.

Amphitheatre

One of those ages is being excavated around a Roman amphitheatre. The area was continuously inhabited from Ptolemaic times until Late Antiquity (3rd c BC-7th c AD), leaving behind mosaic floors amid crumbling stone. In the Byzantine period this was a dense maze of small houses with shops and small workshops specializing in glass and bronze production. The remains of a red brick Roman bath of the 4th c AD was once an expanse of vaults and domes, with a sumptuously decorated interior, underground heating and aqueducts.

Water heating for the baths

The Roman theatre was used for 300 years, falling into ruin only after the Islamic conquest. It was a small theatre for music performances, later expanded. Greek graffiti praises the winners in chariot races.

Nearby is a vast complex of lecture halls that was in the centre of the ancient city. All the auditoria have tiers of benches lining three of the walls and an elevated seat for the lecturer at the rounded end. Absolutely unique in the Mediterranean world, they were part of an academy of learning for which Alexandria was renown 5-7 c AD.

Alexandrian lecture hall

We drive through cramped streets in standstill traffic, the seaside corniche (boulevard) completely in ruin, moldy, flapping with dirty cloths over hollow windows, relics of an intriguing Moorish-colonial architecture, in some places restored and elegant. There are shops of antiques and dusty memorabilia and exquisite mosques of lacey stone, where demonstrations are held Friday afternoons. In city squares people sit on grass beneath palm trees as garbage swirls in the air. On the outskirts are shallow waters of bullrushes, where men and boys maneuver their flat skiffs.

Fort Qaitbey

The rough pale blue-green Mediterranean beats against gold sand and sandstone jetties, and everywhere are cats, drenched by the pounding sea at the Fort Qaitbey (15th c.), or the Citadel, the perfect little fortress. They are mangy and wet but seem to survive. They jump on boats and boulders, rocking in the waters.

Along the corniche some of the buildings are so dilapidated and discolored and abandoned that the city can seem a tragic ode to our Faustian age. Still this is the seaside resort where one escapes the summer inferno of Cairo, elegance mingled with extreme disrepair, grand hotels on the sea, across from discolored, depressing concrete piles.

The Catacombs in 1902, Wikicommons

The next day we visit some late Roman era catacombs, that have been discovered in the most dilapidated, crumbling quartier where women nonetheless walk in pristine silky scarves, and brilliantly colored clothes hang from green shutters and paneless windows. These burial vaults are the Greco-Roman version of a decadent Egyptian art. In place of the jackal Anubis, the artist depicts a dog, in the place of the ancient venerable serpent, a worm. These underground warrens apparently belonged to wealthy families of Alexandria's slow decline. We wander through the passageways now empty of bodies, decorated in remnants of Roman art.

Funeral tent, set up in the streets

As we leave the catacombs, our huge bus in the narrowest of streets, we are blocked by a man walking a ten meter ladder side to side, to construct an outdoor tent for a mourning ceremony. We maneuver endlessly around the little market of dates and fruits under the mosque on muddy rutted roads where garbage is here and there piled up and pilfered. A young skinny man comes to the side of the bus, pantomimes lighting a bomb and slamming it into the bus and laughs, and repeats the act around the bus. Dogs and cats scramble through the muddy streets, where well-constructed apartments of brick and concrete are surrounded by discarded and gutted cars--a veritable salvage emporium left on the sides of the street, next to a schoolyard with kids in new basketball outfits. Men shuffle around in dusty jellabahs. It takes almost an hour to maneuver out of the quartier. A beautifully stone-lined canal is filled with garbage. As we circle we see the mourning tent erected--it is beautiful, embroidered silk panels creating a building in the open air.

Our final stop is the Library of Alexandria, a magnificent testimony to a past of great erudition, the 3rd c. BC library having been Alexandria's finest achievement, with its half million texts. This modern day version is high-tech, with museums and exhibitions, a vast reading room, and many ancient books available digitally.

And we are back on the desert road for Cairo.

Aswan and Nubia, Mickey Mouse the Camel and pet croccodiles

We are chugging toward the Cataract Islands, whirlpools in the Nile among little islands where bullrushes might have hid the baby Moses. Colorful little boats, like painted wooden bathtubs, paddle toward us--kids with little boards for paddles catch up with us and grab the tires hanging from the sides of our motorboat, and sing Alhouette, and other French children's songs. The older adults lean over the sides and sing loudly and happily with them. They hang hard in our wake and finally let go, drifting away in the Nile.

Kitcheners Island is a botanical garden where tree species from all over the world are planted, bordered by cool aisles of royal palms. Lord Horatio Kitchener (1850-1916) had managed Egypt for the British, and been given the island where he satisfied his horticultural passions. Now it serves as a nursery and breeding ground for many species. An embassy of cats greets us on the steps of the island, overflowing with acacia and bougainvillea. They are slender with large almond eyes, and they peer at us, some in fright, some craving caresses. It is heaven here, among the healing ancient trees from India and California and every warm land.

Then we float down between palm trees and horses grazing, a full sun and wind, a short stretch in a felluca with its great slanted sail. We disembark on the desert coast of Elephantine Island, above which the rosy sandstone of the Agha Khan's mausoleum is enclosed by a rambling wall that strings over the huge sand dunes. The previous Agha Khan had come here for recuperation and finally desired to be buried here, by St. Stephen's Monastery. He is also credited with restarting the Nubian perfume business.

Mickey Mouse and dentally distressed friend

Under the wall's shadow are camels and their dark black drivers, mangy, branded and talkative---one poor thing has a bloody mouth (her tooth was pulled, said the boy who tended her), and she wails and writhes her long neck. Jacques and I are dispatched to a dark black man dressed in a winter jacket under the searing sun whose hands were ice cold. Our camel, Mickey Mouse, lumbers to standing with both of us swaying forward and back, and plods at his leisure. The camel driver hums and urges him on, and meanwhile, it turns out, strikes Mickey rhythmically with a stick. Mickey seems indifferent and reluctant to proceed, until he spots a certain camel, and hurries through the herd to sniff his genitals, causing the other to bolt. A little later he rushes through the crush to caress another camel's face with his own. As we turn around, he practically gallops the way to his spot under the wall.

Fellucca, behind is Agha Khan's tomb

We climb back on top of our motor craft to steer among bullrushes and small rock islands where birds, long and beaky, unfurl their wings and pose for us, or skim the water flourishing their wingspread.

We disembark on a hot, sandy incline above which perch Nubian houses, hobbit-likes series of arches painted in bright fantasies. We enter a house with its spacious straw roofed salon in which two adolescent croccodiles lie in a cement tank, barely lifting their eyes to us, mythic as Egyptian hieroglyphs. They are pets. A man passes around a little baby --attention, tenez bien la tete. They will be eventually released into their native waters, not eaten, we are assured. Over the entrance is nailed a dead albatross or pelican, its beak to the sky, for good luck. On the walls' exterior a graffiti of Mecca with the pilgrimage plane overhead. This is Nubia, amidst Egypt, the families displaced by Lake Nasser and given new homes by the General, whose photo is next to Sadat's and a boy of the family--the only wall decorations.

The large room is lined with benches and has tables of trinkets to buy and local dishes to taste. The bread recipe is from antiquity. leavened by the sun. After a good hour in the sweltering home, where children scamper in sweaters and beg, we go to a more modern house, empty and spacious marble,  and stand over the terrace overlooking more brightly painted facades, while Adel explains how the Nubian family meets every need, rescues, supports, provides all. 

Philae Temple and Aswan

We steam down the Nile (moving south, but upstream) amidst continual oases where the luckier beasts live. Villages of rough brick, like unfinished ideas, undulating green waters, gardens of Eden, lush palms sweeping the bright green grass, turn into mounds of desert and back again. Fishermen unfurl languid nets, donkeys and horses and oxen feed at water's edge.

Aswan

In the morning we are docked outside Aswan. Placid waters, where beautifully marked birds fly and float, a hazy mosque nearby. A dark man in an adjacent boat prostrates himself on the deck at the call to prayer. Across the Nile a tiny white donkey brays and feeds on the marshy shore.

Motor boats of the Nile

Philae

We are bussed to little roofed motor boats that convey us to the island of Philae, soft black Nubians selling their wares on board. As we approach, the golden temple appears on its rotated axis, originally built on the oddly shaped island of Biga. There it became threatened by rising waters from the Aswan dam and was transported, stone by stone, to its present island. The US was among the countries that assisted this extraordinary feat, and received the Temple of Dendur in return, which you can now see at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Isis and Horus greet the Pharoah

Napoleon's soldiers visited Philae

Philae is curvilinear, appropriate for the quintessential feminine goddesses Isis and Hathor. Like Edfou it was built by the father of Cleopatra, who was otherwise a fairly unsavory character who slaughtered his kin and tried to play the Romans against the Egyptians till he was despised by both. But the temple is exquisitely tranquil and beautifully preserved, the architecture complete including the side temple for the "birth of the god", showing the goddess Hathor breastfeeding the Pharoah.

Trajan's temple at night

Beyond is another perfect temple built by the Emperor Trajan, with 14 Greco-Roman/Egyptian columns, massive rose colored limestone against the blue sky. Our guide Adel bristles with the drama of each story that he reads from the walls. It is a beautiful, tranquil nurturing atmosphere, disturbed little by the black Nubian vendors and their gentle insistence.

Glass artist

Adel counsels purchases and prices as we drive to the "factory", Abode of Perfume, first to watch a laid back black Egyptian whirl glass into elaborate perfume flacons, then to listen to a jokey (apparently West African) black man with his retinue of round women in black robes who offer massages and daub our arms with perfumes as he barks the wares. Time for a decision, and I buy a collection of essential, not the much-promoted perfumes they claim are sold by international brands.

Old Cataract Hotel

The goddesses guard Philae

In the afternoon we take a caleche to the city of Aswan. It is my choice, but it was all I could bear to watch that poor horse flop sidways and gallop uphill at the sound of the whip. Distraught for the poor horse in the suffocating heat, we finally reach the Old Cataract Hotel, a refurbished relic of the colonial days where Agatha Christie among many other notables used to stay. It is perched on a sun baked corner overlooking a protected bay of fellucas, across from Elephantine Island, a cluster of ruins that had been devoted to the god Khnoum, a ram-headed potter who created mankind of clay.

View of Elephantine Island

We drink a pot of watery lime-blossom tea on the expensive terrace and walk down to the water where a dark black friendly man wearing wool under his brown jellabah in the sweltering heat practices French with us, offering in an exquisite African accent a ride on his boats to the monastery of St. Stephen where the Agha Khan is buried.

Inner sanctum at Philae

We have agreed to meet Mohamed again for the ride back, but we are hounded by other young men with their caleches who finally yell at Jacques, why don't you listen? There is a palpable frustration and anger among all those who rely on the tourists (who no longer show up) for their living. We visit the town--a Coptic church, a public garden where families picnic on the grass, and meet Mohamed for our ride back.

Feryal Garden

We reach the boat and I bid goodbye to Rambo who stoically waits for trials to come. Mohamed haggles a bit more with Jacques (appealing to me as "mere"), then palms the 100 pound (Egyptian) note that Jacques gives him, claiming it was only 50. Standard practice, we have read, among caleches.

In the evening we set out for a Sound and Light Show on the island of Philae. Goats and sheep munch in the marshy brush at the end of the concrete dock. The rascal Mohamed waves at us cheerfully, while Rambo the lopsided horse stands still, ready for the next battle.

Philae at night

Now the boat ploughs among darkened isles, rocks rising from the Nile, their suddenly more palpable presence in the dark, so close. The temple waits in the dark, and blossoms into light as we arrive. The Son et Lumiere begins with the deafening, melodramatic "poetic" voices of the gods, and alternating illumination of the friezes and hieroglyphs at many angles. The stones beneath us radiate heat, almost oppressive under the starry night. Simply the sight of the temple, lit from its many angles, would have been enough.