Cruising up the Nile

We boarded our cruise boat around noon on Saturday March 7, to cruise upriver from Luxor to Aswan. This cruise had several planned stops along the way to see some of the many fascinating archaeological sites.

After settling in to our small but comfortable cabin (complete with television), we went for lunch and met our table-mates. These were a Canadian couple, Trish and Joe, from Edmonton but currently working in Doha, Qatar on the Persian Gulf, and Erica and Peter, from Sydney, Australia. They proved to be amiable companions.

We had a farewell tea on board with our friends the Pickerings and thanked them for their wonderful hospitality.

The next morning we were taken on a tour of the Valley of the Kings. This most famous site is the destination of seemingly every tourist in Egypt. Most of them seemed to arrive right after we did. The spectacular tombs were all very crowded, with line-ups at almost every one. Throughout the day, busses continually arrived and disgorged yet more people, who travelled from tomb to tomb in large groups, each led by a guide. The guides carried various coloured umbrellas, flags, and the like so that their groups could follow them through the crowds. The guides would herd their groups together at various points of interest, and deliver lectures in English, French, Italian, German or Japanese, as required.

Our guide spoke authoritatively on most historical subjects and explained a number of the carvings and freizes we saw, but some of his claims (like the ancient Egyptians inventing electric lighting) were perhaps a bit fanciful.

All of this was distracting, but nothing could take away from the grandeur, and the spectacular artistic and architectural wonders that were all around. It is impossible to do justice to the tombs and temples we saw without writing at great length about them, which I don’t have the expertise to carry off. They were however, magnificently constructed and decorated, with a precision and intricacy that immediately erased any notions about this being a society that was backward in every respect to our own.

A notable stop on our tour that morning was the Temple of Hatshetsut, perhaps the most famous female pharoh. This huge temple (picture) was partially cut from the limestone cliffs that tower above it, and then built outwards from the cliff face. The temple is decorated with wonderful and delicate reliefs, (second picture) but these have been vandalised many times over the centuries, first by her stepson, Tutmosis III, who removed her name wherever he could, and subsequently by later pharohs, the Romans, and also by early Christians, who decried the depiction of "pagan" gods, but were not deterred from using the temple as a monastery after defacing the carvings.

We saw vandalism at many of these ancient structures over the next few days. The carvings were sometimes vandalised by successor pharohs, and later by the Romans. Grave robbers stole from many of the sites. Some of them were used by local people as houses, or even stables. Adventurers from France and Britain carved their names into walls and pillars, stole statues, and chiselled off carvings as souvenirs. Their graffiti has become part of the history of these buildings. Other treasures were carted off to England, France, Germany and other countries (including Canada) in the name of science.

As we cruised up the Nile, we went ashore to see a number of wonderful sites, some of which can only be reached by boat and so are more or less intact. An inevitable part of every site was the crowd of souvenir hawkers and tourist stalls outside the gates. (Please come in, free to look, I give you good price). When our tour boat was waiting to go through some locks on the Nile, some of them even rowed out in small boats to try to sell necklaces and scarves. Of course, to the average Egyptian any tourist is fabulously rich, and and small amounts that they can persuade us to part with mean so little to us and so much to them.

The last temple we saw was the temple of Philae at Aswan. This temple was built quite late (started in 370 B.C.), and was used by both Egyptians and Romans to worship Isis, even after the Roman Empire converted to Christianity. The entire temple complex was moved from its original site, which was flooded by the High Aswan Dam. This huge undertaking took eight years to acccomplish, a task undertaken by UNESCO and the Egyptian Government.

We left the boat in Aswan, and flew to Cairo for a brief stop on our way the Athens. (Please note that this is being posted on March 30. We have been so busy doing things in Greece, I haven't had time to write about them. We are having a great time here, as you will see when I get caught up.)