First off, just got a comment from the John W. Wynn Middle School, so I wanted to say hi to the 7th grade geographers! Woohoo!
The past two days have been a total mix. Yesterday stunk. Our tour company is totally bush league. We were told that we would get into Aswan on our overnight train by 6AM, but we didn't actually arrive until almost 4PM - and other people traveling with us knew the real time, so it wasn't like the train was late. Then they tried to cut a whole bunch out of our itinerary because the train being so late wasn't their fault. We finally straightened that out after a lot of phone calls and "unhappy customer" voice, but all seems to be going better now.
Today we went to the Aswan High Dam, the temple at Philae, and the temple at Abu Simbel.
We started the morning at 3AM with the security convoy to Abu Simbel, which is down by the border of Sudan. They've had security trouble there for years, so all the tourists join a convoy which is protected by armed guards. No hassles, no problem. The temple itself was really impressive. It used to be a border marker between the kindom of Egypt and the Nubians and Cushite kingdoms. Everything about it screams "not to be in your face, but anyone who messes with Pharaoh gets his clock cleaned...have a nice day, welcome to Egypt." I couldn't enjoy it fully because the place was teeming with people, but it's hard not to be impressed - it's really well preserved.
The Dam, meh, I'm not big on the feats of engineering, and as far as big dams go, it's actually not so tall. Plus we only had 10 minutes there and didn't even get to go to the visitor center (like I said, our tour's pretty bush league). But I've been there. Lake Nasser is pretty. Nuff said.
The highlight of the day was definitely Philae. They had to move the whole temple complex up to higher ground so it wouldn't be submerged when they built the dam and created the lake. It's amazingly preserved, and the whole complex is pretty much intact. They have a nilometer that measures the flood of the river each year to determine taxes, and a whole bunch of temple space dedicated to the goddess Isis. There are several layers to the place, starting way back to the first dynasties and coming all the way up to the 1800s. The ancient Egyptians worshipped there, and the Greeks under Alexander the Great added to it, then the Romans, and then the Coptic Christians, who briefly used the place as a church, and there's even an inscription carved over some heiroglyphics from Napoleon's army when they came through. My favorite part, other than how beautiful the place was (pics when I get myself a computer with USB), was the graffiti! (kids, don't take this as encouragement, it's only cool if you lived hundreds of years ago) There's some in almost any language you can imagine - Greek, Arabic, English, French, Italian...even some pictures carved in.
I wished I could read heiroglyphics and Egyptian iconography, because there are so many inscriptions and pictures there that are trying to tell you something, but alas I didn't have time to do my homework on it, so I'm left thinking "well...when I come back, I'll have to prepare better."
Tomorrow I'm off on my felucca tour - two days on a boat with no plumbing...wish me luck!
The past two days have been a total mix. Yesterday stunk. Our tour company is totally bush league. We were told that we would get into Aswan on our overnight train by 6AM, but we didn't actually arrive until almost 4PM - and other people traveling with us knew the real time, so it wasn't like the train was late. Then they tried to cut a whole bunch out of our itinerary because the train being so late wasn't their fault. We finally straightened that out after a lot of phone calls and "unhappy customer" voice, but all seems to be going better now.
Today we went to the Aswan High Dam, the temple at Philae, and the temple at Abu Simbel.
We started the morning at 3AM with the security convoy to Abu Simbel, which is down by the border of Sudan. They've had security trouble there for years, so all the tourists join a convoy which is protected by armed guards. No hassles, no problem. The temple itself was really impressive. It used to be a border marker between the kindom of Egypt and the Nubians and Cushite kingdoms. Everything about it screams "not to be in your face, but anyone who messes with Pharaoh gets his clock cleaned...have a nice day, welcome to Egypt." I couldn't enjoy it fully because the place was teeming with people, but it's hard not to be impressed - it's really well preserved.
The Dam, meh, I'm not big on the feats of engineering, and as far as big dams go, it's actually not so tall. Plus we only had 10 minutes there and didn't even get to go to the visitor center (like I said, our tour's pretty bush league). But I've been there. Lake Nasser is pretty. Nuff said.
The highlight of the day was definitely Philae. They had to move the whole temple complex up to higher ground so it wouldn't be submerged when they built the dam and created the lake. It's amazingly preserved, and the whole complex is pretty much intact. They have a nilometer that measures the flood of the river each year to determine taxes, and a whole bunch of temple space dedicated to the goddess Isis. There are several layers to the place, starting way back to the first dynasties and coming all the way up to the 1800s. The ancient Egyptians worshipped there, and the Greeks under Alexander the Great added to it, then the Romans, and then the Coptic Christians, who briefly used the place as a church, and there's even an inscription carved over some heiroglyphics from Napoleon's army when they came through. My favorite part, other than how beautiful the place was (pics when I get myself a computer with USB), was the graffiti! (kids, don't take this as encouragement, it's only cool if you lived hundreds of years ago) There's some in almost any language you can imagine - Greek, Arabic, English, French, Italian...even some pictures carved in.
I wished I could read heiroglyphics and Egyptian iconography, because there are so many inscriptions and pictures there that are trying to tell you something, but alas I didn't have time to do my homework on it, so I'm left thinking "well...when I come back, I'll have to prepare better."
Tomorrow I'm off on my felucca tour - two days on a boat with no plumbing...wish me luck!
1 comment:
The pyramids sound amazing (as has your whole trip so far!) and I love the idea of hundred year old graffiti. When I was hiking in Utah recently we saw petroglyphs (sp?) a couple hundred years old which was pretty cool, I can't imagine thousand year old writing! Stay safe and have fun.
Nikki
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