Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 12

 

[“Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 12,” posted below, is the final installment of my account of my journey around Israel and Egypt almost 39 years ago.  Those ROTters who’ve read along with the postings since Part 1 I hope will agree it was an extraordinary experience; I hope, too, that I’ve conveyed that on the blog.  

[Remember that this trip was only possible in 1982 because of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed just 3½ years before.  My parents had gone to Egypt several years earlier, but they couldn’t have gone from Egypt to Israel or vice versa at that time—and, in fact, never got to Israel in their lifetimes.

[This final section of the chronicle, which also ends the recovery of my uncompleted contemporaneous journal (see my note on Part 3, posted on 17 July), covers the last day of my cruise down the River Nile and my departure from Egypt and return to the U.S.

[If you’ve not been among the visitors to Rick On Theater who’ve been following along with the whole account, I invite you now to go back to 11 July and start with Part 1.  The sections are posted continuously, with a break after Part 5 (23 July) for a topical report on theater news; the journal entries recommence with Part 6 on 2 August and continue till this last entry.]

Day 4 of Sheraton Nile River Cruise/Luxor – Wednesday, 29 December

The visit to Luxor—another ancient capital of Egypt under the Greek name of Thebes (during the period of the New Kingdom, ca. 1570-ca. 1077 BCE)—started first thing.  We went ashore at 8 a.m. to tour Luxor’s West Bank (we’re talking the Nile here, not the Jordan, of course). 

Luxor, often called Egypt’s “open-air museum” because of all the historical sights in the immediate area ought to take a couple of days to see comfortably, but the river cruises only allow a day at most (I imagine some stick around for less).  The West Bank contains one of the largest collections of archaeological treasures in the world.  Hence, the early start.

The Nile cuts Luxor in two.  On the East Bank is the city, where both ancient Thebans and modern Luxorians live and work, and where the two famous temple ruins are found and where visitors will find most hotels, restaurants, and shops. 

The West Bank of Luxor is where the ancient Egyptians buried the dead.  Every night, the sun sets on the West Bank, so this became the Theban Necropolis, containing mortuary temples, monuments, and tombs, and including the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. 

(Mortuary or funerary temples are temples erected next to or near royal Egyptian tombs to commemorate the reign of the deified pharaoh for whom they were constructed.  The New Kingdom temples were dubbed “Mansions of Millions of Years” or “Temples of a Million Years” as an expression of the pharaoh’s intention to live for eternity in the afterlife.)

As we arrived on the West Bank of Luxor, right near the parking lot, we were greeted by the Colossi of Memnon.  These monumental twin statues of Amenhotep III (reigned: 1390-1352 BCE) look eastward towards the Nile.  The two seated statues, erected in 1350 BCE, tower 60 feet in height. 

The statues are badly damaged; the features of the pharaoh are nearly unrecognizable.  They were intended to serve as guardians for Amenhotep’s mortuary temple, the largest and most lavish temple complex in Egypt, which stood behind the colossi.  Little remains of the temple, however, due to erosion by the flooding Nile, cannibalization by later rulers, and earthquakes.

The Valley of the Kings is a royal burial ground for pharaohs from the New Kingdom, as well as powerful nobles and the wives and children of the pharaohs.  Famous kings from this period include Thutmose III, Tutankhamun, Seti I (reigned: 1290-1279 BCE; he may have been the pharaoh at the start of the enslavement of the Hebrews, during the time of the abuses which led to the Exodus), and Rameses II.  

Their tombs, over 60 in this small area, were constructed between 1539 and 1075 BCE.  (And, yes, this is the legendary burial place of King Tut, discovered in 1922 by British archeologist Howard Carter [1874-1939], whose house is on the West Bank just outside the necropolis—kept much as he left it.)

Though the Valley of the Kings may have included the burial place of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s second known female pharaoh (reigned: ca. 1479-1458 BCE; the first was Twelfth Dynasty Sobekneferu, reigned: 1807-1802 BCE), the Valley of the Queens was the burial site of the pharaohs’ wives.  

The tombs here are smaller and lack some of the grandeur of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings . . . with one big exception: the tomb of Queen Nefertari, wife of Rameses II and the dedicatee of the Small Temple at Abu Simbel (see Part 10).  It’s one of the most spectacular tombs in Egypt, with remarkable architectural detail and more vibrant colors in the wall paintings than in many tombs, temples, and pyramids in the country.

Among the wonders of the Theban Necropolis is Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, her most famous architectural achievement.  Her actual tomb is in debate—there are several burial places in the necropolis, including some in the Valley of the Kings, that may have been her final resting place, and one mummy, buried with that of another female associated with the queen, that’s been identified as Hatshepsut.  But her mortuary temple is undisputedly one of the monuments on the cliffs of Deir el-Bahri, part of the necropolis.

The colonnaded structure has a much different appearance than many other temples in Egypt, but that’s part of what makes it so noteworthy.  Nonetheless, most of the ornamental statuary is missing—her successors Thutmose III (her nephew and stepson) and his son Amenhotep II had launched a campaign to erase Hatshepsut’s reign from the historical record—and a mistaken attempt at restoration in the early 20th century has altered the temple’s original appearance.

Living up to its sobriquet as part the world’s greatest open-air museum, there are scores of sites on Luxor’s West Bank worthy of seeing (though, I have to confess that unless you’re a professional or amateur Egyptologist, the temples, tombs, pyramids, and burial sites all start to seem alike at some level).

Among the monuments of note are the Mortuary Temple of Rameses III; the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple dedicated to Rameses II; and the Mortuary Temple of Seti I.  Of further interest is Deir el-Medina, the ancient village where the artisans who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived.  Tombs were built here for some of the most prominent workers. 

Excavations of the artisans’ village, particularly those around the same time that the world was fascinated with the revelations from the tomb of King Tut, provided the most information ever gathered on the community life among the working people of ancient Egypt.  Details about every aspect of the lives of the ordinary Egyptians in the village, occupied from the middle of the 16th century BCE through the end of the 11th, were revealed.

Finally, in another gathering of burial sites are the Tombs of the Nobles, carved into the rocky hillside.  These were the tombs of high-ranking Egyptians, servants of the pharaohs, officials of Thebes, or other dignitaries.  Like the workers’ village, the nobles’ tombs offer a change from the grandiose repetitiveness of the royal monuments.

We returned to the boat at noon-ish for lunch, then at 2:30, we went into the East Bank to see the Temples of Karnak and Luxor.  (Karnak was another site that figured in the Roger Moore Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me which was filmed on location here in October 1976.  Readers who are Bond fans will remember the scene at Karnak as Moore’s big fight with Jaws [the late Richard Kiel].  Scenes for the 1978 film version of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile were shot in some of the same locations in late 1977.  See my remarks in Part 9.)

Formally known as the Temple of Amun, Karnak was a complex of temples built over 2,000 years and dedicated to Amun and two other deities.  (Amun was the patron god of Thebes who ultimately was combined with Ra, the sun god, and thus became the king of the gods.  The Greeks associated him with Zeus.)

Started in the Middle Kingdom, around 2000-1700 BCE, and continued into the Ptolemaic period, 305-30 BCE, the temple complex is a ruin today but still shows evidence of its former magnificence.  It was the largest religious building ever built, covering nearly 300 acres.

When the Persians conquered Egypt in 343 BCE, followed by the Greeks (332 BCE) and then the Romans (30 BCE), Karnak diminished in importance and was slowly abandoned.  By 323 CE, Roman emperor Constantine I (ca. 272-337 CE; reigned: 306-337) recognized Christianity, and in 356 CE, Emperor Constantius II (317-361 CE; reigned: 337 to 361 CE) closed all pagan temples throughout the Roman empire, including Egypt.  A number of the abandoned temples at Karnak were converted to Christian churches.

Luxor Temple, also known as the Southern Sanctuary, was unique in that it was dedicated not to a god or a deified pharaoh, but to the rejuvenation of kingship.  An annual religious festival involved a procession of the statues of the deities Amun, his wife, and their son from the Karnak temple complex.  (Reminds me of the San Gennaro Festival in New York’s Little Italy which starts with parading the saint’s statues through the streets.)  Later celebrations would see the statues travel down the Nile by sacred boat, and a ceremonial re-coronation of the pharaoh.

Built around 1392-1213 BCE, the Southern Sanctuary is a graceful temple complex, though far simpler than Karnak.  In ancient times, the temple would have been surrounded by mud-brick houses, shops, and workshops, but after the decline of the city, Luxorians moved into the partly covered temple complex and built their city inside it.

We were back on board the Tut by 5 in the afternoon (for Afternoon Tea, natch), followed by dinner and the usual evening’s pastime.  This was our last night on the Nile and our penultimate night in Egypt.

Day 5 of Sheraton Nile River Cruise/Luxor – Cairo – Thursday, 30 December

On Thursday morning, we had breakfast on the boat, said our good-byes, and checked out, putting ourselves back in the hands of Egyptian Express and Unitours.  We had a couple of hours to kill in the morning, so I wandered a little around the East Bank and essentially window-shopped.  With a population of around 260,000 in 1982, Luxor’s a bustling little city—even if it is surrounded by hordes of ancient monuments (“the world’s greatest open-air museum,” remember?)—and the sightseeing doesn’t allow much time just to look around at the modern surroundings.  So I did.

But I had to keep my eye on both my watch and where I’d wandered off to, because I had to be back to catch our transport to Luxor International Airport at 2:30 for our 3:45 EgyptAir hop back to Cairo.

It was a short flight, so we landed at quarter of five and were whisked right off to the Sheraton Heliopolis Hotel [now called the Sheraton Heliopolis Hotel, Towers & Casino—it seems gambling has become the attraction for coming to contemporary Cairo], the hotelier’s airport hotel where we spent the night. 

The upscale enclave of Heliopolis, established in 1905 by a Belgian industrialist as a suburb of Cairo, is now a district of the capital city just 15 minutes from Cairo International—handy if you have an early flight. 

DEPARTURE & HOMECOMING

Cairo/New York (and points between) – Friday, 31 December

Everyone had different flight schedules, and I don’t remember my departure time or what airline I was flying.  (It wasn’t Alitalia, which I flew to Israel, because I didn’t stop in Rome.  The itinerary was written for Olympic Airways, the Greek carrier, but I didn’t fly that, either, since I didn’t stop in Athens.) 

What I do remember is that my flight left Cairo and stopped in Istanbul (suggesting that I was flying Turkish Airlines, but I don’t recall that being the case) and went on to Brussels.  I changed planes there and flew on to JFK in New York. 

I remember this because when I first looked at my ticket, I thought, ‘Wow!  I’ll be setting down on four continents!’  Cairo is in Africa, Brussels is in Europe, and New York, of course, is in North America.

But I’d been thinking that Istanbul was in Asia Minor, which is western Asia—but, of course, it’s not.  It’s in the tiny part of Turkey that’s in Europe.  (In my defense, poor as it is, I hadn’t been to Istanbul yet.  I got there in 2010 [see my report posted on 24 June 2010].  I just . . . Don't know much about geography—with apologies to Sam Cooke [1931-64].)

In any case, I got home after something like 15 hours of flying-and-waiting.  (I don’t recall another five-hour lay-over like I had in Rome on the flight over.)  According to my passport, that got me back in New York City sometime in the late evening New Year’s Eve.  It was probably the wee hours of Saturday, New Year’s Day, by the time I got through customs and got back to my apartment in Manhattan.  I took an airport bus out when I left, so I probably did the same to get home.

I imagine I was exhausted and jet-lagged when I got to the apartment.  But I was also satisfied.  This trip in 1982 and the one to China in 1980 were both before traveling got unpleasant.  I don’t mean going places—that’s almost always great.  I mean the getting there.  It’s turned nasty and brutish, to coin a phrase, sometime in the ’90s. 

[This concludes my transcription and recovery of my travel journal of my trip to Israel and Egypt in December of 1982.  The latter part, the reconstruction of the trip after I stopped writing the journal, was much harder than I anticipated. 

[It took not only reliance on the Unitours, Egyptian Express, and Sheraton Nile Cruise itineraries, but some research (mostly for the specific sights we saw because without contemporaneous notes, I wouldn’t have remembered most of the details after 39 years) and some occasionally extensive Internet searches regarding locations like hotels and the Nile cruise ship to determine if they were still around under the same names.

[The personal reminiscences, as well as the consequences of aspects of the voyage in the ensuing years, are entirely from my memory of the experiences.  As I wrote the post, I was a little surprised at what I recalled.  The journal was supposed to be an aide-mémoire, but I wasn’t prepared for it to have worked so well.

[As I’ve said, I intend to transcribe the other two old travel journals sometime in the near future.  I’ll be continuing with the 1980 journal of my visit to the People’s Republic of China, the second-oldest of the three chronicles, and then transcribe the account of my high school trip to Poland and the USSR from 1965.  (As I observed in my introduction to this post on Part 1, ROTters will know about this last trip from “Going to a Swiss International School, Part 5.”) 

[Both of those journals were completed as I made the trips, though I’ll still provide present-day commentary as I transcribe them.  I hope you’ll all come back when I post those accounts in the coming months.]

Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 11

 

[“Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 11” covers my second and third days on the Nile River cruise, with visits to Aswan (which I missed, as you’ll read) and the temples at Kom Ombo, Edfu, and Esna. 

[Again I urge readers who haven’t followed along for the whole journey to go back and read the preceding parts of my account.  Parts 1-5 were posted on 11, 14, 17, 20, and 23 July, and Parts 6-10 on 2, 5, 8, 11, and 14 August.  There will be one more installment of the journal after Part 11.]

Day 2 of Sheraton Nile River Cruise/Aswan/Kom Ombo – Monday, 27 December

When I retired last night, I felt a little punk—nothing serious, so I chalked it up to a very long day (which, you’ll recall, started at 2 a.m. and lasted till past 9 p.m. or so—19 hours; see Part 10).

When I woke up this morning, I was head-achy and my sight was a little bleary.  I was on the cusp of feeling a little queasy, too.  As I said earlier, I don’t normally suffer from tourista, so I assume that wasn’t the cause of my discomfort.  The boat hadn’t gone anywhere yet, so I discounted seasickness—to which I’m not usually susceptible, either.  (Can you even get seasick on a river boat?)

At breakfast, the cruise guide made a suggestion: heat or sun stroke.  We’d been in the desert all day the day before—pretty much all of Egypt is in the Sahara and we’d tromped around Abu Simbel for a couple of hours and then added the rest of that long day.  I concluded that that’s what it was

I decided it would be better to stay aboard the boat for the morning rather than risk getting any worse and ruining the whole trip down the Nile.  The boat was cool and the lighting was low, especially in the cabins.  So I stayed below and, as the French say, j’ai pris mes aises—I took it easy.

Well, I did say that the desert clime eventually got to me, didn’t I (see Part 7)?

By the time the rest of the group got back around noon, I was feeling much better. 

(I’d missed the High Dam and the older Low Dam—built in 1909—the Philae Temple, and the granite quarries.  The temple was another ancient monument, from the 7th or 6th century BCE, moved to save it from the waters of Lake Nasser and the granite quarries of Aswan, which today serve as outdoor museums or sculpture gardens, once supplied the stone for many of the monuments we’d seen elsewhere, such as the burial chambers of Zoser in Sakkara (Part 7), and Cheops, Chephren, and Mykerinos in Giza (also Part 7).  London’s famous Cleopatra’s Needle was also hewn in Aswan.)

While we ate lunch, the boat set sail for Kom Ombo, about 30 miles downstream from Aswan.  At 3 p.m., we disembarked at the Temple of Kom Ombo.  I was feeling well enough that I rejoined the travelers; I was just a little careful about sun exposure and over-exertion for the rest of the day.

There is a town of Kom Ombo, a farming community (mostly sugarcane and cereals)—almost all of Egypt’s crops are grown in the narrow strip of arable land along both banks of the Nile—but the temple is on the river bank and the boats dock and unload right there.  We only stayed an hour before reboarding and setting sail for Edfu.

The Temple of Kom Ombo appears to be a rarity among ancient Egyptian temples because it’s dedicated to a number of deities rather than just one.  (There are also architectural anomalies in the design of the temple as well.)  It dates to the Ptolemaic period, around 180-47 BCE (when the Greeks ruled Egypt)—though there was an older temple on the site from the reign of Thutmose III (reigned approximately 1458-25 BCE) and there are echoes of that past. 

Thutmose’s temple was dedicated to the crocodile-headed god Sobek who’s associated with pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess and also protects against the dangers of the Nile.  Among the finds in the ruin were the mummies of several crocs.

At 4 p.m., we set off for Edfu, 40 miles farther down river from Kom Ombo, where we docked for the night. 

After tea and then dinner, instead of the disco, the cruise held a Galabia Party.  It was named for the floor-length robe worn by Egyptian men and women that’s a loose-fitting, traditional Egyptian garment from the Nile Valley.  Most, I believe from my brief observation, are made from Egyptian cotton, considered among the finest varieties in the world.

While I was still in Cairo, it seemed almost everyone I saw, from guides to workers and merchants, was wearing a galabia (pronounced ga-la-BEE-yah), which came in white for summer and heavier fabrics in plain grey, dark green, olive, blue, tan, or striped patterns for colder weather.

The thing was that the galabia looked so damn comfortable and easy that I decided to get one to wear at home.  Many street vendors were selling them, so I shopped while I was out walking on our free day (Part 9) and bought a dark blue-on-light blue striped one to take back with me.  [I wore it so much around the apartment that it eventually fell apart.]

The Galabia Party on board the cruise ship was essentially a cocktail party, but with silly games emceed by the boat’s staff.  The games all had an Egyptian motif . . . if you don’t mind cultural stereotyping: walking like an Egyptian painting or statue [inspired somewhat, I assume, by the Steve Martin “King Tut”sketch on Saturday Night Live; the song “Walk Like an Egyptian” didn’t come out until 1986—but the painted and carved images were all around us every day], belly dancing, dressing like a mummy, and other nonsense. 

Points were awarded and prizes handed out at the end.  I confess that I skipped this event because I felt I’d already pushed my still-slightly-shaky condition a little during the day.  It was a bit of a shame, too, since I actually already owned a galabia.  Most of the others had to buy one or rent one for the night from the ship’s “bazaar.”

Day 3 of Sheraton Nile River Cruise/Edfu/Esna/Luxor – Tuesday, 28 December

After breakfast, we disembarked at 8 in the morning and made for the Edfu Temple.  Once again, there’s a modern town, and here even an archeological tell south of the town with ancient pyramid ruins; but we spent only two hours at the temple, dedicated to the god Horus, depicted as a man with a falcon’s head.  Horus is one of the most significant gods in Egypt’s pantheon, the god of kingship and the sky among other functions.

Built between 237 BCE and 57 BCE, into the reign of Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE; reigned: 51-30 BCE; this is the Cleopatra of popular imagination and stage and screen), the Ptolemaic temple is the most intact of all the ancient temples found in Egypt.

One reason for its state of preservation is that the temple was abandoned after 391 CE when all non-Christian worship was banned in the Roman Empire (of which Egypt was a part).  The disused temple was buried by the shifting desert sands and river silt deposited by the Nile.  Standing at 118 feet high, by 1798, only 79 feet were visible above ground level.  The temple was uncovered in 1860.

A sidelight: The inscribed temple texts include a mention of what could be construed as a theatrical performance.  There’s no archeological evidence that the ancient Egyptians had any kind of theatrical or dramatic performance tradition, but they did have religious festivals at which some scholars posit there could have been enactments of religious myths and stories.

One such could have been the “Sacred Drama” that recounts the unending conflict between Horus and Seth mentioned in the Edfu temple texts.  No one actually knows from any evidence found so far that there were dramatic performances in these religious festivals—but I note that the Edfu temple was built during the rule of Greek pharaohs, and the Greeks essentially invented drama (which, I should add, grew out of religious worship and was considered sacred to Apollo—with whom Horus was associated during the Greco-Roman period in Egypt). 

I’m just sayin’.

After the visit to the Edfu Temple, we returned to the boat and set sail for Esna at 10 in the morning, another 32 miles north along the river, arriving at around 2:30 p.m.  As at Edfu, there’s a modern town, but Esna’s temple is in the midst of it about 220 yards from the river.

Built starting during the reign of Thutmose III and completed in the Greco-Roman period (between 40 BCE to 250 CE), the temple is consecrated to ram-headed Khnum, the god of the source of the Nile and the creator of the bodies of human children, plus his wife and son.  The Esna temple, built of red sandstone, is considered outstanding for its location and its architecture.

We returned to the boat and during five-o’clock tea, we embarked for Luxor where we docked at 8 that evening for the night.  On the route downstream, the boat had to negotiate the Esna Lock about two miles down from the temple.  As we waited for the lock to drop the boat to the lower level, there were peddlers that sailed out to meet the cruise ships to sell their goods.

I said that we saw lots of feluccas on the river (Part 10); they’re sort of the workhorses of the Nile.  (Some river cruises sail on large feluccas, which are slower and more leisurely, and usually more expensive with fewer passengers.  Smaller feluccas serve as water taxis, delivering visitors from one river town to the next.) 

We usually moved too fast for the river peddlers to catch up to us except at the locks, and they took advantage of that.  The sellers, yelling “Yallah, yallah, yallah!” threw the goods up to the decks and the buyers threw the money down—and somehow it all worked out.

We docked in Luxor at about 8 p.m. during the dinner service.  Tomorrow would be my last day of tourism in Egypt.

[This was the next-to-last section of my chronicle of this trip; “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 12” will be published on Friday, 20 August, and will conclude this recovered journal.  The final installment covers my visit to the Theban necropolis, the ancient temples of Karnak and Luxor, my return to Cairo, and my departure for the U.S.]

Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 10

 

[“Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 10” begins my voyage down the River Nile.  The rest of the journal is taken up by this cruise, which ends with a flight back to Cairo and a night in an airport hotel preparatory to returning to the States.

[I’m not an especially romantic person—sentimental sometimes, but not romantic—but the notion of floating down the Nile from Aswan to Luxor generated visions of Cleopatra (who looked remarkably like Liz Taylor) and Marc Antony.  Of course, in the image, they were sailing in a papyrus vessel and I was on a motorized riverboat . . . but you can’t have everything!

[If you’re just joining us on this journey, it would be a good idea to go back and pick up the first nine installments of the account.  Part 1 was posted on 11 July and Parts 2 through 5 followed at three-day intervals.  I interrupted the schedule to post a journalistic report, but Part 6 appeared on 2 August and the three-day schedule recommenced.]

ALONG THE NILE

Cairo/Abu Simbel – Day 1 of Sheraton Nile River Cruise/Aswan – Sunday, 26 December

I didn’t have my “Nile Balcony” breakfast because of the early hour and short deadline.  After getting our bags into the corridor having a very early breakfast (I don’t think I’d eaten as early as 3:00 in the morning since the army where such hours were known as “oh-dark-thirty”!), we went to Cairo International at 3:30 for a 5 a.m. EgyptAir flight to Abu Simbel.

Abu Simbel Airport is about 700 miles south of Cairo, almost to the Sudanese border (Upper Egypt).  It’s about a 2¼-hour flight (we were scheduled to arrive at 7:15) for a visit of just two hours.  The tiny airport serves only one destination: the world-renowned Abu Simbel temples in Nubia, which includes the southern part of Upper Egypt and half of Sudan.  The temples are dedicated to Pharaoh Ramses II (ca. 1303-1213 BCE; reigned: 1279-13 BCE) and his wife, Queen Nefertari (ca. 1300-ca. 1255 BCE; m. Ramses: ca. 1287 BCE).

(Rameses’ Queen Nefertari shouldn’t be confused with a more famous Egyptian queen, Nefertiti [ca. 1370-ca. 1330 BCE], the Eighteenth Dynasty wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten [reigned ca. 1353-36 or 1351-34 BCE].  Nefertiti is the subject of the iconic stucco-coated limestone bust in a Berlin museum.)

On arrival, off we went, straight from the airport to the massive temples of Abu Simbel, a ten-minute ride away. 

The Great Temple of Ramses and the Small Temple of Nefertari were carved into the mountainside on the west bank of the Nile between approximately 1264 BCE and 1244 BCE, during the Nineteenth Dynasty reign of Rameses II.  (He’s also known as Rameses the Great and is believed by many historians to have been the pharaoh of the Exodus.)  They stood there, with their monumental statues of Rameses (66 feet tall) and Nefertari (33 feet), for 3,000 years.

That was until 1968.  That’s when the whole kit-and-kaboodle was moved to its present location 71 yards higher and 219 yards back from the river.  Why, you may well ask (if you’re too young to remember or have just forgotten)? 

When the Aswan High Dam was begun in 1958 to control the annual Nile flooding—it was completed in 1970—it formed Lake Nasser, which threatened to inundate the temple complex.  In 1960, a rescue plan, backed by UNESCO, was conceived by architects and engineers.

Archeologists, engineers, and heavy equipment operators took the temples apart in chunks and transported them to the new location where the temples were reassembled like a gigantic 3-D puzzle.  Not only were the temple structures and their attendant statues of Rameses and Nephertari reconstructed above the lake, but the modern-day temple-builders also constructed an artificial mountain into which the newly-sited monuments were fitted.

The feat was humongous.  It took four years and a crew of 500 workers operating day and night to accomplish, not to mention over $40 million [equal to $337 million in 2021].  But what I was imagining on our way down to Abu Simbel was the meeting of the cabinet of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70; President of Egypt: 1956-70) at which the engineers and architects proposed the scheme.

“You want to move what WHERE?” I hear Nasser exclaiming, as the ministers all sit stunned and stare at the experts (who, incidentally, were all foreigners).

In the end, however, the reconstructed temples look as though they were always in that place—at least to an ordinary tourist like me.  Even the artificial mountain looked natural.  Now, I saw Abu Simbel only 14 years after it was rebuilt.  I wonder if age and weathering will make the seams show?  In, say, 50 years, will the site look like an aged movie set?  [That would have been in 2014 . . . I wonder.]

(Another archeological treasure that was endangered by Lake Nasser and moved was the Temple of Dendur [built around 15 BCE].  It was given to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1967 because the museum pledged to build a special exhibit space for the treasure.  It’s been on display there since 1978.

(The Temple of Dendur is one of my absolute favorite exhibits at the Met.  Not only is the temple itself a stunning little architectural gem, but the Met’s designers created an unquestionably spectacular presentation environment for it.  It’s a stage set, and the temple is the star of the production.

(It’s so visually striking that since it opened, I’ve harbored the fantasy of using it as a setting for a production of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.  If I couldn’t do it at the Met, I’d have the whole environment, temple and all, replicated in a performance venue someplace.)

Our visit to Abu Simbel was over in less than two hours because we had to be back at the Abu Simbel Airport for a 9:15 EgyptAir flight to Aswan, about 40 minutes to cover 175 miles.  This was the starting point of the Sheraton Nile Cruise, four nights during which the river boat would be our hotel.  [The Sheraton cruises ceased operation in 2000.]

We arrived at Aswan International (that’s right, it’s international!) Airport at just before 10 a.m.  We went from there to Aswan and the Sheraton pier—they have their own—to board the boat.  Boarding time was noon, and I don’t recall how we killed the time before then. 

The drive from the airport, just 11 miles away, only takes a half hour at most, so we would’ve arrived in Aswan around 10:30 or so.  Maybe we had a second breakfast—lunch would be served on board—since we’d eaten so early and we’d been rushing about for eight hours already!

So, we checked in to the boat at 12 and after dropping in on our cabins, immediately had lunch.  (The food was more than passable.  The boat wasn’t large, so I assume the galley was a tight fit.)  The Sheraton ran four boats on the Nile in the ’80s, and I think I was on the 78-cabin H/S Tut. 

(The other Sheraton river boats were the H/S Anni [64 cabins], the Hotp [64 cabins], and the Aton [82 cabins].  H/S stands for “Hydraulic Ship”—as opposed to “Steam Ship” [S/S] or “Motor Ship” [M/S].)

After lunch on our first day aboard the Nile River boat, we saw sights in Aswan.  We made a stop at the Mausoleum of Agha Khan, the burial place of Agha Khan III (1877-1957), the 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili sect of Islam.  It’s an immense tomb on the west bank of the Nile in Aswan on a hilltop overlooking the villa the Agha Khan and his wife used as a winter residence.

(Interesting note: the Agha Khan left instructions in his will that he was to be buried near the villa two years after his death.  He died and was first buried in Versoix-Geneva, Switzerland, where I went for my junior year in high school.  I wrote about this period of my life recently in “Going to a Swiss International School,” Parts 1-3 [posted on Rick On Theater on 29 April and 2 and 5 May 2021].)

The Agha (or Aga) Khan is an honorific title bestowed on the Imam of the Nizari Ismaili Shia.  The Nizaris are the largest branch of the Ismaili Muslims, who, in turn, are the second-largest branch of Shia Islam.  The Agha Khan claims descent from Muhammad and is the spiritual leader of his sect of Muslims in vaguely the same way that the Dalai Lama is the leader of the “Yellow Hat” school of Tibetan Buddhism.

The mausoleum, which is built of pink granite, is designed to resemble the Masjid (mosque) al-Juyushi, a Fatimid mosque in Cairo built in the 11th century.  The Fatimids were an Ismaili Shia dynasty that ruled North Africa in the 10th through the 12th centuries, making Egypt a Fatimid power center.  Presumably, this is why Agha Khan III chose this site for his final resting place.

[In 1997, the Begum, the wife of the Agha Khan, closed the mausoleum to the public, though the grounds remain accessible.  At the time I was there, it was still open to visitors.]

After the mausoleum, we visited two small islands in the Nile that are part of the city of Aswan.  Elephantine Island is the larger of the two, and is located closest to Aswan off the east bank of the river.  The island’s only 3,900 feet (less than three-quarters of a mile) long and 1,300 feet (about a quarter of a mile) across at its widest point.  (By comparison, New York City’s Roosevelt Island is about two miles long with a maximum width of 800 feet.)

The island’s odd name may have something to do with its history.  In ancient Egyptian, guidebooks told me, the name meant both “elephant” and “ivory.”  The island was a trading center for African ivory.

Some guides also pointed out that the large rocks on the island look like elephants standing in water.  That strikes me as little fanciful, but at least it’s feasible.  Another observation was that the shape of the island from the air resembles an elephant tusk.  I can’t confirm that . . . but, umm, how would an ancient Egyptian get to see the island from the air, anyway?  From an ancient Egyptian helicopter, maybe?  Or the observation deck of a very tall ancient Egyptian skyscraper?

The island’s prominence in trade comes from its location.  It sits in the Nile on what was the border between Upper Egypt and Nubia.  That made it an ideal spot for exchanging goods among traders plying the Nile, an important trade route.

As a result, the island had a fairly significant existence for such a tiny place.  The archeological evidence over the decades has been important enough for Elephantine to be the home of the Aswan Museum (which also contains artifacts found in or salvaged from the monuments that were excavated when the dam created Lake Nasser).

Elephantine Island is also the site of a fort built in the 17th or 16th century BCE, part of Egypt’s defense of its southern border.  Because the Egyptian religion held that the island was the home of Khnum, the god who controlled the flow of the Nile—he inhabited caves beneath the island—there’s a temple dedicated to him and his two companion deities. 

The Temple of Khnum, on the southern end of the island, is the oldest ruin on Elephantine.  It dates from the Third Dynasty (2686-2613 BCE), with a smaller temple from the Sixth Dynasty local governor (around 2278-2183 BCE).  Khnum is depicted with a ram’s head and there’s a mummified ram, sacred to the god, in the Aswan Museum.

The little island also contains one of the several granite quarries in Aswan that supplied stone for many of ancient Egypt’s historic monuments.  All of these sites are the focus of ongoing digs.

Next to Elephantine Island to the west is what used to be called Kitchener’s Island (now more commonly known as El Nabatat Island).  It’s even tinier than Elephantine, weighing in at only a little over a half a mile in length and about a third of a mile in width. 

The island has had several names and continues to be called varying ones even today.  The designation Kitchener’s Island was the result of the island’s being given to Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (1850-1916), when he was British Consul-General in Egypt from 1911 to 1914 (during the British occupation).

Lord Kitchener made the island his military headquarters and filled it with exotic flowers and rare plants and trees from as far as India and Malaysia.  When Kitchener left Egypt, the island reverted to the control of the Egyptian government; when President Nasser took office in 1956, he called the island Geziret En Nabatat, which means Plant Island.

Today, El Nabatat is the Aswan Botanical Garden, specializing in subtropical, exotic, and rare plants from all over the world.  The island and gardens, which are popular with both local residents and visitors, can be reached by felucca, motor boat, or ferry.  (A felucca is a traditional wooden sailboat that sails the Nile.  We saw lots of them from the cruise boat on this trip down the river.)

We returned to the boat at about 5 p.m. where the crew were serving Afternoon Tea.  (They did this every day of the cruise.  Remember that Egypt was run by the Brits for over three decades.)  Dinner was served on board at 7 or 8:15 (depending on your Seating), and then the on-board Discotheque was opened, as it was most evenings. 

(This being the early ’80s, disco was still popular, especially in Europe, which would have been Egypt’s template for Western tourist entertainment.  At 36, I wasn’t really drawn to it myself.)

As I said, we spent nights on the vessel, which remained tied up in Aswan for the first night of the cruise.

[I guess this isn’t really a “cruise” yet, since we haven’t actually sailed anywhere.  Starting with “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 11,” however, we progress down river, making several stops en route.  Between Abu Simbel (temples) and Karnak and Luxor (temples), we visited . . . guess what.  More temples!

[The song says “See the pyramids along the Nile,” but they’re inland from the river.  What were built on the banks of the Nile were the temples—so, if you sail along the river, it’s a guarantee you’ll see lots of ’em.  (“See the temples along the Nile” doesn’t scan, however!)

[Part 11, the penultimate installment of “Travel Journal,” will be posted on Tuesday, 17 August.  Please come back as I wind up this chronicle of my visit to two countries whose origins stretch back to the beginning of human history.]

Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 9

 

[It’s Christmas Day in Cairo, the last morning in the city before our departure for Upper Egypt (which, if you remember my note, is actually in the south because it’s up river from Alexandria and Cairo and at higher elevations). 

[I had my last “Nile Balcony” breakfast, watching the life along the river beneath my hotel room window, then I took advantage of our free day, as you’ll read below.  In the evening of 25 December, we returned to the Giza Plateau to see the sound and light show at the Great Pyramids.]

Cairo – Saturday, 25 December

Today we had a free day and the birthday gift I gave myself was a return visit to the Egyptian Museum (see Part 8).  I walked across the Nile bridge from Giza into the center of Cairo, a short distance, and spent the morning reexamining the exhibits we rushed through on our guided tour and then went on to parts of the museum we hadn’t visited. 

I made my remarks about what I saw earlier, but I’ll reiterate that this kind of stuff really gets me.  Part of my response is a result of my fascination with really old things, the same way I am with ancient places, but part, and I think the greater part, is because the objects are so gorgeous.  I look at them more as art than artifacts. 

I had the same experience at the Athens Archaeological Museum, which I visited in 1973 [and the National Museum of the American Indian on Washington, D.C.’s Mall, which I saw in 2006, soon after it opened in 2004]. 

[I’ve covered NMAI in several posts.  See, for example, “Fritz Scholder,” posted on 30 March 2011; “Awake and Sing!, et al.,” 3 April  2017; the section on The First American Art in “Art By Indigenous Peoples,” 5 January 2018; and “Akunnittinni: A Kinngait Family Portrait,” 15 January 2018.]

When I was stationed in West Berlin in the early and mid-1970s, I used to go often to the Dahlem Museum [formal name today: Ethnological Museum of Berlin], which was in the same district as the U.S. Army headquarters and my billet.  Even though I saw the works in the art section of the museum (which included the world-famous Man with the Golden Helmet [c. 1650], believed then to have been the work of Rembrandt), I was most fascinated with the ethnological section, where the objects (from cultures of Africa, Oceania, East and North Asia, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia, and native Americans) were displayed with all the aesthetic sensitivity of any art museum in the world.

[It really doesn’t matter the culture.  I’m drawn to shows like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s The Aztec Empire in 2004 and The Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya at the National Gallery of Art that same year.  I spent hours of pleasure at China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 A.D. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004 again; The First American Art: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of American Indian Art, also in 2004, at the Bowling Green (New York City) satellite of the National Museum of the American Indian; and, in 2007, African Vision: The Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection at the National Museum of African Art.

[Note that all these memorable exhibits, with the exception of First American Art, were mounted at art museums not ethnological or natural history institutions—and they all were art shows.  Not only are so many of these items simply beautiful and expressive, but I am always stunned to see so much that’s delicate or made from perishable material that’s survived for hundreds and even thousands of years.] 

Before returning to the Sheraton for our evening outing, I went in search of a Cairene lunch on my own.  Not that there was anything wrong with the food at the Sheraton.  It even served a fair selection of Egyptian dishes—shawarma, fava beans, lentils, grape leaves, hummus, falafel, kebabs, kofta, and such (not dissimilar from Israeli or Turkish food)—but it’s “sanitized,” so to speak.  Not just hygienically, but “visually” for the Western eye and palate. 

I went looking for a Cairo café.  If it was reasonably clean-looking and busy (that is, popular). I gave it a try.  I settled on a place that turned out to be a lunch spot for Cairene office-workers.  (In Hong Kong, when I was on a trip to China, a couple of years earlier, I went to a native dim sum restaurant near the harbor.  The menu was entirely in Chinese—the clientele was virtually all local residents—and I just turned myself over to the waiter.  It worked out excellently, so I did the same thing in Cairo!  Also excellent.) 

I don’t remember what I ate—except that there were fava beans.  They’re pretty much a staple, I gather.  [By the way, this was almost a decade before Silence of the Lambs.  Until 1991, favas were just oversized limas!]

After a brief respite at the hotel, that evening we returned to the Giza Plateau for the sound and light show at the Great Pyramids.  Most people nowadays are familiar with sound and light shows; they’ve been around for over half a century and are pretty much seen all over the globe.

For those few who don’t know what one is, a sound and light show is the use of lighting effects projected onto the side of a building or ruin of some historical note while live or recorded narration accompanied by music dramatizes the history of the place.

The sound and light show at the Great Pyramids of Giza, the first in Africa, has been performed since 1961.  The narration was performed by the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif (1932-2015) and the music was composed by Halim El-Dabh (1921-2017), a pioneer of electronic music, who drew on ancient Egyptian themes and texts.

I’m not a big fan of sound and light shows; I find them hokey and enervating.  The most interesting thing about the performance at Giza was that it was the same show that Roger Moore’s James Bond was at in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me.  The word is that the script hasn’t changed in decades—and the technology hasn’t much, either.

The Great Pyramids sound-and-light was somewhat gimmicky in my opinion.  The Sphinx recounts the story of the pyramids and the three pharaohs, Cheops, Chephren, and Mykerinos.  There’s dramatic music and the lights change color and shift from the façade of one tomb to the next.  It’s all very ersatz-dramatic, like the difference between a film-strip and an actual movie.

I’ve only seen a couple of sound-and-lights; I can’t even remember what the others were.  My problems are with both the sound—the writing is stiff and artificial (at Giza, the “ancient” Egyptians spoke “biblical” English: a lot of thou’s and hast’s) and it was all spoken in stentorian tones—and the light—the Sphinx and the pyramids were arbitrarily lit in bright colors that had no connection to anything historical.

The history—or legends, since little is really known about the Fourth Dynasty pharaohs—is very sketchy and not always related to the pyramids or the Sphinx, despite the fact that that’s what we’re looking at.

Remember what I said about the desert on winter days?  Well, on winter nights, it gets cold fast after the sun goes down.  Sitting for an hour—at some distance from the pyramids in folding chairs, I might add—it’s necessary to have a warm sweater or jacket to stay comfortable. 

I can’t say this was a highlight of my visit to Cairo.  [I don’t know what the tickets cost when I went since it was part of the tour package, but today’s prices are $19 for a regular seat or $23 for a VIP seat (the first three or four rows).]  The Giza monuments are way more impressive just as they are in daylight than in the sound-and-light.

The next day was our departure from Cairo and we were flying.  Reveille was at 2:30 a.m. with breakfast at 3.  We had to have our luggage outside the rooms at that hour—so it was pack up and turn in . . . and hope to be able to get right to sleep.

[In “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 10,” I’ll be seeing a remarkable engineering feat—and, believe it or not, I’m not talking about the Aswan Dam.  Then I spend the rest of my Egyptian adventure aboard a Nile River boat seeing not the “pyramids along the Nile,” but the ancient temples. 

[It’s coming up on Saturday, 14 August.  Please come back to Rick On Theater for the next installment of this recovered journal.]

Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 8

 

[This is the second installment of the Egyptian portion of my chronicle of my travels in Israel and Egypt.  The whole experience was quite different from the voyage around Israel.  Israel is a bit more than ¹/₅₀ the size of Eqypt, yet we saw most of Egypt on day trips out of Cairo (until the cruise on the Nile, which was an add-on).  In Israel, we did several day trips, but we stayed in three different cities. 

[Almost everything we saw in Egypt was either ancient or medieval-to-Ottoman.  The only truly modern thing we saw was the Aswan High Dam (and, I suppose, the reconstructed Abu Simbel Temples—all to come in the post).  There was a considerable amount of ancient history to see in Israel, a lot of medieval and early-modern, but also a lot of 20th-century sights—which makes sense, since Israel is a 20th-century nation (and now, a 21st-century one as well).

[There’s nothing amiss in this contrast.  It’s just a curious dichotomy in the two halves of one sightseeing journey.]

Cairo – Friday. 24 December

I had my continental breakfast overlooking the Nile from my balcony again.  Then we made our excursion to the Egyptian Museum (formally, the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities).  This is where all the principal relics of ancient Egypt are preserved (aside from the ones held—often under protest by today’s Egyptian government—in places like London, Paris, and Berlin).

The Egyptian Museum is where the artifacts from King Tut’s tomb, including the famous gold funereal mask for his mummy, are usually on display.  Except, that is, when they’re traveling.  That’s the problem with places like the Egyptian Museum or the National Archaeological Museum of Athens: their holdings are of such interest around the world and in such demand that anytime you visit one of them, you’re bound to find some of their best exhibits absent! 

Tut’s treasures, for example, were on tour for nine years (1972-1981)—which meant that they weren’t in Cairo for nine years.  Relics from the “Boy King’s” tomb (he took the throne at about 9 years old and died at 18 or 19) are among the most travelled artifacts in the world.

Fortunately, there are far more items of interest in the Egyptian Museum than just Tut’s stuff—his are just the most famous.  There’s so much of interest in this place that when we had a free day, I made a beeline for it on my own.  (It was in walking distance from the Sheraton, as I noted earlier.)

I guess most visitors, especially foreigners, are drawn to the burial customs and artifacts—the mummies, sarcophagi, funereal masks, canopic jars, and so on.  The Tutankhamun relics are surely the most famous collection in the museum, and many of the items are undeniably extraordinary.  But I didn’t go back to revisit those well-known objects. 

The large statues, many of them representations of the pharaohs whose tombs we’d seen the day before (see Part 7)—and many of them were transferred from the Giza Complex—are magnificent,  We’re all familiar to some extent with Greek and Roman sculpture.  One way or another, there’s a direct line from those civilizations to our culture. 

But the equivalent Egyptian statuary is less familiar.  That makes it exotic and novel—and, hence, an object of fascination.  The large Egyptian statues of honored men are curiously dichotomous.  While the Greek statues are almost entirely realistic and accurate in detail, the Egyptian examples have split artistic personalities.

On one hand, the poses and stances are stiff and artificial.  The parts of the body often don’t look quite natural—and they’re not.  (I know some of the reasons for this, but that’s not relevant to my point here.)

The faces, however, are as real as anything Michelangelo might have carved.  The features like the eyes, noses, mouths, cheekbones are so distinct and varied that they almost have to have been reproduced from life with specificity and accuracy.  They’re true sculpted portraits—I’d bet on it.

The large sculptures, though, aren’t the pieces that caught my eye the most.  It was the little items—including the jewelry.  There were some pieces of jewelry that were just stunning.  (It’s no wonder that in the 1920s and ’30s, right after tomb of Tutankhamun [1332-1324 BCE] was opened in 1922, the West went mad for Egyptian motifs.  This stuff is elegant by even modern standards.)

Other small items, however, like vases, bowls, small figurines, are also exquisite.  When my mother and I used to go to art exhibits, we’d assess how well we liked the show and the works on display by deciding what pieces we’d come back for on a “midnight shopping trip.”  From what I saw at the Egyptian Museum, I’d clean out the place.  (No, I’d leave the mummies and sarcophagi.  And the large statues—no place to put them.)

After our brief guided visit to the Egyptian Museum (my comments above combined those from my later visit on my own), we toured Old Cairo.

The city of Cairo, now Egypt’s capital and largest city (with a 1982 population of about 7.9 million inhabitants—grown to almost 10 million today), is one of the largest cities in the Arab world, Africa, and the world.  [Today, Cairo is the ninth-largest city in the world by population.]  It wasn’t founded until 969 CE, after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641.  There were, however, settlements in what is now Cairo beginning in the Roman era before the 6th century BCE.

Around 525 BCE, the Babylonians, having conquered Egypt, built Fort Babylon at the mouth of the canal that connected the Nile with the Red Sea.  The canal, which marked the boundary between Upper (i.e., southern) and Lower (i.e., northern) Egypt, made this a particularly strategic location in the ancient world and many settlements grew up here—on the southern edge of the modern city.

(For a brief explanation of the apparent paradox of Upper Egypt being in the south and Lower Egypt being in the north, see Part 7.)

In 30 BCE, the Roman Empire annexed Egypt and built a bigger fortress near the site of Fort Babylon.  According to the New Testament, soon after Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph fled Roman Palestine in fear of King Herod’s determination to find and kill the infant “King of the Jews” and took refuge for several years in Egypt.  It wasn’t until Saint Mark went into Egypt, however, that Christianity took a hold there.  He began converting the pagan Egyptians and in about 33 CE, the Coptic Christian Church was established in Alexandria, then the capital of Greco-Roman Egypt.

The Christians were persecuted by the Romans for hundreds of years, even though a substantial number of Egyptians were now followers.  Nonetheless, numerous churches were built in what’s now called Coptic Cairo, a part of Old Cairo, in the late 4th and early 5th centuries of the Common Era. 

In the early years following the Arab conquest, the Christians were permitted to build several churches near Fort Babylon in Old Cairo.  One of these is Saint Sergius Coptic Church (full name: Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus Coptic Orthodox Church).

Consecrated in the 4th century, Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus is one of the oldest Coptic churches in Egypt.  It’s situated over the place where Christians believe Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus took refuge when they came to Egypt.  The church’s historical importance is that it’s where many patriarchs of the Coptic Church were elected.

The story of Sergius and Bacchus is based entirely on legend; there’s no historical evidence to support any of it.  They are nonetheless considered saints in the Roman Catholic Church as well as many Eastern Orthodox branches of Christianity.

According to their legend, they were lifelong friends who were high-ranking young Roman soldiers in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and part of Syria) in the 3rd and 4th centuries.  They were unmasked as secret Christians in the early years of the 4th century and when they refused to renounce their beliefs, they were tortured. 

Bacchus was beaten to death under torture and Sergius, still refusing to abandon his faith, was beheaded.  Their martyrdom is dated at 303, but there’s no record of their ever having existed, much less when they died.

Because of their undying friendship for one another, Saints Sergius and Bacchus are forever linked as “paired saints,” venerated together due to a close relationship which transcends mere friendship.  (Among other paired saints are the female Roman martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, the Apostles Peter and Paul, and even Jesus and his disciple John.)

[Because of the assertions of one 20th-century historian, the closeness of Sergius and Bacchus is interpreted by some as romantic and the two saints have become the unofficial patrons of gay Christians.  There is, of course, no more evidence that this is true than there is of anything else in the story of Saints Sergius and Bacchus.]

Nearby is the Ben Ezra Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Cairo.  Founded in the 9th century, it’s claimed to be on the site where the pharaoh’s daughter found baby Moses among the reeds along the Nile.

The date of the founding of the synagogue isn’t known, but historic documents suggest that it was before 882 CE and probably before the establishment of Islam (622).  The original building, built in the 4th century, was a Christian church (purchased by a former Jerusalemite rabbi, Abraham Ben Ezra (b. 1089-92; d. 1164-67), for whom it’s named.

The present interior is interesting, mixing features of Islamic and Coptic architectural influences.  The echoes of church design are obvious, but the synagogue layout is reminiscent of traditional houses of prayer of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, with the bimah in the middle of the sanctuary floor, rather than at one end, and no seats for worshipers like an Ashkenazi synagogue.

(I usually distinguish the two synagogue configurations by comparing the Ashkenazi shul to a proscenium theater, with the stage, or bimah, at one end and the audience [i.e., congregation] seated in fan-shaped array facing it.

(The Sephardi synagogue is like an arena theater, with the stage in the center and the audience arranged in a circle around it, except that Sephardi synagogues don’t have seats.  The worshipers stand.  [The word bimah, incidentally, is the same in a synagogue and in a theater; the name of the famous Habima, Israel’s national theater company, means ‘The Stage.’]

(I have noted that Ashkenazi Jews are those mainly from Eastern and Central Europe.  Sephardim come from Spain and Portugal, having arrived in Europe with the Moors; they’re closely related culturally to the Mizrahim.  Mizrahi Jews are those from Western Asia [i.e., Middle East] and North Africa.)

Though the Ben Ezra Synagogue has ancient roots, the current building only dates from 1892.  Four years later, in a storage space for aged Hebrew texts awaiting burial (sacred Jewish texts and secular texts which mention the name of God must not be destroyed or discarded; they’re buried just like human remains), a huge cache of manuscripts was found and shipped to the University of Cambridge for identification and study. 

The collection is currently archived in several university libraries in England and one in New York City.  What the Dead Sea Scrolls are to the origins of the Old Testament, the Ben Ezra cache is to the history of medieval Jewry.

In 1168, Moses Maimonides (Rambam, see Part 2) settled in Fustat, the city, now part of Old Cairo, that was the capital of early Muslim Egypt and the site of the Ben Ezra Synagogue.  He lived there for the rest of his life and, although he apparently wasn’t a member of the congregation, some of the ancient documents found tell of his life and work.  These papers, some in Maimonides’ own hand, are a primary source of the philosopher’s biography.

Like many nations in the Muslim Middle East and North Africa, the Jewish population of Egypt has dwindled in the 20th century, especially after the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.  With a shrinking congregation, the Ben Ezra Synagogue no longer functions as a house of worship.  It serves as a museum and tourist attraction.

In the afternoon, we went to a different part of Old Cairo, away from the river, to the Citadel of Mohamed Ali (apparently more commonly known as the Citadel of Cairo or the Citadel of Saladin), a medieval fortification in the city built by Saladin (1137-93), the first sultan of Egypt and Syria (1174-93) and leader of the Muslim military campaigns against the Crusaders (1182-92), and then rebuilt and redesigned by subsequent Egyptian rulers. 

The citadel served as the seat of the Egyptian government from Saladin’s reign to the Ottomans in the 19th century, down to Mohamed Ali, (1769-1849), the Albanian Ottoman governor and the de facto ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848 who’s considered the founder of modern Egypt.  It’s more like an Egyptian Kremlin, with mosques in place of the churches in the Moscow fortress, than a White House or Élysée Palace. 

The citadel was closed to the public and used as a military garrison and base by the British occupation army (1882-1956), and then, after 1946, by the Egyptian military.  [The Egyptian government opened a large part of the Citadel to the public in 1983, and initiated the conversion some of its old buildings into museums.]

From the citadel, we paid a visit to Cairo’s bazaars, specifically the Khan El-Khalili market, the famous bazaar or souk in the center of the city.  (Bazaar is a Persian word that’s been adopted by many cultures, while souk, an Arabic word, is the common term in the Middle East and North Africa.)

In the Muslim world, bazaars are not only common, but essential commercial and social centers.  All manner of goods are sold there and it’s where local residents and visitors exchange information, news, and gossip. 

While in the West, bazaars are often temporary or ad hoc marketplaces, often set up for charity fundraising, in the nations where bazaars and souks are a way of life, they are permanent locations, usually along a covered street (or network of streets in a neighborhood) or in a covered structure. 

Stalls or shops are individually operated like a farmers’ market or flea market in the West, and the goods range from crafts, to spices and incense, to street foods and sweets, to jewelry, to clothes, to toys.  Today’s bazaars also sell tapes, CD’s, souvenirs, picture postcards, slides, and so on, and usually feature cafés, one of the oldest of which is El-Fishawi, established in 1773.

In addition to the local people who shop in the bazaars, they are big tourist draws because they’re invariably colorful and bustling with activity.  Big cities that were crossroads for commerce and trade, like Istanbul, Bagdad, Damascus, and Cairo, developed large bazaars and they still operate today as vital parts of the cities’ cultures.

Khan el-Khalili is such a place.  Established in the 1380s by Jaharkas al-Khalili, the Master of the Stables of Sultan Barquq (1336-99; reigned: 1382-89; 1390-99), it soon became an important commercial center.  (A khan is a multi-level building which served merchants as a place to store their goods on the ground level, with living quarters above.  In the front of the street-level courtyard where the merchandise was stored was a space for a shop to sell the wares.)

Because it’s a gathering place for thousands of people, both Cairenes and visitors—tourists today, traders and pilgrims in the past—the bazaar also attracts entertainers and holiday celebrants.  It’s always full of noise and music, odors and aromas (from the spices in open sacks, the burning incense, smoke from shishas and hookahs, and the food and Arabic coffee from the cafés), and crowds and animation.

[The 1988 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), the only Arab writer to have won the prize, set his 1947 novel Midaq Alley (released in English in 1966) in the Khan el-Khalili.]

[Part 9 of “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982,” the next installment, is scheduled for Wednesday, 11 August.  It was Christmas Day in Cairo and I’ll be covering our attendance at the sound and light show at the Great Pyramids that night.

[Over the years (and I’ve seen a lot of them by now), I’ve spent Christmas in some far-off places.  On this continent I’ve marked the holiday in Chicago; New Orleans; Williamsburg, Virginia (for an 18th-century celebration); Mexico City; and Quebec City. 

[On the way to New Hope, Pennsylvania, in 1985, my parents and I stopped to watch Washington Crossing the Delaware at Washington Crossing.  In 1976, I had performed the role of Hessian Colonel Johann Rall, the mercenary defender of Trenton who was defeated by Washington’s Continentals on Christmas night 1776, in William Mastrosimone’s Devil Take the Hindmost (see my post “Johann Rall: A Historical Portrait,” 10 and 15 December 2009).  The play was presented in the bicentennial year; the historical reenactment we saw was staged on the 209th anniversary of the crossing.

[Abroad, I saw Christmas in Paris on my 16th birthday in 1962 and London the next year.  Zermatt, Switzerland, home of the Matterhorn, was the site of several holidays after that, and one in Gstaad.  I observed one memorable holiday at the 700-year-old home of a family of friends in the tiny French town of Villefranche-de-Lauragais in 1971.  I was in Beijing in 1980 (the period of my next transcribed journal), followed by Cairo in 1982.

[I’m not even counting the places where I was living when 25 December came around—Washington, D.C.; Koblenz, Germany; Berlin; New York City.

[But I digress . . . .  Please return to Rick On Theater on 11 August for the next part of “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982.”]