[“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.]
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