Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 7

 

[After a brief hold-up to publish a timely post on an important announcement by Actors’ Equity Association (see “Actors' Equity's Open Access,” 28 July), I returned to the posting of my travel journal for a 1982 trip to Israel and Egypt.  I posted Part 6 of the series on 2 August, after the interruption, and now comes Part 7 of “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982,” the first installment of the Egyptian half of the journey.

[As I have all along, I strongly recommend that readers who haven’t been following along continuously from Part 1 go back to 11 July and catch up.  Parts 1 through 6 of my chronicle, covering my visit to Israel, started on that date and continued on 14, 17, 20, and 23 July, and 2 August.]

CAIRO, EGYPT

Cairo – Wednesday, 22 December

We arrived at Cairo International Airport and were met by some staff of Egyptian Express Travel, the company handling the Egyptian half of the Unitours program, and after processing through the usual customs and immigration folderol, we were transported to the Cairo Sheraton Hotel [now called the Sheraton Cairo Hotel & Casino].

I think this is where I first heard what would become a key phrase from our guide: “Yallah, yallah, yallah!”  Yallah means “Let’s go!” or “Hurry up!” but I gather it’s also used as just an attention-getter like “Over here!” or “Look this way!”

We heard it from the guide when he was on the move or trying get us to gather ’round him, and we heard it from vendors and peddlers in street markets and tourist-site souvenir hawkers.  (I never heard it spoken—or, rather, shouted—in anything but threes.)

It was ubiquitous—and one of a couple of Arabic terms I picked up just from listening.  (Another was shukran for “thanks.”)

The hotel is actually in Giza, just across the Nile from downtown Cairo, walking distance from the Egyptian Museum, which holds most of the Egyptian antiquities in the city.  The hotel sits on the western bank of the river, just across a bridge over the Nile. 

(Giza is officially a separate jurisdiction, or governorate, but it’s effectively a close-in suburb of Cairo, as can be surmised from the name of the Cairo Sheraton Hotel.  It’s sort of like, say, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is to Boston—separated by the Charles River.  Generally speaking, the Nile separates Cairo proper from Giza.  Cairo is east of the river; Giza is west.)

When we got to the hotel—very mid-20th-century modern with little, except decorative appointments, that said “Egypt” (ancient or modern)—and got ourselves checked in and received our room assignments and keys, I went up to my room.  (The Egypt group was much smaller than the Israel one, so I didn’t have a roommate.)

The room looked out on the Nile!  I should say, “looked down,” as the hotel was right on the riverbank and I was several stories directly above it.  What’s more, I had a little balcony hanging right over the Nile!  I decided then and there that I would have my breakfast on that balcony every morning.  I mean . . . it’s the River Nile—you know what I mean?

Cairo – Thursday, 23 December

After breakfast—which I had on my “Nile Balcony” as I promised myself—we took off for Memphis (and I don’t mean Tennessee!  —with a hat-tip to Chuck Berry).  That’s the ancient capital of Egypt, 18 miles south of Cairo along the Nile. 

The ancient city of Memphis is today an archeological ruin, designated a World Heritage Site in 1979 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).  It’s located near several modern towns that are within its historical borders; the closest is Mit Rahina.  (We visited only the historical ruins.)

According to legend, the city was founded by King Menes—for whom it’s named—who flourished around 3200-3000 BCE and who united Upper (counterintuitively, that’s southern because the Nile flows south—up river—to north) and Lower (i.e., northern) Egypt and established the First Dynasty. 

(Along the Nile, the topography of Egypt slopes downward from an elevation of over 600 feet near the Sudanese border in the south to less than 20 feet at Alexandria on the Mediterranean Sea in the north.  Cairo sits at an elevation of 75 feet above sea level, while Aswan, 540 miles south, is 636 feet above sea level.)

King Menes made Memphis—the Greek adaptation of Menefer, the city’s Egyptian name—the capital of the united country, and it remained the seat of the kings and pharaohs until the Ninth Dynasty (ca. 2160-ca. 2130 BCE).  It continued to be an important center for business, trade, and religion.

The first true scientific exploration of Memphis was during Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769-1821) campaign in Egypt (1798-1801), during which the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799.  The first excavations of Memphis were made in 1820 and digging continued into the 20th century [and the early years of the 21st century].

Memphis was a populous city, ranging in size from 6,000 to 30,000 inhabitants during its rise in prominence to the height of its importance.  Witness to this are the large number of temples—mostly to Ptah, the god of craftsmen and architects, and the city’s patron deity—built by the various rulers who reigned from here.  

For the same reason, there are numerous necropolises.  The best known is the Necropolis of Sakkara (also spelled Saqqara), an ancient burial ground of Egyptian kings and nobles, about 17½ miles south of Memphis and a bit west of the Nile.  

There are numerous tombs, including both mastabas, rectangular burial structures for non-royal Egyptians, and pyramids.  (Aside from their shapes, mastabas and pyramids are differentiated by their construction media: pyramids are made of quarried stone, granite for the substructure and limestone for the facing; mastabas are built out of mud bricks—the kind written of in the Old Testament story of the Exodus.) 

The Sakkara necropolis is a vast place, covering an area of a little less than 4 square miles (about the size of East Orange, New Jersey; Brewster, Massachusetts; or Hempstead, New York), a true “city of the dead.” 

The most famous of the 16 royal pyramids as Sakkara is the Step Pyramid of Zoser (Djoser), built during the Third Dynasty (2686-2613 BCE).  It’s the oldest-known intact stone structure in the world.  Pharoah Zoser reigned for a period of from 19 to 28 years (depending on the source of information) sometime between approximately 2686 and 2611 BCE. 

The pyramid is the main feature of Zoser’s vast burial complex of ceremonial structures and decoration surrounding an immense courtyard.  It’s made up of six steps, or set-backs, reaching a height of 205 feet with a base 358 feet by 397 feet.  (The Great Pyramid of Cheops in Giza, by comparison, is 481 feet tall on a base of 755.6 feet square.)  The top is flat; there’s no pyramidion, the pyramid-shaped stone that forms the peak of a true pyramid or an obelisk.

After our visit to Memphis, we had lunch at the Mena House Hotel, originally a mid-19th-century hunting lodge in Giza about eight miles southwest of Cairo.  It was converted into a hotel, named for King Menes. which opened in 1886.  [Since 2018, it’s been operated by Marriott.]  It’s in view of the Great Pyramids of Giza, about 600 yards south.

(In December 1977, Egyptian diplomat and delegate to the United Nations, Esmat Abdel-Miguid [1923-2013], and Osama el-Baz [1931-2013], Egyptian diplomat and Chief of Staff to the Egyptian president, sat down with Eliahu Ben Elissar [1932-2000], Israeli politician and diplomat who was Director-General of the Office  of the Prime Minister of Israel, and Israeli lawyer and diplomat Meir Rosenne [1931-2015], who served as legal adviser to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at Mena House to discuss a peace settlement.  

(Also attending as observers were U.S. Under Secretary of State Albert Atherton [1921-2002; U.S. Ambassador to Egypt: 1979-83] and United Nations representative General Ensio Siilasvuo [1922-2003] of Finland, head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Mideast.  

(The result of this Mena House conference was the Camp David Accords, signed by Anwar Sadat [1918-81; President of Egypt, 1970-81] and Menachem Begin [1913-92; Prime Minister of Israel, 1977-83] on 17 September 1978.  It was those accords that made it possible for me and my traveling companions to visit both Israel and Egypt on one trip and cross directly from Jerusalem to Cairo the way we did.)

After lunch, we went to the edge of the Western Desert, an area of the vast Sahara that lies west of the River Nile, to see the Great Pyramids of Giza, also known as the Giza Pyramid Complex.  The complex, on the eastern edge of the desert (about eight miles southwest of central Cairo), includes the Great Pyramid of Cheops (also known as the Pyramid of Khufu); the slightly smaller Pyramid of Chephren (or Khafre), about 275 yards southwest; and the Pyramid of Mykerinos (or Menkaure), another 300 yards or so farther.  

Also part of the complex are several small pyramids associated with the Mykerinos  pyramid, a number of other structures such as temples and tombs of lesser nobles and the pyramid-builders, statues of the pharaohs interred there, and several large cemeteries containing mastabas.  The Great Sphinx lies on the eastern side of the complex.  The entire complex, named a world Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979, covers a tad over 62½ square miles.  (That’s a little bigger than Louisville, Kentucky, and Akron, Ohio, and a little smaller than Davenport, Iowa.)

Of course, half the reason to go out to the Giza complex is to see the Great Pyramids, especially the Pyramid of Cheops, by far the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one still extant.  Constructed between approximately 2580 and 2560 BCE, it’s the oldest of the pyramids in Giza and also one of the largest structures ever built, twice the size of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome (commonly known as the Vatican).

It could have taken as long as 27 years to construct the royal tomb for Pharoah Cheops (reign: ca. 2589-2566 BCE) of the Fourth Dynasty (2613-2494 BCE).  At originally 481 feet tall, when the polished limestone casing was removed over the centuries (including the pyramidion), the height of the Great Pyramid had been reduced to its current 454.4 feet.  Still, for more than 3,800 years, it was the world’s tallest structure. 

(The central spire of London’s Lincoln Cathedral, completed in 1311, is believed to have been 525 feet tall, surpassing the Great Pyramid’s height by 44 feet—until the spire collapsed in 1548.  After that, the Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, became the tallest structure at 1,063 feet.)

Like all the Fourth Dynasty pyramids in Giza, Cheops’ tomb was built of granite blocks and then faced with white limestone so that the sides looked smooth.  The limestone was highly polished so that it reflected the sunlight like a giant gem in the desert.  The facing stones were stripped from the pyramids starting centuries ago for use in other construction.  A few of these stones are still in place at the base of the Great Pyramid.

The two other great pyramids, the tombs of Pharaohs Chephren (ca. 2558-2532 BCE), one of Cheops’ sons, and Mykerinos  (ca. 2532-2503 BCE), a son of Chephren, are both smaller than Cheops’—Chephren’s, completed in approximately 2570 BCE, only slightly, but Mykerinos’, completed in about 2510 BCE, very noticeably.  Chephren’s pyramid exhibits a considerable amount of the limestone casing at the top.

Among its attendant structures—all the burial pyramids are themselves complexes in addition to being parts of the overall Giza complex—the Mykerinos  pyramid has three subsidiary pyramids, known as “Queen’s Pyramids” (though their actual purpose may have had nothing to do with the burial of the pharaoh’s wives).

At about 980 yards (a half mile) southeast of the Great Pyramids lies the Great Sphinx, possibly the most iconic sight in all of Egypt and one of the most recognized images worldwide.  A monumental limestone sculpture of a reclining mythical creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the wings of a falcon, the Sphinx is the other half of the reason to come to the Giza Plateau. 

The face of the Sphinx appears to represent Pharaoh Chephren, prompting Egyptologists to posit that it was intended to guard his tomb and suggesting that it was created between 2600 and 2500 BCE.  The Giza Sphinx was carved from the bedrock of the Giza Plateau.

‘Sphinx’ is a Greek word that may be derived from the verb ‘to squeeze’ or ‘to strangle’ (presumed to relate to the way lionesses kill their prey—Greek sphinxes usually had the head of a woman); but this is disputed and many authorities believe that the Greek word was adapted from the Egyptian name for the sculpture of the beast (as differentiated from the mythical creature itself, the Egyptian name of which is unknown). 

The ancient Egyptians called the statue of the Sphinx shesep-ankh, which means ‘living image’ (which also referred to other representations of royal figures).  It was a reference to the “living rock” present at the construction site from which the statue was carved rather than brought from another location.

The statue is badly, but unevenly corroded—mostly by desert wind and blowing sand.  The bedrock of the Western Desert out of which the Sphinx is made is accumulated in layers which offer varying susceptibility to erosion.  That’s why the lowest level around the lion’s legs and the head, sculpted from harder stone, are more intact than the middle portion of the beast’s body, which is softer and weathered in striations.

One incident of visible damage seems to have been deliberate, however.  The missing nose appears to have been chiseled off sometime between the 3rd and 10th centuries CE and there are many legends purporting to explain this vandalism.  The two I’d heard are that Napoleon’s artillery took potshots at the Sphinx out of disrespect for the Egyptian people and their culture and that early Muslims defaced the man’s head because Islam forbade depictions of human figures.

Both of these are clearly apocryphal.  Aside from Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt being at least eight centuries later than the most recent dating of the defacement, the evidence of chiseling eliminates the use of cannons to blow off the nose.

The story of the Islamic prohibition of human representation is probably wrong because the Koran forbids idolatry, the worship or reverence of icons or images.  There is also a prohibition of depicting Mohammed and other prophets.  These wouldn’t really have applied to the Sphinx—except for one putative explanation of the destruction. 

A 14th/15th-century Arab historian posited that a Sufi Muslim found that the local farmers were making offerings to the Sphinx to increase their harvests.  The mystic defaced the statue in an act of iconoclasm.

I suppose this could be credible . . . if there were sufficient explanation for it to have happened 400 years later than the scientific estimate of the damage.  Dating anything in Egyptian history with accuracy is a fraught endeavor.  Which is part of the reason, I suppose, that everything about ancient Egypt lends itself to mystery and imaginative speculation.

Like most of the ancient sights I saw in Egypt, standing in the desert looking at the Great Sphinx was awe-inspiring.  I mean that in the literal sense: I was overtaken with awe.  Forget the damage and the weathering, this enigmatic creature, immense and even noble-looking, had a mysterious hold on my imagination. 

The Great Pyramids were astonishing and impressive.  There are some generally accepted theories about how the ancient Egyptians (and their Hebrew slaves) built the monumental tombs, but it’s still all miraculous to me.  Standing in front of those huge structures rising out of the desert . . . they shouldn’t have been able to exist.  But they do—and there they were.  The treasures found inside them (I had seen The Treasures of Tutankhamun at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City [15 December 1978-15 April 1979]) and some of the funereal art inside the chambers was gorgeous.  But the Sphinx was something else again.

(I do have a thing for the ancient Egyptian tomb paintings.  For a class, I did a project that was designs for the costumes for George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra and I drew the presentation renderings to look like tomb paintings.)

I’ve already said how I react in the presence of really old places like Stonehenge and Jericho (see Part 4).  The Sphinx was all that at over 4,000 years old, plus mystery and magic.  Stonehenge is just a rock circle—okay, with spiritual overtones; Jericho is just a city—immensely old and biblical, but still . . . .  The Sphinx is a mythical creature, a keeper of secrets, the guardian of the dead.  I mean . . . WOW!

(On Saturday evening, 25 December—that’s right: the night of Christmas Day and my 36th birthday—we came back to Giza to see the sound and light show at the pyramids; see Part 9.) 

I should say a thing or two about being in the Sahara for a day.  Essentially, it’s a huge sandbox.  As I commented earlier, our deserts in the States are mostly dirt and rock; the Sahara is sand, just like in the movies.  It’s the largest hot desert on Earth; only the deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic are larger.

The Sahara can have a strange sort of beauty and fascination, especially if you know you’re getting out of it soon, but aside from the places like the Giza Plateau with the pyramids and other structures (and the tourists) and the narrow stretches along the Nile (which I’d see in a few days; see Parts 10-12) which are green, it’s bleak and stark.

It's also hot.  The guidebooks say the winter temps in the desert are moderate, but my experience was that it was very warm during the day.  This is exacerbated by a number of climatic factors: it is very dry, because there’s little rainfall (which is, after all, why it’s a desert!); it’s almost always sunny and very bright, so, in addition to the heat, there’s always a glare (which also reflects upward from the sand)—and virtually no shade except in areas with man-made structures; during the daylight hours, the sand heats up and retains that heat and you start to feel it on your feet pretty quickly.

To add to all this, the hot, sunny, dry conditions attract . . . flies.  They’re worse in the summer and spring, I understand, but they’re out in winter, too.  Before I left home, my parents, who’d been to Egypt a few years before I went, gave me a horsehair flywhisk from their visit.  I thought it was an amusing affectation, like something Hercule Poirot might carry in Death on the Nile.  But NOOooo!  I carried it with me to the pyramids on a whim—and did it come in mighty handy.  Those little buggers (sorry about the pun) sting when they bite!  And they’re annoying as hell!

I hate to sound like a prissy western tourist.  I’m really not.  I traveled quite a bit once upon a time and while I saw the main tourist attractions—the Arc de Triomphes, the Porta Nigras, the Forbidden Cities, the Tivoli Gardens—I also always tried to get to the most interesting places to which not everybody flocked.  I don’t suffer from motion sickness or tourista, and I really like sampling the local food and drink.

And I did that in Egypt, too.  We had free time in the itinerary, and I went wandering (see Part 9).  But the desert climate did eventually get to me, as you’ll hear shortly (Part 11).  But, if I’m honest, I’ve never been real good with heat—not even good, ol’ Mid-Atlantic summertime heat, and I grew up with that.

[Barring another interruption of this series such as last month’s Equity post, “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 8” will be published on 5 August—same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.  I’ll be seeing the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Old Cairo, and the Cairo bazaar.  I hope you’ll all come along with me.]