[Preamble]
You're going where? No. C'mon.... you must be
crazy!!! Why would you go there? Aren't you concerned for your safety? What
about terrorism?
This was pretty much the standard response when
people found out I was planning on spending 3 weeks in Egypt. My response to
their reaction: "The US isn't exactly safe from terrorism anymore – more people
died in "911" than Egypt in the last 10 years" – it's truly sad that this is
true, and I don't like reminding people of that fact. I used this response not
to make people afraid in their own country, but to point out that the US doesn't
have the monopoly on safety. There is an amazing world out there, and by
refusing to be afraid, living life the way we want to live it – that is how we
defeat terrorism.
Moving on... I think anyone growing up in the US
public school system is infused from day one with wonder about the ancient
Egyptians. I was no exception and decided that the stuff of lore would make
great canon fodder for my camera. So trepidations aside and camera (Canon D60)
in hand, I set out to photograph some of the most ancient of wonders this world
knows.
[Cairo]
Arriving in Cairo one is assaulted with the usual
sights, sounds and smells of a large metropolitan city in a 3rd world country.
Dirt and litter, clinks-clunks-clanks & honks and Diesel fumes are your reward
for leaving the confines of our sterilized society. The first response, for me
anyway, by this complete bombardment of all my senses is euphoria. Like a kid in
a candy store, the stimulation of so many new things is euphoric -- everything
is great the first day.
2 days later: it smells bad, looks bad and is way
too loud – do they really have to honk their horns all night and call the
faithful to prayer at 4:45am every
morning? The answer is yes, and after a few more days you come to see those
things as part of the beauty you traveled half the world to experience.
I spent 5 days in and around Cairo. Photographing
the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, and visiting the smaller pyramid and burial
sites at Saqqara were the main ancient Egyptian attractions in the area. Also
noteworthy in Cairo is the Egyptian museum with its 100,000+ collection of
antiquities, the Citadel & Mohammed Ali mosque, hundreds of smaller yet
still-grand mosques in their picturesque neighborhoods.
The Pyramids... what can be said that hasn't already
been said?... I think the best (and often used) quote to describe them is "very
big, very old." It may sound very simplistic -- utterly foolish to think
something so basic about something so phenomenal. Standing at the base, and
viewing from afar, those words echoed through my head. It was almost as if the
sheer weight of history, the colossal-ness of their size squeezed out all higher
levels of thinking leaving only "very big, very old" rattling round in my now
vacant, stupefied head.
[Abu Simbel]
Needing to get out of the big city, I traveled way
down south to a temple 40 kilometers north of the Sudanese border called Abu
Simbel. Impressive enough in its own right, it impresses you even more when you
find out the entire temple (cut into the side of a mountain) isn't in its
original location. It was moved about 20 meters up in elevation when the Aswan
dam some 200km away created a lake that would have submerged the temple,
drowning the loudest of all ancient Egyptian voices. The voice I speak of
belonged to Ramses II a.k.a. "Ramses the Great", greatest of all Pharaohs. He
built Abu Simbel near the outskirts of his great land to warn and scare people
arriving from the heart of Africa. The inside of this temple is filled with
hieroglyphics depicting him wearing his nice Egyptian crown, cutting off the
heads of anyone who dared stand in his way.
It was another colossus statue of Ramses the Great
that inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley to pen this beautiful, and ultimately
poignant slap in the face to Ramses.
|
Ozymandias of Egypt I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose from And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sand stretch far away. |
The last few lines really strike home after visiting
Egypt. Except for the Nile, and the odd oasis, Egypt is barren barren barren.
During my 3 week trip I saw more rocks, sand, dirt and pebbles than I had seen
in my previous umpteen years on this earth. I saw big rocks, small rocks,
painted rocks, naked rocks, carved rocks.... you get the picture. It's amazing
to think that a civilization that contributed so many diverse innovations to the
world was rooted in a land so desolate.
[Luxor & West Bank]
After Abu Simbel, I visited the last remaining "big
ticket" item on the Ancient Egyptian antiquities docket. Luxor and the West
bank. Luxor, built on the east bank of the Nile (where does the sun rise?) was
one of the major cities where Egyptian culture thrived. The west bank (where
does the sun set?) was where the pharaohs, queens and other notables were
buried. To sound trite one could say "Luxor is chock full o neat stuff." Said
another way: Luxor, pound for pound, has the most archeological attractions of
possibly any location on earth. There are the temples of Luxor and Karnak, the
Valley of Kings, Valley of Queens, and a multitude of funerary temples scattered
around the banks of the Nile.
What struck me most there is that the most
impressive monuments raised by the Egyptians were to their gods and themselves
in death. Their religion was a driving force behind much of their society, and
what that didn't effect, their preparation for the afterlife did. Juxtapose that
with the greatest "monuments" we create. I'd have to say almost all our most
impressive structures (skyscrapers) are built to our various business "gods."
Commerce is king in these days and times. We don't concern ourselves so much
these days with God, and our own deaths.
[Petra]
From Luxor, I made an unplanned jaunt over to Jordan
to see Petra. Petra was perhaps the most moving experience of the trip. If
you've seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you've seen the narrow, windy
canyon opening up to a huge rose-red temple carved into a mountain (called the
Treasury).
You enter Petra at the start of a 1.2 km canyon
called the Siq. You slowly wind your way through the twists, turns and curves of
the narrow canyon, expecting at any moment to see the Treasury peek out from
behind the rock that ensconces it. You walk like this, expecting at every turn
to be rewarded by the sight of IT.
On and on you walk, at first you don't notice how beautiful the canyon is
because you're dulled by the expectation of seeing
IT.
Gradually, after rounding countless bends you give up expecting to see
IT. You
start to look around in awe at your surroundings -- a narrow, burrowing canyon
that slithers and cuts its way through the bowels of a red desert. You look at
the rocks, the patterns, and the odd tree that grows sideways from the rock. You
think about the thousands of footsteps and years that have come before you. You
wonder why the society that lived here (the Nabateans) abandoned this most
beautiful of places. You relax and start enjoying the walk, you gaze up and
around, you round a corner and BOOM. There
IT is.
IT is
before you. IT
captivates you...
IT moves you.
You're tempted to think that it's just a
big temple carved out of, and into a mountain. You want to discount it as one
impressive building in the middle of some desert and that's all it is. You
can't. Try as you might avoid it... you're impressed.
Lest you discount me as a poet wanna-be, I'll switch
gears back to the merely narrative. The Treasury is just one of about a 1000 (I
didn't count) buildings, caves, and tombs carved into the sides of everything in
a 400 square mile area. The buildings, man's creations, are truly magnificent,
to think about all the work that went into carving out those buildings from
solid rock. What's equally or more impressive, and what made Petra in my opinion
more impressive than most things in Egypt, was the added beauty of God's
creation. The colors of the rock, the formations, and the grandeur of the entire
setting taken as a holistic experience made Petra more impressive and beautiful
than the "lone and level sands" of Egypt.
[Wrap Up]
I saw so many amazing things and took a lot of
pictures (don't ask how many), it was a great trip. The biggest drawback to the
trip was meeting all the people who had just come from Turkey and inspired me
with tantalizing stories of Istanbul, and realizing that I had to go back to a
cold east-coast winter.
The Egyptian people were great; very friendly and
very fond of Americans. At the pyramids, I shook countless hands, was asked to
be in 80 pictures and signed my "autograph" too many times to count – all
because I come from a land they call "Am-reek-a". I even had a few marriage
proposals... but I digress. :-)
Despite this, I only met one other yankee while
traveling. There were hundreds of tour groups filled with Italians, Germans,
French, Spanish and Japanese. -- Only one other yankee. -- I even met several Finns,
and the first Slovenians I've ever met. ---- One yankee. ------ One.
We can't let fear rule us, it's not a nice master.
[Highlights]