Chronic Pharaonic Fatigue

Hieroglyphs
Originally uploaded by hazy jenius.

Travelling Egypt is:

A Thousand and One Nights

of Tasty Delights

Baksheesh Fights

Sandy Sights

Towering Heights

Temples and Lights

Bedbug Bites

Day one in Cairo, First stop: The Egyptian museum. What an introduction into Egypt! I walked around wide-eyed and jaw agape all day as I explored the massive building jam-packed with ancient treasures. History was coming to life for me then and there as I remembered studying this ancient civilization in school. My childhood imagination was vivid, but nothing like the display of grandeur and innovation laid out before me. The museum teemed with clues to the grandeur and innovation of pharaonic life: golden serpentine masks, alabaster caskets with obsidian knobs, beds shaped like leopards, and stools with legs craved like a geese. Ebony and Ivory. Lotus Buds and Scarabs. All the Egyptian Gods were present too, in both human and animal form. Hippos, Falcons, Crocodiles, Jackals and Lions all paraded by one the walls of sarcophagi. The tales of the ancient gods are so creative and fascinating to hear or see eloquently come to life on the wall of a tomb.

Cruising down the Nile on the M.S. Crocodile... Temple after temple, each started to look the same. I had hieroglyphs and tombs swimming madly before my eyes. I had succumbed to chronic Pharoanic fatigue. But one experience on the Nile stood out from the rest. I visited Luxor's Mummification museum where a group of Italian Archeaologists were giving a lecture on their current excavation of the "Tomb of Harwa" in the Valley of the Kings. The team had begun excavation in 1995 and more than a decade later, they still hadn't finished uncovering their pharoanic find. The team showed slides of the state they had found the tomb in, the process of cleaning centuries of sludge off tiny bits of crumbled carvings, and the painstaking assembly of the pieces of hieroglyphic puzzle. This lecture made me appreciate those that made Egyptology their life's work. Excavation is still going on, and new discoveries are still being made. It is estimated that it will take 75 more years just to finish excavating Karnak!

How did this once glorious empire deteriorate into the state that it's in today? How did these innovators and leaders in science, architecture and art fall so far? Due to poverty and lack of education, Egyptians are now forced to exploit the genius of their ancestors as their main means of income. The colorful stories of the ancient gods fall on deaf ears. Most Egyptians are Muslim, and any religion believing in more than one god, much less depicting them on temples is deemed sacrilegious. Many Egyptians are nationalistic and proud, but surprisingly, it isn't the ancient builders of the pyramids that they cite as sources of pride, but rather more contemporary political figures. It is a shame that the only interest most modern Egyptians seem to have in their history is how to rip off tourists by showing it to them.

Giving Thanks

Summit on Mt. Moses
Originally uploaded by hazy jenius.

I am so behind on my blogs my head just spins at the thought of back-blogging, so I'll start with the here and now. Yesterday Ahmed, my Egyptian "husband" (there is no boyfriend/girlfriend relationship in Islam. We say we're married so people will respect me and the police won't arrest him.) and I decided to tackle Mt. Sinai (Moses Mountain.) For me, making the hike up the famous mountain wasn't as much of a pilgramage as was something I HAD to do before leaving Sinai. For Ahmed it was one of the last days we had to spend together before I left for the rest of my Middle East journeys (I'll be back to Dahab in a few months in Sh'allah.) I've climbed heaps, and done a sunrise summit of Mt. Fuji, so Mt.Sinai was relatively easy. For Ahmed things were a little more difficult. Although there are hundreds of tourists that come to Mt. Sinai and the St. Catherine Monastary very few are Egyptians. Ahmed was hassled and questioned very thouroughly as to what his intentions were by the guards. More difficult than getting him in the gates was getting him up the mountain! Ahmed had never been hiking before, and he certainly hadn't ever dealt with cold like this before. Add that to the fact that we started the hike around the time when he should be sleeping soundly and you get one very unhappy camper! About 30 minutes into the hike he said he wanted to go back down. Going down was next to impossible, as the path was packed with Jewish and Christian pilgrams, Russian toursits bussed in from Sharm El Sheik and loads of crapping camels with Bedouin guides offering "helpa helpa". With much coaxing, and a little bickering, we finally made the summit. It was bitterly cold at the top, but the sounds of prayers and hymns and the sight of the sun peeking over the vast landscape beneath warmed both our bones and our hearts. True, it was terribly touristy and a little trashed, but it was much more peacful and serene than the circus that I found at the summit of Mt. Fuji, Japan. The mountain itself is an unparalled work of nature, and it's easy to see why so many found this place a pathway to God. As far as Thanksgiving goes, I didn't spend it eating turkey with cranberry sauce, but I did find plenty to be thankful for. I gave thanks to the beauty of Sinai and the hospitality it's people have granted me for the year that I have lived here. I gave thanks for finding someone as lovely as Ahmed to help me accept and understand the culture and religion and people of Egypt. Finally, I gave thanks that I have the ways and means of having such wonderful experiences all over the world. I consider myself very lucky on days like these, and that I am forever thankful.