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.