A Trip Down the Nile...Aswan & Abu Simbel

Saturday, February 22nd, found us waking up in Aswan. This was going to be a great day. There are 'cataracts' at Aswan.  Actually, there are several places along the Nile River with cataracts.  A cataract in this instance is a lot of rocks that form rapids which larger vessels cannot traverse.  However, cataracts are a wonderful place for bird watchers because many varieties of birds live there. In order for us to see the cataracts we would need to be in a smaller boat. 

After breakfast we gathered in the lobby of our cruise ship. When there are many cruise ships in a harbor they park they two to four abreast.  The doors to our cruise ship were opened and we walked through the lobby of the ship next to us to get to our little ship which was parked by the ship next to us. Never have I done that before.

Our little ship was the bottom part of a boat with poles holding a roof.  The roof was sturdy enough for us to walk and sit on but we were asked to ride below.  It kept us out of the sun and life is a little warmer in Aswan that in Cairo.

Our destination would be where we would start our camel rides. I will share a few pictures of the cataracts going to meet our camels and returning.

This tower on top of a hill is a lot like the towers in the Lord of Rings movie in which they light a fire and someone on a mountain top a little further down sees it and lights their fire and that process continues to spread the word about a possible danger or other event.  These little towers were placed all along the Nile River so that in 30 minutes time a message could be sent from Aswan to Cairo. That is pretty quick for a distance of about 550 miles by car.

The thing on a pole is a light so the cataracts can be lit at night.

 

 

The picture below is Elephantine Island. There are ruins of a Temple to Khnum and another to his female counterpart, Satet, as well as other ruins. Elephantine Island also has another of the three Nileometers along the Nile River.  We did not get off our boat to tour this Island.

This was our destination. The northern portion of Nubia.  Here we would learn to get on a camel and then ride it for 20 minutes through the desert to the little Nubian village pictures below with all the blue painted roofs and homes.

 

These are some of the camels our tour group would ride.  In the front are two saddles for the camels.  To get on the camel you would place one hand on the horn in front and one hand on the horn in back. You would sit as close to the front horn as you could. Then the camel handler would have the camel stand while you leaned back as far as you could and stayed leaning until the camel was standing.  Then you would place both hands on the front horn and ride sitting straight up staying close to the front horn.  

I took this picture of my camel while I was riding on it.  I was not the first person in our group to get on a camel but somehow I was the first person they led onto the trail.  I asked the handler if my camel had a name.  He said, "Jamba Jamba."  So here you have Jamba Jamba plodding across the desert to a Nubian village with me on his back.  I just have to say this was soooooo much fun!!!  I would do that again in a heart beat.  You sit so high you feel you are on top of the world. I thought part of the fun of riding on a motorcycle was being tall enough to see over a lot of things.  Multiply that times at least 10 and you get the thrill of riding this huge, lumbering beast. Time slows down and the world is just simply gorgeous traveling this way.  By the way, Claude just named his camel Wildfire. 

 

 

This is the home in the Nubian village we would visit.  Mr. Rabee is 80 years old and Nubian. His home is one of the oldest in the village. The entire family resides here, his parents, wife and children, their wives and children. He keeps crocodiles in a pin constructed in his living room. The picture below his home shows paintings on his wall that depict his life. This one tells that he made the Hajj to Mecca and, if you look to the left, you see a camel which says he made his Hajj on a camel. The third picture is also a portion of his living room. The wall paintings tell that he was a fisherman and owned a boat.

 

We were given 'hibiscus tea' to drink.  We would be offered this beverage 3 times during our stay in Egypt.  I read about hibiscus tea in several travel guides before we went on this trip and was hoping we would get to taste it. It is made from dried hibiscus blossoms. You simply boil water and place the dried hibiscus in the water and let is brew for a few minutes. Then remove the hibiscus and enjoy the tea hot or cold. I would recommend a little sugar as this is a very bland tea.  But it is a real Egyptian treat and I was very happy we were served it.

Then Mr. Rabee brought out the crocodile. Claude got to hold it and I got the kiss it!!

 

Soon it was time to say goodbye to this lovely Nubian village and head back through the cataracts to our cruise ship for dinner.  This was a great experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone touring Egypt.  In the back of this picture is the Aswan High Dam.

I saved this picture of the cataract tour because it happened just before we got back to our cruise ship. These two little guys got to our tour boat on something like a surf board. They grabbed on to the side of our tour boat and let it pull them along on their surf board all the while singing at the top of their lungs something in Arabic. It was great fun to hear them and their singing and laughter. 

We ate a quick lunch so we could meet our tour bus for the remainder of the day.  Our next destination was Abu Simbel but it was a 3 hour bus ride there and 3 hours back.  We had a security officer on our tour bus again to help us pass security so we could get on the highway.  We would drive through a bit of Aswan, then over the High Dam and through the Nubian desert going around Lake Nasser to Abu Simbel.  The fact we drove 3 hours around Lake Nasser to get to Abu Simbel gives one a little idea of how huge this lake is.

This picture is of the Broken Obelisk.  You can see the flat stone in the middle of the picture. An obelisk had to be made of one stone with no breaks. It was not made in pieces stacked on top of each other. This obelisk cracked when they were trying to cut it out of the ground and was just left where it lays.  It has been a great place of archaeologists to try learn how they carved these huge obelisks. It was located across the highway from the security station we went through before crossing the Aswan High Dam and heading into the Nubian desert.

These are a few pictures of Aswan. They are top to bottom of this section:  a Muslim cemetery, a soccer stadium that looks in great disrepair but is actually used, a street vendor using a cart that would have been drawn by a donkey, and motorcycle trucks (I found these little things fascinating).  

Then we crossed the Aswan High Dam with Philae Island off to the side.  The Temple to Isis was on Philae Island.

Soon we were in the Nubian Desert. The first picture looks like there is water in the background. That is a mirage. NO water.  The third picture is a home in the desert.  I am ever so grateful for my home on a hill in Sadieville. The channel of water in the next picture marks where the Tropic of Cancer goes through Egypt. The next picture is just a little mountain that happens to look like a pyramid. We saw many of these in the Nubian Desert. The final picture just reminds me of what the surface of the moon might look like.

Now, our goal, Abu Simbel.  I will start with two diagrams I took off the Internet.  

The first shows the location of Abu Simbel originally and where in stands today with regard to Lake Nasser.  When the Aswan High Dam was built Lake Nasser was created behind it. As Lake Nasser filled with water it would have covered many of Egypt's amazing antiquities.  Abu Simbel would have been one of these.  The world community donated money so this amazing temple could be taken down and rebuilt on higher ground so it would not flood or be covered with Lake Nasser. 

The temples of Abu Simbel were Nubian style temples.  Instead of building their temples out in the open like all the temples we had been through, the Nubian temples were carved into the mountain.  There are actually two temples at Abu Simbel.  The first and largest (Great Temple) is to Ramesses II.  The second and smaller (Small Temple) was built to Nefertari, Ramesses wife. 

This second diagram shows how the interior of these two temples would look.  We were not allowed to photograph the interior of these temples.  But this diagram gives a great feel to the interior of the temples.

Here is what the temples look like today.  The Temple to Ramesses II is on the left.  The Temple to Nefertari, his wife, is on the right. Keep in mind these were cut into huge pieces and moved to this higher location. They were reassembled and then a mountain built over them so they look like they did when they were on lower ground. 

This picture is Ramesses II Temple. At the very back inside the mountain is the sanctuary of the temple.  There are four statues in a row of their gods.  Ramesses II is one of these four statues.  One day each year the sun would come through the front door and shine all the way through the temple to the four statues of the gods. When they moved these temples it was thought they had them aligned exactly as they had been built to have this sun event, but they were one day off. We arrived the day after the event. The day of the event this area was filled with visitors to witness the sun shine on these states of gods. The day we arrived the huge parking lot had one bus on it and that was our bus.

This picture is Claude in front of the Temple to Nefertari.

These are pictures of Lake Nasser around Abu Simbel.

After our visit we all boarded our bus for the three hour trip back to our cruise ship.  One more night on the Radamis I.  Then we would head back to Cairo.

A Trip Down the Nile...Edfu & Kom Ombo

And this is the only picture of a sunrise I got while in Egypt.  Even the night we drove out of the Nubian desert I watched for the sun going down. It was just like light faded and went away but none of the beautiful drama one usually expects from sunrises or sunsets. The smoke you see is sugar cane burning.

Now we begin Friday, February 21st.  Our cruise ship was at Edfu when we awoke.  The view from our state room was the dock at Edfu. The dock was really steps going up the hill to the street.  The street was already beginning to fill with carriages.  Our first outing would be to the Temple at Edfu, also known as the Temple of Horus.  To get there we would all take a carriage ride from the dock through the streets of Edfu to the temple.

Claude and I were assigned carriage #99.  

Here are a few pictures of the streets of Edfu.

 

 

Osiris was the father.  Isis was the mother.  Their son was Horus.  They were all gods of the Egyptians.  Usually a temple would focus on one god. This temple focused on Horus. Here are a few pictures of this temple.  

 

One of the neat things in this temple was a hieroglyph with an ark born on the shoulders of men holding staves that the ark is fit on. This is the same type of ark as the Ark of the Covenant that the children of Israel carried in the wilderness. After seeing this hieroglyph, we went into the sanctuary portion of the temple where there was an ark.

There was also a little portion called the Sun Court. The picture I share from the Sun Court was one of my favorite hieroglyphs. It is the spread wings of a falcon. Many of the tops of door frames had these wings. Isis was sometimes portrayed with these wings fully opened. This hieroglyph on the Sun Court door is the winged sun which represented divinity, royalty and power.

We were given time to wander through the temple at our leisure as long as we were back at the entry at a certain time. Claude and I managed to find the outer wall of the temple and the inner wall of the outer wall that surround the temple area.  This is Claude walking between these walls. Even though this was probably a less used area of the temple site, these walls were still covered with hieroglyphs top to bottom.

Another lesson in understanding hieroglyphs can be seen on the front pylon (gate) to the Temple of Horus. It is the 'double crown'.  This crown features a white portion that is in the shape of a bowling pin and a red portions that looks like a fez with a tall piece on the back. The white bowling pin portion represented the Upper Kingdom. The red fez portion represented the Lower Kingdom.  The Upper Kingdom was actually the bottom portion of Egypt and went from the Aswan/Nubia area to Cairo.  The Lower Kingdom was the delta area above Cairo. This seemed very reversed to me until I understood the Nile River flows from the south to the north so the Upper Kingdom would have been closer to the beginning of the Nile River and the Lower Kingdom, while really north of everything, would have been the closer to where the Nile River empties into the Mediterranean.  The king or pharaoh would wear this double crown when they ruled over both the Upper and the Lower Kingdoms. 

After touring the temple, we passed back through the shops.  This time almost all in our tour group would purchase clothing to wear to dinner that evening. Claude and I found a shop and looked for something large enough to fit my Great Viking. The shop keeper showed us one thing and I was sure it would not fit. I asked if he had anything larger. He assured me he did and pulled out this number all the while calling my Great Viking 'Alibaba'. He also managed to find a dress large enough for me. We were ready to attend dinner that evening in style.

We returned to our cruise ship and enjoyed lunch and a lazy afternoon ride to Kom Ombo. Here are a few of the Nile River pictures from this portion of the cruise.

 

 

 

 

 

Our second tour for Friday was the temple in Kom Ombo. I must post this picture of the dock. 

The importance of this dock is how graphically it shows the lack of tourism in Egypt.  Normally this dock would have had cruise ships packed end to end and maybe even side by side. Every one of the little shops would have been open and bustling with tourist trying to find souvenirs. Ours was the only cruise ship until we finished our tour and then one other ship had arrived.  There were only four stalls open for business.  Tourism is a major portion of the income for this part of the country and there is precious little happening.  It was sad to me, very, very sad.

We left our ship and walked to the temple. The top of it can be seen just over the trees on the right side of the picture above.  Alan showed us a picture of the sand covering the front of the temple and the ruins it was in when it was found.

 This temple was a little different. There were two doors and two hallways throughout.  This temple was actually for two gods. The southern portion of the temple was dedicated to the crocodile god, Sobek. The northern portion of the temple was dedicated to the falcon god, Haroeris, or Horus the Elder.  Here are pictures of the interior of this temple.

Osman pointed out an interesting hieroglyph that was actually a calendar.  Beside the date was the event that happened on that date.  This is one way they can determine when things actually happened and what the real history was of some of the sites.

Claude found this beautiful hieroglyph of alabaster essential oil bottles. 

The temples in Egypt had an additional purpose besides just being a temple. They were schools or hospitals. The Temple at Kom Ombo was a hospital that specialized in bone and leg injuries. Osman took us to the back wall of the temple where there were hieroglyphs explaining this. One of the hieroglyphs was of the medical instruments of the day.

The final lesson we learned here was about the Nileometer.

 

The Nileometer was important in the days when the Nile flooded every year.  This hole in the ground would fill with water as the Nile rose indicating when a flood was imminent and how bad it was going to flood.

The Temple at Kom Ombo was a lot like the others but there were enough differences to make this one very interesting in its own right.

 Back down the hill our merry little tour group would trudge to see the Crocodile Museum.  It is home to a lot of mummified crocodiles. The top picture is mummified crocodiles without their linen wrappings. The middle picture is a baby crocodile with a crocodile egg on the glass cube.  The bottom picture is crocodile mummies in their linen wrappings.

 

 

We boarded our cruise ship and dressed for dinner in our nifty outfits we purchased at Edfu.  For Claude and I the difficulty was trying to get that turban wrapped around Claude's head like the vendor did it. We didn't quite get it the same but it looked okay nonetheless. These are supposed to be Egyptian poses we are in for the pictures. This was great fun.

 

 

 

Then it was finally time for some sleep before our next full day in Egypt.