Egypt: Day Eleven, Part Three

On the way back north to Aswan across the desert, we drive through a village with a pumping station and some cement plants.  There’s also mining for gold along here, which is exported, especially to Canada.  And there’s a garage full of ambulances; no idea why out here in the middle of nowhere.  But mostly there’s vast nothingness.  More like being on Mars rather than the Moon, but only for a lack of craters.
       And once again comes the warning:  Do not show cameras at checkponts!

When we get back to the boat, it’s still early, given the time of the wee small hours when we set out.  Some of us have signed up for a camel caravan, but not me.  Still, we can accompany those who have across the Nile to their camels on the felluca, just to dabble around on the river.  And being on the water is something I’ve been doing since birth, so I’m up for it.  Along with us comes one of the daughters of Mme. Sadat - Jihan, I believe - and she seems to enjoy being on the water as much as I do, choosing, like me, to sit in the bow.
       This is the same part of the river we navigated last night on our way to the Nubian village.  But in the daylight we can clearly see the mausoleum where the Aga Khan is buried.  Although born in what is now Pakistan, the third Aga Khan fell in love with Egypt and Aswan in particular, where he chose to live part of every year.  He requested the right to be buried on a hilltop across from Aswan and had a mausoleum built in the old Ottoman style.  Its pink limestone shines in the sunlight. Although he died in 1957, every day a red rose is still laid on his tomb, by orders of his wife, who died in 2000.
       As we travel back across the water, one of the crew brings out a tambourine and starts singing.  We all join in, including a song we learned last night on the way to the Nubian village.  Everyone is in high spirits.

Which is a good thing because tonight is our Egypt Night on board.  We’d been told we could dress up for it, and some of us have been making purchases for that as we’ve run the various gauntlets of hawkers.  I bought that white cotton tunic with the blue trim, plus a bracelet I was told was turquoise... which it is, in color, but most probably not mineralogically speaking, but I like it just the same.  Our Armenian minder Siri is resplendent in a shimmering burgundy djellabah.  Alan is dressed up as a camel jockey, literally, turban and all.  Peter’s made an effort also, Ron is splendid as a pasha, although the keffiyeh is perhaps more Arafat than Aga Khan.  But his wife Janet gets both ears and the tail for her outfit:  a striking blue djellaba, long dangling coin earrings and one of those headscarves with coins.  She’s very jingly.
       After dinner with Janet and Ron and Victoria and Floyd, our food accompanied by a group of Nubian musicians, there’s more entertainment.  Two men alternate with a belly dancer.  I’ve seen better - or at least more lascivious - belly dancers at a certain Lebanese restaurant in Detroit, but this dancer gets some of us to try some of her moves.  It turns out that Cathy isn’t bad at it at all.  But I preferred the male dancers.  One does a dervish-type dance in a costume obviously designed with this in mind because it has "moving parts", including a layer that he can put up to cover his head as he spins.  I don’t know why he doesn’t fall down dizzy as can be!  He also comes back in another costume that looks like two wrestlers but is really only him - another imaginative design.  And then there’s a man on a “horse” that sets about kissing all the women in the front row of sofas.  He even drags Cathy back up out of her seat to dance with him and they somehow do some steps holding a sword wedged between them - obviously not pointed enough to pierce his stomach.
       The dancers drag us out of our seats one by one for an Egyptian conga line that morphs into an old rock ‘n’roll type stroll down between two rows of our tour partners.  I end up dancing with Mohammed, one of our tour staff.  And then Sadat’s daughter, whose name I think is Jihan, appears with one of those coin necklace-belts around her hips and does a great version of a belly dance, complete with all the hand movements, and every bit as good as the professional.  It’s fun to see someone whose father was once the very dignified President of this country being such fun rather than sitting in a corner, clapping politely and sipping champagne.
       The musicians and dancers pack up and leave as we finish our cocktails, but I think I hear them later playing on the next boat over - we’re moored one off the other again.  It’s time for bed.  It’s been a looooong day, but a beautiful one.
       As I drift off to sleep, I hear the boat’s engines starting up.  We’re apparently off back down the Nile to Luxor.

Egypt: Day Eleven, Part Two

But why is Abu Simbel out here in the middle of what was - and still is - nowhere?  Ahmed explains to us as we stand outside, marveling at the size and beauty of the monument.  Why?  Because this monument was built in the land of the enemies of Ramses and not in Egypt proper.  Ramses represented himself as a god and his subjects wouldn’t let him do that farther north.  Besides, given the frescoes inside the temple, it’s a word of warning to all the Nubian enemies who would see them.
       My knowledge of Abu Simbel proved totally insufficient, faced with the actual edifice. First of all, there’s not one temple but two, side by side.  The larger one, the one I’d always known of, is the Temple of Ramses II and commemorates his victory over the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh.  The smaller temple next to the first was built for his favorite wife, Nefertari, and is dedicated to the worhip of the goddess Hathor.
       Outside the large temple - 115 feet wide and 100 feet high - are huge 66-foot-tall statues of Ramses, seated two on each side of the entrance.  In the middle, over the door, is Ra, the sun god with a falcon’s head, and above it all runs a frieze of 22 baboons worshiping the rising sun.  At the pharaoh's feet are smaller statues of his wife, children and mother.  The hieroglyphs spell out all the different honorific titles of Ramses.

As much as I’d looked at the facade of Abu Simbel in picture after picture, I’d never given any thought to what was inside.  In fact, I didn’t even know there was an inside.  The idea didn’t even cross my mind after seeing all those other temples.  And yet... when I walk inside the monument - no photos allowed - I’m blown away by what I see.  Every square inch of the walls and ceiling is covered with carvings and colors!
       To the right and left of the central axis are the enemies of Ramses:  the Nubians on one side and the “Asians “ on the other.  On both walls are scenes of battle and many showing prisoners with their hands tied behind their backs.  One huge part of that “Asian” wall depicts the Battle of Kadesh where Ramses defeated the Hittites.  In one image Ramses is shown aiming his bow and arrow, but the bow and arrow are depicted twice, shifted a slight few inches of each other, as if Ramses is in the process of raising his arm, to show motion, because it’s too definitive an effect to be a mere carving mistake.
       There are eight side rooms, four to a side.  Each is just as ornate in its decoration as the central hallway.  They show many symbols of the unification of the two Egypts, with each region’s plants and gods represented.  In one of the “Asian” side chambers there is still ancient blue paint on the beard, neckband, armbands, belt and bracelets of the people depicted, as well as on the ceiling and the heiroglyphs.

       As this temple was built to the glory of Ramses but also that of the sun god, there’s a special feature on the back wall:  four statues of different gods.   These statues stand in the shadows... except twice a year.  The temple was aligned, set up - and relocated - to celebrate the Miracle of the Sun.  Like Stonehenge and other ancient monuments, sun worship was important.  So twice a year - on February 22 and October 22 - the sun’s rays penetrate 213 feet inside the temple at daybreak and reach this back wall.  Sunlight touches only the right shoulder of the god on the left, because he is Ptah, the Lord of Darkness (and of workers).  But the other three statues - all linked with sun-god Ra - receive the sun’s full rays:   Amon-Ra, Ramses II himself as sun-god, and Ra-Horakhty, a combination of Ra and Horus.

The Small Temple "next door" is only the second temple ever built to a queen, the other being to Akhenaten’s queen, Nefertiti.  Outside, the statues are “only” 35 feet high.  On each side of the entrance stands Nefertari, with husband Ramses on either side, and all of these statues hold offerings in their hands.  There’s something infinitely interesting about these statues, and it shows Ramses’s immense love for Nefertari.  These six standing statues are all of the same height.  It was the first and only time a queen was ever memorialized as being as tall, and therefore as powerful, as the pharaoh.
       The temple was once painted red.  The decoration inside is almost as splendid as that in the larger temple.  There is a scene of a bull in a boat sailing through the bullrushes that is quite striking.  Another that caught my eye was one of offering cups with heads on the base and handle.

I leave Abu Simbel with even greater admiration for the workers who built it, and filled with amazement at the ego of the pharaoh behind it all.

N.B.  As I said above, no photos are allowed inside the tomb.  Otherwise I'd still be in there!  You'll just have to find some on the internet.  Sorry.