Egypt: Day Fifteen, Part Two

The next stop is the Roman Amphitheater at Kom el-Dikka, the only one in Egypt.  And again, it was discovered by accident, while moving sand to build a government building.  Archeological digs on the amphitheater have been carried out since 1960 by a joint Egyptian-Polish team.  With tall apartment buildings looming over it on all sides, it looks a bit incongruous.  I try to picture what Alexandria must have been then, during the first few centuries A.D. when it was functioning, and what plays were put on here before 600 spectators.  The white marble it’s made of apparently came across the Mediterranean from Europe (maybe from Carrara, north of Rome?).  There seems to have once been a ceiling over the seating, and the columns were added later but cracked and fell in an earthquake in the 6th c A.D.

       Next to the amphitheater is the Villa of the Birds, whose name came from its mosaic floors with bird motifs.  Visibly the home of someone wealthy from the time of  Hadrian (117–138 A.D.), digs have determined it was redecorated at least four times and ultimately destroyed by fire in the 3rd century A.D.  Once the soot from the fire was removed, the floor mosaics were found to portray quail, pigeons, parrots, peacocks and water hens, as well as other mosaic floors with a panther and a flower design known as a rosette.
  The amphitheater lies at the end of a street of shops and other buildings whose foundations and partial walls still remain.  Richer people built in stone, the common man used red clay bricks.  And statues from elsewhere were repurposed.  There was once a library where you could get books to read while you relaxed in the Roman baths, both hot and cold.
  On the opposite side, on higher ground, stand statues and stelae that have been recovered and put on exhibit here.  Some of them had been tossed in the Mediterranean, which is high in salt content, and so they had to be soaked at length in a freshwater bath to remove the harmful salt particles.  One such is the Obelisk of Seti I from the 13th century BCE, a sphinx with the head of a human or the god Seth.  It gives a good idea of what the face of the enigmatic Sphinx at Giza may have looked like once.

Already lunchtime, and we leave ancient Alexandria behind for the Corniche of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet.  It may well not have changed much since the days of World War I.
  We stop at the Tikka Grill right on the water, where we enjoy both some lovely grilled fish - a welcome change from chicken - and a view out over the whole expanse of Alexandria’s Bay.
Stomachs full, our bus driver Mahmout (yet another version of Mohammed) drives us out to the point of the harbor, where the famous Pharos lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, used to tower some 500 feet high.  Built in 290 B.C., and withstanding a tsunami in 365 A.D., it finally succumbed in 1303 A.D. to a major earthquake.

Fort Quatibay

  What stones didn’t fall into the sea were used to build the Citadel of Qaitbay that now stands on the site.  Although the Crusades were over, the Egyptian sultan needed a fortress against the Turks.  The Ottomans eventually defeated Egypt anyway, and they used both this citadel and the one we saw in Cairo, the Citadel of Saladin.  Later on, the French Expedition to Egypt captured it, not because of any fault in the building, but rather in its troops.  After being neglected, it was restored as the 20th century opened and after the Revolution of 1952 the Egyptian Naval troops turned it into a Maritime Museum.
The view out over the Mediterranean is beautiful, and attracts tourists and young lovers alike, as well as families out for a walk.  There are also buggy rides to be had, and the horses look cared for and well-fed, feed-bag as proof, plus spare fodder in the front of the buggy.  That includes the bay gelding that I just have to stop to pat, whose name, the proud driver tells me, is Jimmy.

Mahmout strolls our bus back down the point and along the Corniche all the way to the opposite point, which will be our last stop of the day.
  What I learned of Alexandria back in grade school can be summarized in two words:  lighthouse and library.  As we’ve seen, the lighthouse is gone but here we are at the new Library of Alexandria.  The ancient one had pretty much a copy of all the world’s knowledge at that time:  scrolls, papyri, books.  The scribes were kept busy translating works from other countries, and any book that arrived in the port on a ship was taken to the library to be copied, the original remaining the property of the library and the copy given to the book’s rightful owner, which is a pretty drastic way to build up a library.  It was eventually burned to the ground, some say by Caesar in 48 BCE, some when Emperor Aurelian took the city around 275 A.D.  And then there was the Muslim takeover in 642 A.D.  Whichever it was, it was the first documented and most catastrophic loss of public knowledge the world has ever known.

  From the world’s oldest library to the world’s newest, the ultra-modern glass-and-steel structure we visit is built very near the location of the ancient one.  Its collection is trilingual - Arabic, English and French - with the French National Library having donated half a million volumes to start it rolling.  With shelf space for 8 million volumes, there’s still room to expand.  And anyone can consult it via internet (www.bibalex.eg/en/default).
  There’s plenty of desk space for consulting books and other documents.  There are six specialized libraries, including one for rare books and another for the blind.  The complex also includes four museums: antiquities, manuscripts, history of science and the Sadat collection of the late president’s personal belongings.  Plus a planetarium.  It’s really quite impressive.

But the day is getting late, and some of us have flights out of Cairo tonight (not me).  So with sirens blaring, our police escort (which we’ve had since entering the city) accompanies us to the highway, and we’re homeward bound.  Although they leave us there, Jihan is under orders to phone them every hour to report on our progress.  As I said, safety is taken very seriously in this country which is so dependent on tourist dollars.
  Halfway back, the sky starts to clear as the climate of the Mediterranean gives way to that of the desert.  We pull into Mena House after dark.  Our sniffer dog is rousted to inspect the bus and we all head off to our separate rooms, to change for dinner or to pick up our suitcases for the airport drive.
       I dine with the two Lindas and then it's off to my room for my last night in an Egyptian bed.

Egypt: Day Fifteen, Part One

It’s going to be a long bus ride to Alexandria - 150 miles, or about three hours - and so an early wake-up call.  This time the remnants of both tour groups - Ramses and Horus - will be together on the same bus.  I dub us Ramus, a new Egyptian god, the god of tour groups.  Our guide will be Jihan, as on the first day’s trip to Meidum and Hawarra.  I’ll miss Ahmed and his humor, but Jihan is very sweet and extremely knowledgeable.

At breakfast with Julie and Larry, I learn the Arabic word for the hibiscus tea juice I’ve been enjoying in the morning instead of orange or pineapple:  karkade.  (Recipe: 1 cup dried hibiscus flowers to 10 cups boiling water - Boil 2-3 minutes, let cool, add ½ cup sugar, stir well - Be careful, this juice stains indelibly!)



  We leave Giza by the Desert Road, in fact the only major direct road from Cairo to Alexandria.  And this time there’s no police escort.  We start out in Cairo in the sun but the farther north we go, the nearer to the Mediterranean we get, the thicker the clouds grow.  This is the first non-sun I’ve seen in two weeks.  As the hours pass and the miles roll by, conversations fade and heads nod, row by row, until all but a few are sleeping.

Along this divided highway there are some pedestrian overpasses, which is a good idea from the lack of self-preservation Egyptian pedestrians seem to have.  It’s strange to see no donkey carts, no people waiting on the side of the road for a microtaxi.  What we do see is a lot of almost chimney-like structures, painted colors with twigs sticking out of them horizontally.  They turn out to be dovecotes and many, many farms have at least one.  There are also farms with long stretches of plastic tunnels for growing produce all year around.
  The Nile River flows into the Mediterranean about 20 miles east of Alexandria.  So as we reach Greater Alexandria, the marshes start.  And the factories:  Coke, Pepsi, refineries, textile mills, pharmaceuticals plants...  And warehouses, because this is a seaport.  This is where business happens, in this city facing Europe.  Except for the minarets, we could be in the industrial outskirts of a French city.
  Initially Alexandria was built on just one island across from a village.  Alexander the Great drew up plans to link them and create a city to bear his name.  When he died, Ptolemy finished the project.  The library and university date from about 230 BCE.  Given that it was not an Egyptian city really, Egyptians were treated as third class citizens.  Above them were the Greeks and the top class was reserved for royalty.

Our first stop in Alexandria is at the catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, which date from the 2nd to the 4th century A.D.   It was lost for many, many centuries and then, as in so many cases of ancient ruins in Egypt, rediscovered when a donkey fell into the entry shaft around 1900.  Access is down a circular staircase around a central shaft used to lower bodies down to their tomb.  There are three levels, the lowest one now under water, and horizontal corridors radiate out from the circular stairway.
  The catacombs had three sections:  two for royal tombs and one for “visitors”.  Purification was carried out on-site, along with mummification under the auspices of Anubis (seen on some of the wall paintings).  No bodies were found because of the water and ambient humidity here on the coast, unlike inland in the desert climate.  Some bones found turned out to be of horses.  The artwork is a blend of Egyptian, Greek and Roman styles.
  Probably a private burial site initially, it became a public cemetery at some point.  Perhaps that private tomb was Tigran’s, also found while digging foundations for a modern-day building.  The artwork isn’t the greatest, with Horus looking more like a pigeon than a falcon and the jackals on either side resembling dogs expecting a treat..
  Scattered outside the property are hundreds of stone pieces of monuments, along with some sarcophagi.  They’re all numbered and just waiting for space in a museum.

We drive through the narrow streets of Alexandria, which, like Cairo, could use a clean-up... and probably for the same reasons.  A few images will stick in my mind.  The lady totally covered in a black burka, her glasses perched somehow on something, as if glued on, and defying gravity.  Shops selling used tires piled one atop the other.  The many chop shops where you can find any part of any car you want.  But especially everyone waving at our bus and smiling.