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.