Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Egypt -- Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt. 4

    Now for something completely different:  a day of tourism!

    Keeping pretty much to our get-up-and-go, hold-on-tight and pay-attention schedule, we met our first friendly tour guide, Amena, whose mastery of English and information proved extensive and reassuring. This was the day Matt, our team leader and the only one of us with previous experience in Egypt, went back into the hotel as we were boarding our van and reemerged through a different entrance. He thought we had left without him. We sat in the van wondering aloud whether he might have, somehow, gotten lost -- not a happy experience on either end! 

    After 15 puzzling minutes and an exchange of text messages with his wife, Chandra, he found us -- and we were off.

    We headed in the direction of Giza: our first stop, Memphis, now a ruin but significant as the first capital of ancient Egypt, where we walked through the outdoor museum that bears many artifacts of Ramses II.

Here we encountered our first set of persistent traders, lined up beyond this, our first sphinx -- whose nose remain intact, unlike the more famous sphinx in Giza, although he shows damage in other ways. We saw our first hieroglyphic relief fragments, had our first extended exposure to serious heat, and discovered the undeniably related fact that shade will save our skins. For those who like to know, these first days in Cairo were in the 90s; in Asyut and especially Luxor it was incrementally hotter. I will comment further on the oft-noted benefit of "dry" (as opposed to "humid") heat in a later episode.

 

    From Memphis we traveled to see the Step Pyramid in Saqqara, thought to be the oldest extant pyramid. There are many pyramids in Egypt, although most often we see photographs of the Great Pyramids in Giza and the Step Pyramid. The importance of the Step Pyramid is that it reveals some of the thought processes of the ancient architects and engineers, as well as of the oldest building techniques in their developmental stages. The famous pyramids show how designs and techniques evolved and improved.

    For the record, I find brick and stone work fascinating, especially when the stones or patterns of a structure change unexpectedly. These changes speak to architecture, technology, and art, yes, but also to human efforts to construct, reconstruct, repair, and alter features --  although I am not usually able to say what those alterations tell me.

    We discovered on our first overseas trip years ago that unless the venue is very small, a visitor can't see everything -- so it's OK -- or, even, better to be selective, to avoid long waits in lines, and to recognize that learning will happen through gradual accumulation of information rather than through immersion. 

    Then we drove on in the direction of the famous Great Pyramids.

    On the way we stopped at a carpet factory where (mostly) young women come to learn the fine art of weaving carpets by hand on looms. 

Depending on the size and complexity of each design, the carpets could take up to six or eight months of steady work to complete. There were perhaps a dozen looms on the ground floor. 

    We were taken upstairs to the showroom to see the dozens and dozens of finished rugs hanging on the walls. I wanted to photograph some of these spectacular and skillfully made scenes, but was told quickly and directly to put the camera away. Right.

    Perhaps the theft of design ideas is at issue, who knows.

    We did not purchase any carpets but exposure to this labor intensive process was very interesting. Well worth the short stop. 

       I would not think it necessary to show where we had lunch, ordinarily, were it not for this woman baking bread in an open oven near the entrance to the restaurant where we stopped. The flat breads she was baking were primarily for use in the open air restaurant, but this woman was selling them to tourists as well. The flat table in front of her oven is filled with flour used to coat the outside of the bread before baking.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    This lunch stop proved to be rare for us in that we arrived somewhere between 2 and 3 -- early for our time here.

    Lunch was identified for us as "Egyptian Bar-B-Q," which I suspect was a convenient category to offer people who were not going to hear, learn, or remember the particular names anyway.

    The Great Pyramids at Giza, our next stop, require a space of their own, so I suggest we take a break here, consider what we have seen so far, and cool off under the fans while we enjoy the food -- before we get return to the van to head back into the desert.

  

 


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