April 17 – At Sea. Two days at sea to catch up and try to rest up for Egypt and Israel. That's about all I did today.
This evening's entertainer was Andy Bunger, a Czech musician who plays several instruments including marimba, vibraphone, panpipes, steel guitar, drums, saxophone and trumpet. At least that's what he played tonight. He's very good on the percussion instruments and panpipes, good on the steel guitar, fair on the trumpet and not so good on the sax. But the show was very energetic and for the most part very good.
This evening is the Venetian Carnival Ball and we're going to wear costumes and masks. It's a formal night so I'll do almost anything to get out of wearing my tuxedo. Diana and I both wore our newly acquired Venetian masks. She also wore a sari she bought in Sri Lanka and I work my Tunisian galif and a cap I bought a few years ago in Fez, Morocco. It was an interesting night but I was ready to get some sleep after the ball was half over.
April 18 – At Sea. It's Holland America Line's 138th birthday today so I expect they'll have a celebration at teatime today. I'm afraid I'm going to miss it, as I want to keep catching up on my journal. And that's just what I did.
Our entertainer was Ken and Casey, "A Man and His Duck." He's a ventriloquist with a duck dummy. We've seen him before and he's hilarious. Tonight was no exception.
April 19 – Cairo, Egypt – Day 1. Well, here's where things really start to bog down. We're going to be off the ship for two days and touring day and night. I'm not even going to take my computer so I'm going to fall way behind. To make matters worse we'll be back one evening and then leave the ship again for two days in Israel. By the time that's over I'm going to be buried. (It's April 25 when I'm writing the next paragraph.)
The city of Alexandria is Egypt's second-largest city and it's largest seaport. Cairo is the largest but is so far up the Nile Delta that large ships can't get there. It's the site of one of the most famous cities of antiquity. It was founded about 331 BC by Alexander the Great and was Egypt's capital for about a thousand years. It was famous for the 'Lighthouse of Alexandria', one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and the largest library at the time as well. At its peak Alexandria was second only to Rome in power and prestige. In 641 AD the city fell to the Arabs, started a period of slow decline and by the late Ottoman period it was only a small fishing village. It has recovered by becoming a major port city.
The port of Alexandria is huge and apparently they have a very successful sulfur mine in the area as I saw the largest pile of sulfur I have ever seen here. It was more than a quarter mile long, about 300 feet wide and 100 feet high. There were several very large barges tied up nearby with more huge piles of sulfur on them. I would hate to be around here if that stuff ever burns. Ouch!!
Our three hour ride to Cairo will be mostly on a highway cut across the desert so it will not be very scenic however we are starting off in the Nile Delta so it is very much a wetland with islands of rushes, sea birds and marshy areas. As we drew closer to Cairo we could see new housing developments starting up. The city of Cairo is spreading like the Dallas Metroplex. The pyramids of Giza used to be in the middle of nowhere, now they are right on the edge of the city.
Our first stop is at the Citadel and the Mohammed Ali Mosque. The Citadel was built by Saladin, the scourge of the Crusaders, on a hilltop in 1176. For years was the center of the city. Later, when he came to Egypt, Napoleon occupied it. Later it became the home of the royal family. The Citadel is home to several mosques the largest one was built in 1248 by Mohammed Ali. This is the same man from whom Caseus (sp?) Clay adopted his Muslim name.
It's a fairly large mosque with two minarets, a sign that it is an important place of worship. The domes and half domes are silver and the stone is dark beige. The large courtyard has the necessary washing facilities for hands, feet and face before entering. Usually you have to take your shoes off to enter but here they allow you to wear surgical booties. Inside is a unique feature, two pulpits. The original one was of marble and is next to the niche that indicates the direction of Mecca. The newer one is wood and mostly green with gold leaf. From the balcony there's a great view of Cairo. In the distance, through the haze, you could just make out the pyramids of Giza.
The streets of Cairo are one large traffic jam. Our guide said that where there are three lanes marked you will see five cars across. He said the lines are not even a suggestion they are simply decoration.
One thing I've already noticed is that the people are way more outgoing in their greetings. Just the sight of a tour bus will start the waving and smiling. I think they have been hurting with the lack of tours because of the revolt. Even the soldiers sitting on their armored personnel carriers are waving, giving us the thumbs up and smiling at us. It wasn't that way 3 years ago.
After the long drive and the trip to the citadel we are stopping for lunch. The hotel has very nice grounds and many people were taking the opportunity to sit out in the sun. Even the conservatively dressed Moslem women are waving to us and I can tell you that was not happening three years ago. I must be a lot better looking than I was in 2008. Lunch was buffet style and absolutely great. Lots of vegetables, chicken, beef and that ground lamb mixture they put in gyros.
After that it was back into the traffic. One nice thing about the jam up is that the bus has to go slowly and you have time to watch the people going about their everyday lives, shopping, strolling, walking with their children and sitting in cafés drinking coffee. Actually the cafés are a little different. They provide hookahs for the men to smoke tobacco (and maybe some funny tobacco, who knows?) At every location there was a rank of hookahs lined up like shopping carts at the grocery store. Even the older men smoking the hookahs are waving to us.
As we drove to the Egyptian Museum we passed the Presidential Palace that still had barricades, but then so does the White House. The museum is only one block off Tahrir Square sight of the mugging of Anderson Cooper. I don't really wish anyone harm but the sight of that smug son of a gun getting smacked did make me smile a little. I already knew he wasn't seriously hurt. The square itself is smaller than it looked on TV and it's empty now except for some signs and people strolling. Just up the street there's a platoon strength army unit with armored personnel carriers just in case someone starts something.
The only building that I saw with any significant damage was the party headquarters of current president. It wasn't just damaged, it was mostly burned out. Only a few windows had glass in them and the side of the building was 80% scorched.
When we arrived at the museum we were advised to leave our cameras on the bus, as they cannot enter the building. We were dropped off about a half a block from the entrance and directly next to a column of Egyptian Army vehicles. As I got out the back door of the bus I was facing three soldiers, two privates and one noncom probably a corporal. They were grinning and waving to me so I saluted them, which they returned and then stuck their hands out to shake. As we were shaking hands the guys between the next two vehicles were watching and when I got there they wanted to shake my hand as well. This scene was repeated between every vehicle until I got to the gate of the museum's grounds. It was a lot of fun and I really hope this attitude can continue. Egypt won't turn as fast as Iran, Lebanon or Afghanistan but I'm not terribly optimistic about the long-range outlook for maintaining a non-Islamic Republic in the country. I hope I'm very wrong on that.
I bought a guide to this museum in Luxor on our last trip so I know what I want to see this time. The guide has floor maps and pictures of most of the exhibits by room number, in fact it's organized by room and it moves through the rooms in order so it's easy to find the items you want to see.
One of the things I really wanted to see is right inside the entrance and the guide stopped there to discuss what it was. Narmer's Tablet is the oldest known historical document with writing on it. It's about 29 inches high and 24 inches wide and is shaped like a blunt tipped arrowhead. The museum gives his Dynasty as 0, which makes perfect sense to a computer geek like myself. We tend to forget that the first digit is 0, not one. Therefore the First Dynasty would be Dynasty 0 not Dynasty 1. However since Roman numerals don't have the concept of 0, when written in Roman numerals it would be Dynasty I, hence the confusion.
Computer Geek's Note: The reason this makes sense to a computer geek is that, especially with mainframes, and to a large extent with PCs because a lot of their conventions come from mainframe tradition, if you have three things, say printers, they are printer 0, printer 1 and printer 2 utilizing the first three digits. So in the world of computers if you see that there's a number 7of something, and things are being done in an orderly manner, you know that there are 8 of those connected to the computer (ex. drive packs, tape drives, printers, etc.). We won't even start to discuss the world of octal, hexadecimal and binary numbers. To be a mainframe pro you've got to be able to handle all those systems, although to be honest octal numbering is very rare except in the oldest equipment.
If all this seems a little weird to you remember this is stream of consciousness writing and unfortunately the consciousness inside my brain is a very strange and unfamiliar reality for most people.
This guide is so superior to the one we had on our last visit that I'm going to stick with him for the tour. He took us through the major kingdoms of Ancient Egypt in order using museum exhibits to explain the ups and downs that the nation experienced. It was so well presented that I stuck around for the whole 45-minute presentation. I lasted 5 minutes with the pervious guy before I took off on my own.
The Treasures of Tanis are a highlight for me. Tanis is on the east bank of a secondary tributary of the Nile about 80 miles northeast of Cairo. The site was constructed between the XXI Dynasty (1075 BC) and the Roman Era (313 AD). The first discoveries were made by P. Montet, in 1929, were large temples to various gods but the most impressive were Amun and Mut. There were religious structures of all types in the area. In 1939 Montet made the area's most dramatic find, the tombs of pharaohs from the XXI and XXII Dynasties. These tombs were excavated during WWII and Montet kept them quiet, as he didn't want the Germans to find out about them in case they were successful in taking all of Egypt. By the time the war was over they were old news in Egyptology circles and never made the popular press. As shame as they are truly beautiful and a very rare find.
The most amazing of his discoveries, in my opinion, are two solid silver sarcophagi, one each from the XXI and XXII Dynasties. At the time these were made, 994 and 890 BC, silver was very rare indeed and much more expensive and precious than gold. This is because it takes more technology to refine silver than gold. If you heat rock that contains gold the gold just runs out and you can alloy it with whatever you want or use it in it's pure form. Silver requires more of a smelting process, whereas gold just needs to be refined.
The sarcophagus of Psunennes I is amazing. The overall shape is that of a mummy. It's mainly silver but has some gold applied as a headband and the uraeus (cobra) on his headdress. It's the innermost of three sarcophagi and the most precious. He's holding the shepherd's crook and flail across his chest, symbolic of Osirus, just like you see in photos of Tut's sarcophagus. The silver has acquired a dull patina over the centuries but it's clearly been finely worked.
The other silver sarcophagus belongs to Sheshonq II. This one is falcon-headed shows his arms and hands and has the symbols of Osirus on his chest. The falcon head probably links the king to Osiris-Sokari, an underworld, funerary god in the Memphis necropolis.
We went into the Tut jewelry room where his 3 sarcophagi are located along with his funeral mask and a lot of his jewelry. The Grave Goods area is amazing stuff also. They used to entomb dioramas of the pharaoh's favorite places and activities and there are lots of them here.
It was almost time to meet our group in the courtyard so we headed to the museum shop to see what we could find. Diana bought some postcards. Last time I was here a very strange thing happened. I was looking at their guidebooks and the clerk asked me if she could see mine. Theirs were not nearly so detailed or organized as mine. I asked her if she had that book and she said no and that she'd never seen it before. It's printed in Italy and I noticed that it also lists a translator in the English edition. I think it was written by an Italian. I remember thinking that it's a great book and the museum should have it. Well they have it now!
We were supposed to go to the hotel to check in and freshen up to get ready for the Sound and Light Show at the Sphinx but traffic was so bad there's no time. So we wound up at the show as we were. For some people this was a problem because we were dressed for the warm day and at night the temperature drops quickly on the desert. Just to emphasize that fact a wind came up. I was fine but some people were really cold. I guess I should say that I'm not a multi media show type guy so it came as no surprise to me that the Sound and Light Show was not that impressive. To be fair it was not bad either, just not something I enjoyed a lot. Mainly the Sphinx and all three of the Giza pyramids light up and they project images on the wall of Khafre's embalming temple. His is the middle pyramid with some of the casing stones at its peak. To emphasize the lack of tourists the show's seating was less than 25% full.
After the show it was back on the bus and downtown to the Four Seasons Hotel for the night. Kind of a shame that we'll spend less than 10 hours in the room as it was very nice indeed.
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