Northern Palace at Tel Amarna

Flinders Petrie was a 19th century archaeologist who discovered, among many other things, beautifully painted palace pavements and frescoes at Tel Amarna--the capitol of the renegade Pharaoh, Akh-en-Aten. Petrie was very concerned about preservation, and was very much ahead of his time in this regard. At Tel Amarna he built a 250 square foot building over top the painted pavements and frescoes in order for tourists to see them from above without walking on them and destroying them. However, the Egyptian Department of Public Works never built a path to this exhibition building and the visitors trampled the nearby crops getting to and from the site. So, an angry peasant farmer, tired of loosing valuable crops to tourists, took to the frescoes with a hammer and chisel destroying them all. Unfortunately, there are many such stories of lost antiquities in Egypt--usually not by the hand of locals, but by the hand of a tourist or an antiquities dealer. Fortunately, Petrie had documented (he was a pioneer in many ways) the frescoes and pavements in both black-and-white and color drawings on a one-tenth scale before they were destroyed. These photos show all that remains today of the Northern palace at Tel Amarna.

Sunrise over the Nile

Our first morning in Minia, Lea and I saw this sunrise as we were walking to breakfast. The sun was just beginning to burn off the morning mist and fog.

Christmas in Egypt?

As you know, we've been home from Egypt now a little over a week. It's great to be back in our own country, our own beds, eating our own food, etc. In many ways, our trip seems like it was a long time ago.

So many things--big and small--about our trip come to mind throughout my day. One thing I've thought about is how they celebrate Christmas in Egypt. Yes, a Muslim country celebrates Christmas! :-0

We were really surprised when we arrived at our 5-Star hotel in Cairo--the Mena House--and it was decorated to the hilt for Christmas! They went all out. They must have had over a thousand beautiful and live poinsettias all over the place. They had a larger-than-life, automated Santa Claus right next to the front door. He would shake your hand, say "Ho, ho, ho!" and play Christmas carols! The hotel is quite large and every "common area"--like the various lobbies and in front of the elevators, etc.--had live, decorated Christmas trees! It was amazing. All the hand rails and crown moldings were wrapped in garland! I wish I had taken photos!

We thought that all of this decorating must be directed towards the Christian tourists, but then we discovered that almost all Egyptians celebrate Christmas. Most don't celebrate it in a religious sense (although there are Coptic Christians still in Egypt), but they celebrate the secular holiday of Christmas--Santa Claus, reindeer, elves, gift giving, etc. Throughout our three week journey we encountered Christmas decorations everywhere. It was one of those completely unexpected, yet delightful parts of traveling! :-) It's something that I'll always remember as a very pleasant and interesting surprise.

Lea's so happy to be in Egypt!

My favorite part of being here is watching Lea as she travels through Egypt. This is a trip that she's been wanting to do ever since our last visit in 1998. She's so excited about being here. I've never known her to be so thrilled to be anywhere before, and it's such a treat for me to see. Her joy is written all over face as we visit these ancient sites. You can hear the wonder in her voice as she expresses her amazement at what she sees and hears. I'm sure our guide, Ahmed, has never had as attentive a tourist as Lea. He's a great guy and is really taking good care of us, especially, Lea! :-)

Panoramic of Tel El-Armana

Tel El-Armana is a special site that's rarely visited by tourists because it's in a remote region between Minya and Asyut. The renegade Pharoh, Akhenaten, moved his capitol from Thebes to this site to begin what's considered the world's first monotheistic religion, dedicated to the sun god, Ra. The site is surrounded by mountains on three sides and the Nile on the fourth. Here Akhenaten ruled and worshiped his god for 25 years. Along with the change in religion, there was also a change in the art. The Pharoh allowed for more realism in his artwork and he is portrayed as a slightly over weight middle-aged man with a belly and heavy thighs. I keep saying that if I keep eating my way throughout Egypt without exercising, I'll come home looking like Akhenaten! There are a number of tombs carved in the mountains surrounding Tel El-Armana and we visited the ones that are currently open. Unfortunately, the antiquities department doesn't allow photography inside the tombs so I can't show you the carvings and painting, which are amazing, but I can show you this view from up top. In this video you can see Lea waving goodbye to our driver, Mamoud. (you can just make out the van turning around way down below on the desert floor) and a panorama of the ancient site of Tel El-Armana.

Tourist Police Escorts

In the remote areas between Cairo and Luxor we were escorted by the Tourist Police. The Chevy truck in front of us in this video was one of our escorts. Our escorts consisted of a driver and front passenger. In the back of the truck there were two (or more) soldiers (tourist police) with machine guns. We're not sure who they were protecting us from. Tourism is a major income producer for Egypt and they go to great lengths to protect this part of their economy. The Tourist Police escort you everywhere in the more remote regions. There are many check points along the way and they keep tabs on you at all times. They communicate back and forth by cell phones and we were forced to keep to a strict schedule. Dallying in these areas wasn't allowed. We even had a Tourist Policeman riding in our van the entire time. At check points they would sometimes get out and another one would join us. As you can see from this video, the Tourist Police don't follow the traffic patterns, they go right through traffic, like an ambulance. When they need people to move to the side they use a siren. It allows for better driving times than you'd get if you didn't have their assistance, but it was a bit embarrassing to be hurried through congested areas. It made me feel too elitist, but I appreciated the protection and service these guys provide.

Looking up at the Maidum Pyramid

Maidum Pyramid

Thanks to the countless hours of research Lea did for this trip, we're seeing some off-the-beaten-track sites. This pyramid was a stop on our drive from Cairo to Minya. It was a hazy morning, and the horizon wasn't very clear. About 40 minutes outside Cairo, Frank and I both started to see some mountain off in the distance. The closer we got to it, the more we realized it was a man-made structure--the pyramid of Maidum! :-) Needless to say we had the entire site to ourselves and it was a real treat to see. Thanks, Lea! :-)

Sphinx in front of praymids

This was taken near the entrance to the Giza Plateau. Actually, it was our exit. The Mena House is on the other side of the complex so we did the typical tour in reverse order. I liked doing it this way because this saved the "creme de la creme"--the view of the Sphinx in front of the pyramids--for last! We then drove the short distance to our hotel in about 45-minutes! Cairo traffic is CRAZY and SLOW!

Pyramid view from car

This photo was taken from our car as we were driving back to our hotel. It gives you an idea of how large the pyramids are and how they dominate the natural and man-made landscape today--5,000 years after they were built--it's mind boggling.

Mena House Hotel--the view from our balcony

This is the view from the balcony of our hotel room in Cairo. You can see two of the three largest Giza pyramids from our room. The views made the stay there very memorable for us! This photo is a bit hazy and I don't remember when it was actually taken. I have some prettier photos of the pyramids but wanted to show you the view we had from our room.

We're now in Luxor and I have an internet connection that seems to be working! Yay! Sorry for the drought of messages, but we've been traveling through Middle Egypt, from Cairo south to Luxor, by car. This is NOT a tourist area and there's really no infrastructure to support tourists. We stayed two nights in Minya and one night in Asyut--both are University towns. People in Minya were really surprised, and delighted (in a curious way) to see us. We really turned a lot of heads as a lot of them, our guide explained, had probably never seen a Westerner except on TV. Even on the hotel grounds, which were lovely, there was only "local" people as overnight guests and they were all very interested in watching us. It was a little unnerving but we knew they meant no harm and weren't trying to be rude. The night we were there was the Coptic Christmas (January 7) and our hotel and other nearby hotels and wedding reception facilities were having Coptic Christmas entertainment--not religious in the slightest, but the holiday is celebrated by the local Christians and so these establishments try to offer them something fun to do. They had live music in the streets in front of the venues with shows to help attract customers. Our guide had said that we shouldn't walk around outside the hotel without him since we would attract a lot of attention. When I heard the music, I thought it might be a parade or street party. Our guide, Amhed, and I went outside to see what was going on and it was a group of performers in front of the hotel next door. When they saw I had my video camera, some of them came over and hammed it up for me. Of course, they wanted a tip in return. It was a lot of fun! I can't upload the video since I don't have permission to use their images, but I'd really like to post it for you. Too bad. :-(

Greetings from Cairo!

We made it to Cairo fine and are having a great time. I haven't posted anything until now, because the hotel charges 50-cents a minute or $30 for a full day for internet! We haven't been online until now. We had to do some trip-related research tonight, so we bit the bullet and connected to the internet.

Tomorrow we leave Cairo and head south to Minya. It's not a tourist destination, so it will be interesting to see this side of Egypt. I hope to be able to connect more often and for a lot less cost, once we're outside Cairo. We'll see.