Egypt (Part 1)

17 April to 21 April 2025

General Observations

Egypt is a multi-faceted country, filled with colour, chaos and some squalor, home to a vast array of ancient monuments, a desert nation whose great artery, the Nile, is the longest river in the world, its cataracts serving as a natural boundary with Sudan to the south. One of the cradles of humankind, Egypt’s primordial past is legend (i.e. ruled by gods), its remote past (pharaohs) cryptic; often overthrown – by the Persian Cambyses c. 525 BC, by Alexander the Great c. 332 BC and his successor Ptolemy, then the Romans c. 30 BC, and reclaimed by Arabs under the Islamic Caliphate c. 641 AD. The British took control in 1882 and pretty-much ‘ran’ Egypt’s last king, Farouk, until his overthrow in 1952 led to a succession of largely unelected strongmen, 3 of whom – Nasser, Sadat and Moubarak – were possibly, or definitely, ‘moved on’ without a poll. Life in Egypt can be touch-and-go but on the whole there is a successful juggling of modernity in the shadow of grand, and not so grand, atavistic traditions. We saw a fair bit of it over a fortnight, under the guidance of the intimidatingly-named Mohammad Osama, for Inspiring Vacations, both of whom we thoroughly recommend.

A word about Anwar Sadat

Egypt has emerged from the crises of 1952, of Suez, of the 1967 and 1973 wars and beyond, as a bastian of peace and stability in the region, albeit a fragile one. Sadat had a lot to do with that; the 1978 Camp David Accord ultimately cost him his life. Kissinger recalled being asked about Anwar el-Sadat soon after the death of President Nasser on 28 September, 1970: “I said I thought he was an interim figure who would not last more than a few weeks. That was among my wildest misjudgments! Over the course of 1971 Sadat would gradually outmaneuver his opponents, accomplishing in May a stunning purge of a formidable group of pro-Soviet rivals who had been plotting to eliminate him. Gradually he established his domestic position and his international freedom of action. Few outsiders even then (certainly not I) understood with what courage, vision, and determination he would later move his country and his region toward a revolution in international affairs, and thus emerge as one of the great leaders of our period.”*  “…none who knows history will ever forget that the journey to peace in the Middle East began with Anwar Sadat, and could not have progressed without him.”**

Cairo

Chaos, colour, movement: traffic comprising mostly beat-up cars, motor cycles with no crash helmets or leathers in sight, often bearing absurdly large chattels; horns sound constantly, a polite way of warning someone is coming through – lanes are ignored, but everything seems to flow. Safety Last seems the watchword on construction sites, and humble jobs abound (street sweepers, street vendors). Lots of mosques, and quite a number of Christian churches. Estimated population of Cairo – between 19 and 23 million people.

A frenetic pace is set here in Umm al-Dunya (what Arabs call Cairo – “the Mother of the World.”).

The Pyramids of Giza and Great Sphinx

“No other people has been so obsessed with immortality as the Egyptian. None has sought to capture time so persistently – at times with defiant boldness, at times passively; now relying on endurance rather than a grand assault, now raising tremendous edifices to faith in the future. The Pyramids at Giza, at once simple and monumental, have withstood the elements and man’s depredations for as close to eternity as man can come. At no other place in the world is man forced into humility so exclusively by one of his own accomplishments. In that sea of sand, split by the green valley of the Nile, stretching man’s vision in a narrow line for hundreds of miles, there is no natural monument to dwarf him; the most breathtaking landmarks are all man-made. They inspire awe by their immensity and grace and above all by the presumption of their conception. The tremendous Egyptian statuary evokes the same emotions: The figures are larger than life; yet their faces are infinitely human and their gaze leads us toward distant horizons.”^

The oldest and only enduring of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Pyramids of Giza (the western side of the river, where the tombs are), are almost 5,000 years old.

Clambering up the tunnel to the vault where Cheops was placed is an open invitation to remain there, such is the physical effort involved:

You line up with hundreds of people, and move slowly through a narrow rock-walled tunnel. Then you descend to a sort of patio, after which you haul yourself up a high step, and through a high, sloped passageway, using one small handrail and slippery wooden slats as steps.

And then crawl on hands and knees through a very low corridor, until you come to the final resting place, although it is not at all restful…more like a sauna where the lights have been dimmed:

The plain on which the pyramids sit were once fed by a Nile canal and piles of sand on which the huge blocks were slid in place. “The remains of the valley temple lie buried somewhere under the outskirts of Cairo, and little more than a rough area of basalt pavement shows the position of the mortuary temple against the pyramid’s eastern side….The second pyramid of Giza, that of Khufu’s son Khafre (Chephren), has survived in somewhat better condition than its more famous predecessor…”^^

Don’t fret about how (or why) they were constructed. They emphasize the why: that man has always needed something more than food, clothing, shelter and companionship. And about 12 years ago, scrolls found near the Red Sea gave a clue as to how they were made, using the universal language of history (mathematics). No alien intervention required.

Egyptian Museum

After recovering from an exhausting visit to Khufu/Cheops, we repaired to the Great Egyptian Museum, to view the treasure without the letting of blood. Opened in 1902 in the Beaux-Arts style, it houses more than 120,000 pieces, some slated to move to the new museum at Giza.

It houses Tutankhamun artefacts, including his mummified grandparents.

El Alamein

To the Mediterranean coast and the small coastal village to the west of Alexandria and north-west of Cairo, where World War came crashing-in 83 years ago.

July 1942 and October 1942: the Battles of El Alamein would prove decisive in the North Africa campaign, and beyond. Against the formidable Rommel and his battle-hardened troops were allied forces from all parts of the Commonwealth.

The War Museum display brings home how antiquated war then appears now, and how survival would have been sheer dumb luck:

El Alamein was of strategic value because Rommel could use it as a base from which to attack Cairo. In June 1942, Churchill exhorted “Everybody in uniform must fight exactly as they would if Kent or Sussex were invaded…No general evacuation, no playing for safety. Egypt must be held at all costs.” Then, in October 1942, the allied forces attacked, leading to many thousands of deaths (over 50,000 on all sides, the total number is unknown), Rommel’s army’s retreat and eventual surrender. Churchill later wrote:

“The Battle of Alamein differed from all previous fighting in the Desert. The front was limited, heavily fortified, and held in strength. There was no flank to turn. A break-through must be made by whoever was the stronger and wished to take the offensive…the fire-power of the defensive had fearfully increased since the previous war, and in those days it was always considered that a concentration of two or three to one was required, not only in artillery but men, to pierce and break a carefully fortified line. We had nothing like this superiority at Alamein. The enemy’s front consisted not only of successive lines of strong-points and machine-gun posts, but of a whole deep area of such a defensive system. And in front of all there lay the tremendous shield of minefields of a quality and density never known before. For these reasons the Battle of Alamein will ever make a glorious page in British military annals. There is another reason why it will survive. It marked in fact the turning of “the Hinge of Fate”. It may almost be said, “before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.””***

Alexandria

‘Greek Egypt,’ Alexander’s seaside city (331 BC), home to the Ptolemaic kings, including the last pharaoh, Cleopatra (VII), once featured the Pharos lighthouse…

…and the legendary Library of Alexandria (3C BC), both sadly lost, to earthquakes and fire. There’s a new version of the latter now.

TVC finally swam the south side of the Mediterranean, having failed earlier to connect with our Corniche-based hotel concerning lack of a bathrobe in our room: “How is room?” “Great, but can we get a bathrobe please?” “You don’t like room?” “It’s fine, we just would like a bathrobe.” “Change room?” “No, it’s fine!” (Poor English, no Arabic).

On the site of the old Lighthouse, one of the lost wonders of the ancient world, Sultan Qaitbey built the Citadel (aka Fort Qaitbey) c. 1480s AD, using some of the Lighthouse rubble.

It was only noticed ex post facto that our guide had arranged an armed guard to accompany us. Otherwise, we sensed no danger; however, a different mood was sensed while exploring the Greco-Roman catacombs of Kom Ash-Shuqqafa. Some 20 metres below street level, several hundred souls were housed here, and in the middle of a part of Alexandria that could kindly be called “vibrant,” our armed guard was no longer humorously tolerated, rather seriously appreciated. Shanty-town seems about right in some parts, including the homes immediately surrounding the catacombs.

After which, the tombs deep underground seemed quite peaceful. A central rotunda with spiral stone stairs leads down three levels, with a meld of Egyptian (including Horus, Anubis), Greek and Roman symbols.

There’s a large banquet hall where the deceased’s family would have what we might call a wake, within the very tomb itself (how Egyptian), and numerous passages leading off the main part of the lower levels, where the dead were consigned. (It helped lift the slightly gloomy mood when one of our group started making ghostly noises).

We drop in to the Nubians

We drove from Alexandria to Cairo, and then flew to Aswan. (Even on a domestic flight, even at hotels, you need to produce your passport). Much of Aswan we will leave for our next post – there is much to relate – but on the evening of 21 April, we rode a felucca (and picked up two tykes as hitchhikers) over the Nile to Elephantine Island, home to many Nubians displaced by the building of the High Aswan Dam in the 1960s and 1970s.

Our boatman, Saleh, then wended us through dusty, noisy, untidy streets to his home, where his family gave us dinner and the children from the place got us dancing. Many Nubians live in very modest circumstances, arguably poverty and squalor, but they remain proud Egyptians, proud of their Nubian heritage, and up close, in their cheery resilience and sheer love of life, they are richer than Ramses.

In our next post, we discover Aswan, Abu Simbel, and more.

[* Henry Kissinger, White House Years (1979), pp.1276-1277.] [** Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (1982), p.651.] [^ Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (1982), pp.650-651.] [^^ Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt (2000), pp. 116-117.] [*** Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4 The Hinge of Fate (1951), pp. 350, 486-487.]