Egypt (Part Three): Farewell

24 April to 1 May 2025

The Nile River

The Nile Valley has been sustaining life since Paleolithic times and for the last 6,000 years or more, has become Monument Valley to the World. The river stretches the entire length of Egypt (and more), a country crossing of some 1,600 kilometres, providing irrigation, agriculture, transport, settlement and even galvanising civilisation itself, before branching out in the flat alluvial Delta and emptying into the Mediterranean.

After an evening at the markets in Aswan, we clambered aboard the M.S. Grand Rose, a venerable Nile cruiser which, while showing its age, was nevertheless quite comfortable and in keeping with the sense of an historical voyage.

On gathering some late arrivals from Abu Simbel, we shoved off and scooted along fairly fast water; past lush green banks, waving to locals; through the great Lock; admiring the chutzpah of local vendors in small boats trying to get our attention, finally entering a watery traffic jam near the Kom Ombo Temple.

Shelley emphasised the dual nature, the upsides and downsides of the world’s mightiest river:

“O’er Egypt’s land of Memory floods are level
And they are thine, O Nile – and well thou knowest
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where’er thou flowest.
Beware, O Man – for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.”

Kom Ombo Temple

It was turning dark when we left the boat and walked up the hill to Kom Ombo, and all of a sudden, the wind whipped-up sand and boat-smog, making the sandstone Temple even more eerie in the crepuscular light.

Dedicated, during the Ptolemaic age (108 – 47 BC), to the Gods Horus the Elder (‘Haroeris’) and Sobek (the ancient crocodile god), there is a double-up of the plan of the temples, and various column capitals abound, along with deity-detail:

“…it is known that pilgrims came to Haroeris, the Healer, to be treated for their infirmities…[hence] the famous and controversial scene in which the king presents a group of ritual and/or surgical instruments.“*

And the gods occupied the chapel of the hearing ear, when Horus wasn’t monstering the awful Seth, depicted unflatteringly as an hippopotamus:

The three seasons of Egypt can be seen on the festival calendar of Ptolemy VI, c. 170BC:

The Crocodile Museum

It is a brief walk down the hill from Kom Ombo Temple, and features a nice array of crocodilia, an homage to the pre-dynastic Crocodile God of the Nile, Sobek:

There are mummified crocs:

and croc tablets:

…and croc figurines:

However, the Nile crocodiles appear, at least in artistic relief, to be kinder, gentler and less dangerous than the Australian ‘salty’, which represents pure evil.

Temple of Edfu

Another Ptolemaic sandstone temple near the west bank of the Nile, about 1/2 way between Aswan and Luxor, c. 237 – 57BC, dedicated to Horus, and his taking care of the nasty god Seth.

Luxor and Karnak

Thebes, now Luxor, features the Karnak Temple complex, an accumulation over several centuries of (not entirely completed) enormous pylons, obelisks, columns, statues, etc. It is probably the greatest outdoor museum in the world, comprising an estimated 25% of the world’s antiquities. In large part it is dedicated to the god Amun (Ammon), considered the equivalent to Zeus or Jupiter, who is depicted with a ram’s head and often journeying in a vast gilded sea or river vessel.

It has seemingly endless courts, columns and colossi, particularly the gigantic Hypostyle Hall, the 97 feet high, 323 ton obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut (of whom more below), and the sacred lake used for purification rituals, some 100,000 square feet in area. And if you walk seven times around the giant scarab (see above), your wish, it is said, shall come true. (We didn’t, so cannot verify this).

Luxor Temple is a smaller collection but right in the heart of the town, overlooking the Nile. The pylon of Ramses II dominates, and homages to that Pharaoh, in various constituents, include the red Syene granite. There is a slight ‘kink’ in the layout, which you can detect from the aerial photograph below: the British Museum fellows surmised this was done to line-up more neatly with Karnak, to which it is linked via the 3,000 year old Avenue of the Sphinxes.

Valley of the Kings

Crossing the river to the west sees lush greenery but then, “At a certain point fields, palms and vegetation would abruptly cease, becoming sand, rock, boulders and desolation. The point of transition from the life and humanity of the arable land to the deathly precincts of the desert has not varied more than a few yards in countless thousands of years…At the very base of the towering cliffs which face the open plain and the rising sun is the Valley of the Kings, known in Arabic as the Wady Biban al-Maluk.“^

In this barren necropolis, there are 63 tombs (so far), of several New Kingdom Pharaohs and High Priests and officials. Nearly all were raided and robbed-clean. The tombs each have a number, assigned according to the sequence of discovery. Some notable ones are shown below:

TOMB OF MERENPTAH (KV 8) [1284 BC – 1204 BC]

TOMB OF RAMESES III (KV 11) [1217 BC – 1155 BC]

TOMB OF TUTANKHAMUN (KV 62) [c. 1341 BC – c. 1323 BC]

Famously untouched by tomb-raiders, the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922. Many stories are told of how this came to pass, but we cite this version from Howard Carter, the man credited with the find: “the water boy…[l]ike small, industrious boys emulating their elders he was carrying on, in his play, digging with sticks in the sand, when suddenly he hit a hard surface. He dug furiously and in a few moments had unearthed a stone step. His heart almost ceased to beat. Hastily he covered the step with sand, so that rival archeologists might not see him, and then ran as fast as his legs would carry him to tell Howard Carter of what he had found.”^^

It is fairly clear that Carter couldn’t resist breaching the treasury room and inner sanctum before notifying the department of antiquities, and also that he carried away a few souvenirs – but that probably reflected the customs of the time. In any event, Carter’s find was splendid and of critical importance. Eventually, someone will break every seal:

TOMB OF RAMESSES IX (KV 6) [c. 1160 BC – c. 1111 BC]

Temple of Queen Hatshepsut

(see also main image)

Around a mountainous corner from the Valley of the Kings is the rocky amphitheatre of Deir el-Bahri, which contains, cut into the mountain, the great Temple to Queen Hatshepsut (ruling c. 1473 BC until c.1458 BC).

Said to be inspired by the now virtually obliterated Mentuhotep Mortuary, it is a three-tiered assembly of terraces, courts, columns and porticos.

The caves adjacent to the temple were, back  in the day, used for fornicating, but now the Poles are here to excavate and restore, and they are too serious for that kind of thing:

The Margaret Thatcher of her day, Hatshepsut was said to have ruled wisely and over a period of stability and prosperity, which is why she was usually depicted as a man, and why there were concerted efforts to effect Damnatio memoriae (i.e., erase her from history). For example, notice how the cartouches of her stepson, Thutmose III, are intact but those of Hatshepsut (to the left) have been scratched-out.

For all that, Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple is a stunning and enduring piece of architecture, very modern in feeling. As Thatcher once said, “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.”

Colossi of Memnon

Built for Amenhotep III (Amenophis III in Greek) at what was then Thebes, c. 1350BC, 60 feet high, they are among the largest figures fashioned from single blocks of stone. They are believed to have been the gateway to a grand mortuary temple of Amenhotep III (being of course on the west bank), and further discoveries are expected in the area eventually.

In 27BC, an earthquake badly damaged the northern figure, and this led to it ‘singing’ or sighing at dawn, akin to the King Memnon of Greek myth greeting his Mother, Eos, the goddess of dawn. Some reported the sound as that of a lyre string breaking (shades of The Cherry Orchard) but many heard nothing at all. Some repairs at the behest of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus about 199AD stopped the singing.

The Winter Palace

We had to have a drink at King Farouk’s summer watering hole, the Winter Palace, located on Luxor’s riverside Corniche. Farouk was famous as a hedonist and sybarite who was ousted in a coup, as the last King of Egypt, in 1952, based in part on the high level of corruption in his administration.

“Like most young males in every age, he exerted himself only in subjects that appealed to him, eschewing disinterested mental effort. (His closest approach to philosophical discourse consisted of throwing bread at passers-by, in the heroic tradition of Bertie Wooster and Bingo Little at the Drones Club.) If Farouk ever read a book from cover to cover, history has not recorded the feat. A subsequent mistress, Irene Guinle, astringently commented: “He had three telephones by his bed…[and would] ring up his so-called friends at three in the morning and invite them to come over to his palace to play cards.” Still, even she credited him with “impeccable manners”….Farouk’s undoing [was] hastened by the CIA program crudely known as “Operation Fat F**ker”…On March 18, 1965, the 45-year-old Farouk breathed his last in a Rome hospital, having suffered a massive seizure a few hours beforehand at the nearby Île de France restaurant. Perhaps simple obesity, chain-smoking, and excessive consumption of carbohydrates finished him off, but many Egyptians believed, and some continue to believe, that Nasser had had the ex-monarch poisoned.” **

OK but at least royal hedonists have a sort of class. He used to hang out at The Winter Palace, built in late Regency style by the British in 1887 – it is now a Sofitel hotel. After some mutual consternation on the part of our group and a concierge, we discovered that the 500 Egyptian Pound fee per head was merely a drink coupon designed to discourage rubbernecks who did not wish to avail themselves of the facilities.

The rooms and gardens are delightful and the red-carpeted passage is believed to have been where, in 1922, Howard Carter announced that he’d found the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Our groups had some interesting taxi rides back to our hotel – ensure that you negotiate taxi prices before embarking, and be careful of who might be driving home…after a few drinks at the Winter Palace.

Hurghada

Our Tour guys, Inspiring Vacations, wisely figured that the group might need some R ‘n’ R by this time, so we motored through the Eastern desert, and then between rocky mountains, to the Red Sea town of Hurghada, which was once a sleepy fishing village but is now quite a swanky beach resort. Quite good food, with alcohol(!), whilst overlooking the cool blue waters and a myriad cruisers.

TVC staff are not really beachgoers but couldn’t resist a dip in the Red Sea, and a stroll along the marina.

On the Marina, we recommend Olie’s for lunch:

It had a tad more class than other eateries, where who-knows-what the catch of the day might be:

In fact, the real surprise was when we found ourselves at a loose-end one mid morning and über-ed to the Hurghada Museum. This relatively unknown newcomer (opened 2020) has idiosyncratic opening times but also a very impressive array, featuring Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Christian, Islamic and Judean artefacts, that we could enjoy almost completely to ourselves, which is probably why we took so many (non-flash) photos:

Some of the items were a statuette of the God “Ptah,” creator god of the ancient city of Memphis; a trio of King Tut figurines; a statute of King Amenhotep III; the head of King Tuthmose III in red granite; A Quran; a Torah; a Mashka lantern or lamp; and several mummies c. 332BC – 395AD, found in the Western Desert in 1996 by Dr. Zahi Hawass and his team.

Khan El-Khalili bazaar

We ended our tour back in Cairo, with a trip to this 600 year old bazaar – once a market for spices, later gold, now just tat unfortunately, but still of interest:

And then, all too soon, it was evening – time to don the Fez one last time for a (real) drink with our group, some to be heading north, some east, some home. Ma’a El Salama, Egypt!

Zid hashshi bashshi tafaddal adni surra sili ! [“Add, laugh, rejoice, bring nigh, show favour, gladden, give!”]  – Al-Mutanabbi (born 915 AD).

[* Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt (2000), p. 210.] [^ Thomas Hoving, Tutankhamun, The Untold Story (1978), pp. 30-31.] [^^ Thomas Hoving, Tutankhamun, The Untold Story (1978), pp. 77.] [**R.J. Stove, “Revisiting the Avaricious, Lustful, Greedy, Fat King Farouk” (2020), The American Conservative.]

One last word

Memo to the street and antiquities vendors of Egypt, and perhaps also the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce: when Australian tourists draw near, leave em’ alone! If not pestered and harassed, they will very likely select some of your wares and pay the asking price, or reasonably near to it. If you ‘get in their face’, you won’t realise a sale.