We took this trip with a group under the auspices of the Vanderbilt University Alumni Travel Program.
Khaled Lofty, a degreed and government-licensed Egyptologist, accompanied us everywhere throughout the trip. He provided historical context, explanations of Egyptian religious beliefs and how details, like hieroglyphs and pictures, are observed and interpreted that was fascinating and invaluable. Vanderbilt faculty member Annalisa Azzoni, who has written a book on the private lives of women in ancient Egypt under Persian rule based on discovery of an amazing archive of documents found on Elephantine Island, also accompanied us throughout Egypt.
Day One: Tuesday, January 16. We had a smooth journey from JFK to Cairo and an amazing first full day of touring. We learned a lot about pyramids (there are 123 in all Egypt) and visited a few that are on the West Bank of the Nile River in Giza. It was incredible to get up close and personal with them to experience how massive they are. The largest took 20 years to construct by over 100,000 workers.
Oh yes, we did ride the camels. I stopped holding on for dear life just long enough to have this photo taken. Please notice how pretty my camel is.
King Zoser's famous Step Pyramid at Sakkara is the first known stone structure ever built, created a century before the Great Pyramids.
The hieroglyphics inside a tomb that we visited were in incredibly good shape, especially considering they’re about 4,600 years old.
The Sphinx is one of the largest and oldest statues in the world. It’s 240 feet long and 66 feet tall - carved from a single piece of limestone. Our group had received special permission to walk around the floor of the Sphinx right up close to it where the general public can’t ordinarily walk. That’s our group below just entering the area. What an experience.
Day Two: Wednesday, January 17. We started another busy day flying about an hour from Cairo to Aswan. We checked into our historic hotel overlooking the First Cataract of the Nile, and enjoyed several different tours.
We sailed a short distance to Elephantine Island to visit an archeological site of another temple surrounded by a village.
The boat rides were fun. They were covered sailboats with open sides, where local craftspeople had brought their crafts onboard to offer for sale, as well as to provide a bit of local music and dancing.
We enjoyed a tour of a Coptic Cathedral right across the street from our hotel. Security has been very tight everywhere, but very much so here. A number of armed guards surrounded the cathedral, including a guy in a tank with his automatic weapon very ready.
When we exited the cathedral, we were amused by a pack of goats providing grass maintenance to the median dividers in the middle of a very busy street.
Day Three: Thursday, January 18. We visited the Nubian Museum, which had a wonderful collection of artifacts and displays about Pharaonic Egypt from the Nubian perspective (the Nubians were a dark-skinned people with their own impressive culture and empire due south of Egypt). We also visited the Aswan Bazaar ... great for leather goods, gold and silver jewelry, Bedouin carpets and scarves, and Nubian artifacts.
Day Four: Friday, January 19. Today, we flew from Aswan to Abu Simbel to visit the Great Temples of Ramses II. We were not at all certain that it was going to be worth going to the trouble to take a 40 minute flight just to see this temple and then to fly right back again. Well, oh my gosh, it was worth it. The whole thing is jaw dropping. It’s actually two temples that were built right into a wall of limestone during the reign of Ramses II, 1290-1224 BC. It’s another example of a temple that was originally on another nearby site but was threatened by the rising waters of Lake Nasser behind the Aswan High Dam. It was cut into 500 huge blocks and reassembled in a nearby but safer location. This is the larger temple that was dedicated to several gods as well as Ramses. You can’t see the entrance in this photo but it’s straight ahead of the people on the walkway leading to it.
This is the smaller temple which was dedicated to a goddess and Ramses’ favorite wife, Nefertari.
This is a view of both those temples.
The interiors of both temples were amazing. Photography was not allowed inside, so we bought a package of postcards that show some of the interior. This is the main hallway as you enter the larger temple. These statues are huge. There are lots of rooms off of this hallway with every inch covered with drawings and hieroglyphs.
This is an example of a drawing from the smaller temple. We were blown away by the natural preservation of the highly detailed work that completely covers the walls and columns. It was fantastic!
After a short return flight from Abu Simbel, we moved from the hotel to a Nile cruise ship. After settling in on the ship, we began our afternoon shore excursions at the Aswan High Dam. An engineering marvel when built in the 1960s, it contains 18 times the material used in the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The Dam created 500-mile long Lake Nasser, increasing Egypt's arable land by 30%, doubling its electricity production and raising the water table in the Sahara as far away as Algeria.
One of the granite quarries that supplied most of the hard stone the ancient Egyptians used in building contains the 138-foot long Unfinished Obelisk. Three sides were completed except for the inscriptions, and it would have been the largest single piece of stone ever handled if a flaw had not appeared in the granite.
We sailed a short distance to the Island of Agilka on Lake Nasser to visit the Philae Temple. Original parts are 5,000 years old and parts of it were updated by the Greeks and Romans. Amazingly, it’s not the original site for this temple complex. The original island was completely flooded when the Aswan Dam was built. So between 1972 and 1980, the whole thing was cut into 40,000 pieces and moved 600 feet to higher ground!
Day Five: Saturday, January 20. Every time there’s another visit to a temple on the itinerary, I think ‘ok, I think I’ve already got the whole temple thing’. But then I find each one is unique and remarkable in its own way.
This morning, we cruised down the Nile to Kom Ombo. At the Temple of Two Gods in Kom Ombo we learned about the gods Sobek and Haroeries and saw and learned about sacred mummified crocodiles.
As you may see if you look carefully at the carving on this stone pillar, Sobek was a crocodile-headed god, while Haroeries was the falcon-headed sky god.
The grounds of the Temple of the Two Gods also contains the Nilometer ... a deep, round stone-lined pit that filled naturally with Nile River water. The priests determined the current year's taxes by measuring the level of the river in this primitive (yet elegant) gauge ... they presumed the higher the water, the better the crops ... and thus higher the taxes!
From Kom Ombo, we spent a few beautiful hours yesterday cruising down the Nile River to Edfu. Along the Nile it’s very fertile and green. But within a mile or so the Sahara Desert starts.
The Temple of Horus in Edfu is the most complete and best-preserved temple of ancient Egypt. It had been totally submerged under the desert except for the very top of the pylon entrance; when it was rediscovered and excavated it was in near-perfect condition.
Day Six: Sunday, January 21. We sailed from Edfu to Luxor, passing through the Esna Lock. In Luxor, we visited the Temple of Luxor and the Karnak Temple. The Temple of Luxor is distinguished by its Avenue of Sphinxes, which originally ran over two miles to the Karnak Temple, and is now being restored to connect them again.
The Karnak Temple complex is big ... very big ... 48 acres big.
It’s known for its immense hall consisting of 134 columns, labyrinthine passageways and huge obelisks. The key difference between Karnak and other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed and used. Construction work began in the 16th century BC and approximately 30 pharaohs contributed to it. Restoration work is going on now.
Day Seven: Monday, January 22. Today we left the ship and crossed to the West Bank of the Nile (where the Egyptians always buried their dead). We passed the Colossi of Memnon (75-foot high, 1000-ton statues of Pharoah Amenhotep III) on the way to the fabled Valley of the Kings.
We also passed by the Temple of Queen Hatchepsut at Deir el-Bahri.
In the Valley of the Kings, we toured several spectacular tombs of Pharoahs.
The interiors of the tomb of Ramses IV illustrate the scale and the richness of the carving and decoration in the tombs ... even after 3000-3500 years!
Day Eight: Tuesday, January 23. We began our final day in Egypt at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, highlighted by the famed treasures of King Tutankhamon, and the Mummies Room ... the final resting place of some of Egypt's greatest Pharoahs, including Ramses II, who built all or much of the vast majority of the incredible constructions we had seen all across Egypt.
We had a tour and talk inside the Sultan Hassan Mosque, the best example of Islamic architecture in Egypt.
After a walk across the old walled Arab town of Cairo, we ended our sightseeing in Eqypt in its most famous shopping district, the Khan e Khalili Bazaar.
Day Nine: Wednesday, January 24. Wednesday morning we flew into Amman. En route to our hotel in Petra, we made a few stops. The first was to Mt. Nebo, the alleged burial site of Moses. A small Byzantine church built by early Christians and this modern monument stand at the summit.
Mt. Nebo overlooks the Promised Land -- the Jordan River Valley with the Dead Sea visible in the distance.
The Byzantine church contains extraordinary floor mosaics dating from the 4th-5th centuries.
After Mt. Nebo, we stopped at Madaba, a small Jordanian town in which experts believe a fine Byzantine or Umayyad mosaic lies underneath almost every house. Many have been excavated and are displayed, but many more are believed to awaiting discovery. This is a surviving section of a vivid, 6th century mosaic floor map in Madaba's Greek Orthodox Church of St. George, depicting the entire region from Jordan and Palestine in the north to Egypt in the south, including a fascinating plan of Jerusalem. It is thought to have served as a "tourist map" for pilgrims. The original was 45x70 feet, made with 2 and a half million pieces.
Day Ten: Thursday, January 25. Thursday’s highlight was exploring Petra. We stayed in one of the modern hotels within walking distance of the ancient “Pink City” which was once a rich merchant city and stop for the camel caravans bringing frankincense, silk, slaves, etc. from Arabia to the Mediterranean. Its most prosperous time was from about 100 BC - 100 AD with its complex of dams, water channels and water storage incredibly impressive. All of the Petra photos are from our walk through the Siq, an immense crack through the Nubian sandstone. We walked a little over 2 and a half miles through this fissure (along with the occasional horse drawn carts, donkeys and camels) with overhanging cliffs 300 feet above our heads, soaring temples, simple and elaborate tombs, a theater and a mausoleum. It was awesome ... this is where you enter the Siq.
After walking a little over half a mile down the winding road, you emerge into a larger open area with this incredible temple (The Treasury) in front of you.
This Roman theater was carved right into sandstone where tombs were likely to have been. It would have held over 8,000 people.
The natural colors in some of the rocks were gorgeous.
Walking back out of the Siq. Notice the people on the road to give you a sense of the size. It was truly spectacular.
Day Eleven: Friday, January 26. We drove an hour from Petra to spend several hours at Wadi Rum. This is an area of incredible landscapes of red sand, valleys and weathered sandstone mountains rising out of the colored sands. A number of movies have been filmed here, including Lawrence of Arabia, Mission to Mars and probably most recently, The Martian with Matt Damon. They had us sit in the exact spot where he’s sitting in a still photo from that movie. The 4x4 Jeeps were a fun way to explore much farther than if we were just on foot.
You can’t tell from this photo, but this was a very steep climb in the sand to get to the very top. I didn’t get all the way up there so I’m taking the photo from an area about 3/4s of the way up.
Day Twelve: Saturday, January 27. We drove to Jerash where there is an amazing archeological site that is about 5 square miles. This was once a beautiful Roman city with colonnaded streets, shops, temples, churches, theaters and a coliseum that flourished in the 3rd century. It was largely ruined by later invasions and earthquakes and lay buried under sand and rubble for centuries. It was rediscovered in 1806 and has been excavated to reveal this incredible example of a Roman City. We walked through it for 3 hours. Paul took this photo (too steep for me!) from the top row of seats of one of the theaters.
We drove back to Amman for lunch and a walking tour of east Amman which is the older part of the city. (The west side is very modern and where our hotel was.) We enjoyed lunch, a stop at a pastry shop for dessert and walking by all the various shops. Paul thought the little gold outfit at this shop would make a nice addition to my wardrobe.
The Farmer’s Market was a riot. It’s HUGE, noisy and crowded. It sounds like everyone is yelling at each other, but it’s just the vendors pitching what they’re selling. I took a few videos to capture how it sounded.
After a few evening hours of rest, we left Amman in the middle of the night for Cairo, to catch our connecting flight home at the end of a truly spectacular trip!
A NOTE ON THE FOOD:
We had some good food and some not so good food in Egypt and Jordan. Meats were often grilled or bbq’ed to the point of being overcooked. The rest of the meal was typically all kinds of Middle Eastern salads, most of which were usually a mystery to us. However, we did have a few favorites.
There was always hummus, served with delicious varieties of warm pita bread- and it was the best we’ve ever had. Falafel is also a very big thing. Restaurants take great pride in claiming they make the best falafel. I’ve never been a big fan of falafel, but I actually did like it here. At this restaurant in Cairo we were given a demonstration of how it’s made.
We ate lunch at a small family owned restaurant in Madaba, Jordan. The owner prepared a Maqluba for us. It’s a layered stew with chicken, rice, cauliflower, carrots, potatoes and lots of warm spices. After it’s cooked for hours, the whole pot is quickly flipped over onto a serving platter with a dramatic loud crash. This awesome dish was my favorite meal of the whole trip.
We stopped for a light lunch at a very casual street restaurant in Amman, Jordan that is known for its falafel. There are photos of the Jordanian royal family eating here right along with the ‘common folk’. When you sit down, the table is covered with a piece of plastic. You’re not given a plate - a large round of pita bread is thrown down in front of you on the plastic and then styrofoam plates of falafel are brought out with dishes of hummus, french fries, and hunks of tomato, onions and mint. (I should have taken a photo before we started eating rather than after we finished!)
This is another example of I should have taken a photo before starting to eat this dessert. We stopped at a pastry shop in Amman to try Kanafeh. It’s a very popular dessert made with a layer of cheese (like a soft mozzarella) and a layer of vermicelli noodles which is baked in a very sweet syrup and then topped with pistachio. Sounds weird but it’s really good.
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