Egypt Day 1: Cairo...continued, Koshary Lunch

 Koshary at Abou Tarek

 

Anshul had identified a restaurant close to the museum that specialized in serving Koshari, a mix of different pasta, lentils,  chutneys, fried onions creating a very carb rich vegetarian dish. All of us enjoyed, this was topped by a kheer like dessert. 

 

Returned to the Hotel, tired like hell, slept the rest of the day off.

 

 

Egypt Day 1: Cairo...continued, Museum

 Egyptian Museum at Cairo had many surprises. One of them was the Tutankhamen Section. Tutankhamun’s tomb like all that of other contemporary pharaohs was in the Valley of Kings in Luxor, erstwhile Thebes. While the tombs of all other Pharaohs were robbed, Tut’s tomb was buried under a landslide soon after sealing and its location was lost. It was discovered intact with all its artifacts in 1922 ( ~3200 year after his burial) by a team led by British Egyptologist Carter. The sheer magnificence of the artifacts in the tomb of a Pharaoh of minor significance (he died at ~19 of age), is amazing and leaves one wondering about artifacts in tombs like that of Ramses III or Amenhotep who were conquerors and bought riches to Egypt.

Tut’s mummy was placed in multiple coffins, fitting inside each other like Russian dolls. And the whole arrangement was inside four shrines, one inside the other. The mummy had famous solid gold mask. The intricate decoration on each coffin left one gasping. Tut’s jewelry could make anyone jealous. His dagger supposedly made from extra-terrestrial origin iron left us intrigued; we can imagine that the iron came from a meteorite but how was the dagger forged? The technology to melt iron did not exist at that time. 

 

No photography was allowed inside Tut’s section, but the outermost shrine, all gilded with gold obviously, stood outside the section (photo attached). One of the most beautiful artifact was the gold leaf throne made in Amarna Style described later.

 

 

 

 Egyptian statues and paintings are in a rigid pose, whether seated on standing. The standing statues are striding forward (“for life” as the guides love to say) or in Osiris pose with arms folded on the chest and legs together ( if made after death). The statues have elaborate headgear and dresses, all carved with meticulous detail out of some of the hardest stones. It also has a falcon at the back (for protection). The name of the Pharoah is carved in a Cartouche in the accompanying text on the statue itself. This is really helpful since all  statues have nearly the same features. Except those from Amarna period. The statues as well as the painting of this period are very different from the art work before and after this period.

Amarna period, a very short one, is within the reign of Pharoah Akhenaten, the father (or grandfather?) of Tut. He upturned a lot of established practices including the polytheistic nature of Egyptian pagan religion. He decided to worship only “the disc of Sun god” called Aten. He even named Tut as Tutenkaten, removed the rights of all the priests and changed the rigid art style to a more natural one and moved the capital from the Thebes (present day Luxor) to present day Tel Amarna. In Ancient Egyptian culture the king was given the divine right to rule, which was given to him through the priests. In this equation the priest had a lot of clout and all the kings ensured that the priests were happy. Maybe the reason for this drastic action was that the priests became too powerful and Akhenaten decided to clip their wings.

After the “heretic king” Akhenaten died, his city, his temples, his palaces, even his tomb were destroyed and his name was removed from all monuments. Egyptians believe that if there is somebody to take the name of a person the person still lives on in the after world. I know this sound very Harry Potter like, but such was their belief. The boy king Tut succeeded Akhenaten at 9 years of age and he ( or his regent) restored the earlier religious practices. When Tut died at a rather young age, a number of Amarna art pieces were buried in Tut’s tomb, making his tomb much richer than probably deserved. Looks like nobody wanted to have anything to do with Amarna art pieces and were happy to bury them all in Tut’s tomb. Since Tut’s tomb remained hidden, the Amarna art work survived.  Akhenaten had the last laugh. :)

In Amarna art, unlike the traditional egyptian style, the Pharaoh is shown having a voluptuous body with nearly feminine features unlike the formal rigid pose in the normal egyptian style. A few Amarna statues can be seen in the museum in a special Amarna section. Here Akhenaten is seen in Osiris pose. Notice the facial features and the big belly. 

For more details on Amarna, a very nice description can be found at https://sailingstonetravel.com/hunting-for-amarna-art-across-egypt/

One of the most famous painting of Amarna period portrays the Pharoah Akhenatan in a languid intimate pose with  queen Nefertiti along with his daughters playing around them. Tuts throne has a similar painting/mural with king and queen in the foreground and Aten blessing the king and the queen. At the end of each " sun ray" is a hand blessing/protecting the royal couple. Since the throne was in the Tut section I could not photograph it, but I found a good photograph ( above) online (link above).

 

 

Egypt Day 1 : Cairo

 Egypt Day 1 : Cairo

 

As soon as visiting Egypt was finalized, I started another mission. Learning Arabic. The initial motivation was to be able to read the numbers on Taxis since the cars in Egypt have Arabic numerals. Then the challenge kicked in along with the recent “loads of time on my hands due to retirement”. I persevered on Duo, some lessons on YouTube and also bought books from Amazon. A few weeks before the departure I realized that THE ARABIC I was learning is NOT the version of Arabic spoken in Egypt. The Egyptian Arabic is different from Tunisian, Moroccan Arabic and all of these are different from the Modern Standard Arabic which is the Arabic used for the written text in the newspapers and also possibly in Quran. Okay, I thought, I’ll still be able to read the signs and that would help. NOooo! the Arabic is generally written without the vowels! JST MGN THT! I was told that usually there is no confusion, and if any, it is removed by “the context”. This floored me completely. To sum it up: I could not understand the Egyptian dialect of Arabic, could not read the “non-vowelled” written words and had already failed at parsing the spoken words which are supposed to merge into the following word constantly. Basically, an Arabic illiterate after 3 months of effort. The wasted effort hurt!. 

 

But in the process, I learnt that the root of many words we use every day is actually Arabic… hisaab, wajan, mareej, dawa, kitab, kameez to name a few. An interesting anecdote: On reaching Cairo on January 3, the first day of our trip, our pickup person was looking for Anshul. Tanjul told him to look for a guy in Pink Shirt resulting in an utterly confused look. My Arabic skills came to rescue, “Wardi Kameez”, perfectly clear! Still feeling proud of it. And this was the first hour in Egypt. Unfortunately, that was the high point of my Arabic. Sigh!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our first agenda after landing was visit to the Cairo museum (after polishing off theplas and mathri in the hotel room like true Indians). We had to brave the long drive and the tough security outside the museum. At first the gun toting guards might seem a little too much to encounter before entry to the museum, but their artifacts are their USP and it is not like they can order a replacement today. Despite the security delays the museum was worth it.

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo looked dusty even before we entered it. Dusty, crowded and noisy. I have been to some museums which have a lot of artifacts but the Egyptian museum at Cairo seemed to be bursting at the seams. It was crammed with artifacts of all kinds, all related to Ancient Egypt with almost zero description on the displays. Without the guide it would be impossible to see. Even with the guide, we missed half of the things.

The statues and sarcophagi were incredibly huge and heavy! How were these stones weighing a few tones moved to this place? Forget how they were moved to the present position, how did ~5000 years back, people without even the knowledge of the wheel or having iron tools managed to quarry, move, carve, polish these statues to the evident precision.

The Egyptians loved their cats ! Sometimes they put human faces on them

Sphinx are a plenty in Egypt, the Sphinx at Giza is the largest. They are supposed be to be protectors. A small statue or the name of the protectee is usually found between the legs of the sphinx. Here one can see the oval with some hieroglyphs. All artifacts are marked with hieroglyphs, the ancient Egyptian script. The names of a Pharaoh ( mind you there are multiple names of the same person, given at birth, given at coronation and more) are enclosed in the oval called cartouche ( a french word for cartridge due to the shape). Hieroglyphs was a very advanced language meant only for royality and priests. The commoners had a simpler version of the script.

 

The interpretation of the script was lost after the last of the Pharaohs. It was deciphered using the Rosetta stone by the efforts of Thomas Young and Champollion (funded by Fourier). Physicists have contributed a lot to Egyptology

 

 

Egyptian Sojourn: A travelogue of an egyptophile

 Egyptian Sojourn: A travelogue of an egyptophile

When Sudhir first proposed to go to Egypt for a holiday I was very skeptical. He arrived at the choice by the process of elimination, time, budget, right time to go, have not been there earlier and lastly should be a mildly interesting place. In short, not very inspiring. First trip after pandemic. Being stuck in NZ during lockdown created many hurdles both physical and psychological.

 

Still, sent feelers to Tanjul and Anshul to ask if they would be able to babysit…no no… cat-sit. They came back with a surprising suggestion. They will come along with us. This was a big boost to the program since the earlier hesitation vanished. To top it, Anshul’s buddy was a travel agent who could arrange the logistics for us. It was highly recommended to take an agent; the net was full of scary stories about how people were scammed, cheated, and heckled. 

 

Finally! We were going to Egypt. The preparations begun. I started watching all the documentaries on Egypt that I could get on YouTube (still have not exhausted them). Read up on the Ancient Egyptian history, culture, cities to visit, places to go to in those cities, what to eat and what not to eat/drink (being vegetarian has its complications ). Saw multiple elaborate videos showing the tourist attractions in much greater detail than what an ordinary tourist possibly can see. Basically, virtually visited Egypt long before even booking the tickets. That’s me; Classic Rashmi. But .....doesn’t everyone do it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So on Jan 2 we landed with all our baggage at the T2 at Mumbai where Sudhir promptly buried his nose in a book (Lonely Planet- Egypt) to BEGIN his homework for Egypt. Now? Huh!. Tanjul, the jet-setting corporator in a new job, went off to the lounge to work till past midnight, leaving Anshul and me to explore the whole airport. Highly recommended! If you want to really-really know your new son-in-law? Spend a couple of hours doing nothing at a place where there is nothing to distract and nothing to do. Just jakal. Love you Anshul.

With this preamble, I am going to post pictures, anecdotes, and interesting archeological trivia about the various places that we visited in Egypt. Our itinerary Mumbai-Cairo-Aswan-Luxor-Cairo-Mumbai. Jan 2 to Jan 13, 2023.