While on the subject of delirious dreams

Six or seven years ago I was laid down by some bronchitis and experiencing high fever. I had just received the large coffee table book "Luxor and the Valley of the Kings" (ordered on Amazon), and was reading it in bed, before falling asleep with the book open at the aerial photo of the temple of Medinet Habu. That night I dreamed that my body was the temple. The next morning the fever had broke and I wrote down the dream as a poem. I just found it in my online email archives. Enjoy!

********************

I am the Temple and the Temple is in me,
Alive and breathing, alert and conscious.

The towering pylons of my gateway heave as I draw air,
While in the great court of appearances,
Lotiform columns dance around my middle.

My halls are vibrant with the spells of long forgotten Gods,
Potent talismans, and irrefutable truths.

I am Temple.

Perfectly ordained and symmetrical, sacred architecture turned into flesh.

I am Maat.

A great tremor brings down my hypostyle halls,
Uproots my flagpoles and reveals my crypts.

I cry: 'Why are thou destroying my walls, laying waste to my sanctuary?'

Fear not, for you are the seed of new worlds!

Burning wind scatters my stones.

The exquisitely carved reliefs of my sacred processions
Float away with increasing speed,
Gods of stone and precious inlays forever broken,
No single block ever to find its match again.

I cry: 'Why are thou dispersing my bones, crushing my head, turning me to dust?'

Fear not, for you are a new beginning!

The fire is in my eyes and my eyes are fire.
Great swirls of burning aether glow with the colors of cosmic birth.

I reach out to embrace the void,
Each finger separated by eons of time,
Grasping matter yet to exist.

Thus the Temple expands into the realm of the Gods, filling space as it creates it.

I am the Temple and the Temple is in me.

I cry.

Still sick

Hopefully the antibiotics are doing their work. Denny seems to be improving, slowly.

Nothing else to talk about.

Yellow room.

The room is painted in two or three shades of pale yellow. With the domed ceiling it is quite lovely. Might as well enjoy it since I will be bed-ridden for a couple more days at least.

Yesterday was glorious with high fever-induced dreams and associated hallucinations. By contrast, today I am just plain sick and hurting like I've been the victim of a baseball bat beating.

Started the antibiotics yesterday, just have to let the thing run its course.

Denny is starting to get better, cautiously. By Monday we will all be strong, hale and hardy and resuming our explorations.

The Revenge of the Pharaohs

I guess no extended foreign travel to exotic lands would be complete without some form of medical situation to spice things up and allow for meaningful interaction with the natives. Whether it is Vishnu, Montezuma or King Tut's revenge, when one feels the all too familiar tummy rumblings, the stage opens to a wild roller coaster ride.

Khaled, the owner of the El Fayrouz with his German-born wife Susan, kindly offers to drive us to the doctor's office at six o'clock. The road to Habu is much more quiet than it was earlier in the day. The near-riot at the one gas station has mostly dissipated by now and we ride unencumbered in Khaled's dusty old Mercedes sedan. Arriving at Habu, he takes the dirt road around the back of the village, skirting the perimeter of the great temple, to avoid the area where the mourning families are still gathering. I'll learn later in the evening that traditionally, funerals used to last a full week -- and still do in some of the more remote rural areas -- but now are mostly reduced to a three-day period, allowing for a long procession of friends and relatives to come pay their respects to the grieving family and bring offerings of food. It does remind me of the millennia-old carved and painted scenes I have seen in the tombs...

We enter the waiting room. Three men and two women are already sitting on low benches, waiting for their turn. Khaled sits and waits with us. A television tuned to what must be Egypt's version of C-Span shows corpulent men in their pinstripe suits and Rolex watches caught in the act of law-making. I wouldn't trust any of them, and the other sitters in the room seem equally unimpressed. True democracy is still a far-fetched dream here. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton briefly appears on the screen, with Arabic subtitles. Someone needs to tell her to fire her hair dresser immediately.

Through the door opening in the thick plastered mudbrick wall, I see slender men in their elegant galabeyas balancing huge platters of food on their heads, walking slowly towards the wake. It seems like an image from a surrealist movie. Indeed, this whole day unfolds like a movie.

It's our turn and I go in with Denny. Dr. Boutros is a handsome man of Coptic background, probably in his fifties, intelligent, animated and straightforward. Highly educated, he comes from a well-to-do Cairo family, but has chosen to come practice in this rural area, charging a nominal fee for consultations. By contrast, he tells us of his brother who practices psychiatry in San Francisco, California, making all sorts of money. He quickly diagnoses Denny's ailment. It is an intestinal bug, most likely food-borne, that is spreading to his other systems. By this time Denny is very weak, having not retained any food in over three days. We're getting up to go and Denny immediately needs to sit back down on the bench, looking like he's going to pass out. He's all gray, cold and clammy and the last time I ever saw him looking this good he was having a heart attack six years ago... I am freaking out, yet with my best measured and composed voice I mention that earlier medical event to the doctor. He's already taken Denny's pulse and blood pressure, which were fine, so he dismisses that possibility and instead puts a salt tablet on Denny's tongue. With all the fluids he's been losing -- and replenished only with water -- his electrolytes levels are just plain depleted. Dr. Boutros adds fizzy electrolytes packets to the prescription.

We swing by a pharmacy on the way back, where we find all the necessary antibiotics and supplements on the list.

The consultation and prescriptions cost us all of £145 LE, or about $24.00 US dollars. Local villagers only pay a fraction of that. No wonder they love him to pieces.

This morning Denny seems to have a bit more spark in his eyes, whereas I've had obsessive dreams all night (arranging and re-aligning countless unidentified carved stone blocks, over and over again, trying to make sense of them). Sisyphus pushing his boulder uphill... I'm trying to convince myself that the aches and pains are due to all sorts of hitherto unknown muscles that were awakened by my day of digging in the trench. But over breakfast I have to confront the evidence: I too have a fever, chills and feel like crap. I barely make it up the stairs to the room, running out of steam halfway.

I guess I'll get to see the good doctor Boutros again...

A Village in Mourning

Before I got to the temple at Medinet Habu this morning, I had a mission: that of finding the office of Dr. Boutros and making an appointment for Denny who doesn't seem to be getting the upper hand on this respiratory/intestinal bug he caught. Dr. Boutros comes highly recommended. Even one of the hotel guest, a French woman who is also a physician, told me he was the man to see. He lives and works in the little village right in front of the temple enclosure. The cab driver who took me there knew him well, saying he is a good doctor, kinda crazy, but a good doctor.

I find the office alright -- his name is painted above the door -- but Mr. Boutros is not there. He usually opens his office at six in the evening, or so I am told...

Meanwhile the little village of Habu is in turmoil. A woman died unexpectedly yesterday. We even heard about it at the hotel. Details are missing but apparently she collapsed quite suddenly, having shown no signs of illness. When we arrive at Habu the place is crowded with people, cars, motorcycles and camels. Everybody came to honor the life of a daughter, sister, mother and wife who was well loved. Men and women dressed in black crowd the dusty road. I stick out like a sore thumb, but fortunately nobody pays me any attention.

Later, after visiting the temple, I come back again to see if by miracle the good doctor would be back already (he is not). The streets are now deserted, except for a lone donkey, too young to be put to work. His coat is thick and fuzzy like a plush toy. He lets me pet him on the head and stroke his furry ears.

We will be back at six this evening.

The crush of humanity

With my legendary luck, I arrive at Medinet Habu as five busloads of high school children, augmented by one each of German, French and British tourists, are spilling their contents at the entrance. It will be just peachy to try to see anything, let alone take photographs...

I take my time and wander off into the smaller adjacent temple of Amun, started around the time of Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III, and added to through the Ptolemaic period. Interesting to see how the style evolves from New Kingdom to Late Period. Crews from the Chicago House are conducting conservation work there and a large part of the temple is cordoned off, which doesn't prevent two young pubescent women in their brightly colored scarves from going over the rope to take cellphone pictures of each other in provocative poses in front of the carved reliefs. The photos are probably already uploaded on their FaceBook pages. Speaking of which, as I brave the crush of humanity to enter the main temple, at least a dozen kids ask to be photographed with me. I have to wonder what they see in this middle-aged bearded foreigner...

My patience pays off, and after maybe 30 minutes a teacher blows a whistle to summon the kids back to the waiting buses. How far did they come from to spend such little time here? Cairo? Alexandria? I can't help but wonder what, if anything, they will retain of their visit. Just one more obligatory school trip perhaps.

The monumental fortified gate at the entrance of the precinct is unique in Pharaonic architecture. It is called a Migdol and is said to be inspired by fortifications in the Levant. It was the point of entry into a massive enclosure wall made of unfired mud brick. Within that enclosure is the aforementioned temple of Amun, the chapels of the Adoratrices of Amun, the memorial temple of Rameses III proper, its adjacent palace and a number of ancillary buildings, store rooms etc.

Most impressive to me is the perfect alignment -- en enfilade -- of the buildings. From the Migdol gate one can see all the way into the vanishing point of the Holy of Holies. Strangely enough it reminds me of Versailles or the Louvre seen from Les Tuileries in Paris. I guess royal architecture from all eras find their common ground in the grandiosity of their perspective.

The kids are gone and the tourists have splintered into smaller groups. I venture into the main temple, which is the most complete and well-preserved of all the memorial temples of the West Bank. Many column, wall and ceiling decorations retain much of their original color. Use of color was very symbolic in ancient Egypt. Skin color in particular. Men had reddish skin while women were represented with more of a golden tan. As far as the gods were concerned, however, skin tones ran the gamut. I already knew that Amun had blue skin (sky color), and Osiris was green (regeneration), but I am here surprised to see that the lioness-headed Sekhmet had the loveliest turquoise as a foundation.

There used to be an early Christian Church built into the second courtyard, of which no trace remains. One can infer its presence by the removal of the original Osirian pillars, and the strange square sockets carved at regular intervals into the architrave around the courtyard, presumably to hold supporting beams.

The palace intrigues me. Rather small and intimate one would think for such a great king, but one must remember that Pharaoh wouldn't hold court here, it was just a place to stay and rest while visiting for ceremonies and celebrations, or to survey the construction progress. The king's bathroom shows one of the earliest instances of a shower stall with indoor plumbing. Ah, luxury!

On my way to Medinet Habu

Leaving shortly for Medinet Habu, the memorial temple precinct of 20th dynasty pharaoh Rameses III, which also includes earlier shrines from the 18th dynasty, as well as later additions all the way to the time of the Roman era.

Off I go!

Playing in the Dirt

I am on my hands and knees in a dusty trench, scraping age-old dirt from an old mud brick pavement in an ancient Roman settlement in front of the great pylon towers of Karnak Temple.

Covered with dust like an old donkey, I am the happiest man on earth!

When we visited with the group over a week ago, the excavations director, Dr. Salah ElMasekh Ahmed, invited me to come back and dig with his team. As if I could ever refuse...

Dr. Salah and his team have been making wonderful discoveries at the Karnak temple, including the original docks where the royal barques would tie up in front of the temple, later period Greek and Roman settlements, bath houses and spas where pilgrims would purify themselves before entering the great shrine.

I crossed the river this morning, taking the public ferry and then a cab to get over to Karnak. When I got there the site was vibrant with activity. From a distance Salah recognizes me and waves. Not wanting to interrupt his work I ask to be put to work immediately. He puts me in the good hands of Amira, a young Egyptologist doing her internship and working on her Ph.D. She hands me a trowel, a toothbrush and shows me how to scrape off compacted sediment to make the floor of the section level. Then it's on the walls of the section we work, making them straight and as plumb and smooth as possible to facilitate reading the strata. In the course of doing so we find many pottery fragments, a much corroded Roman bronze coin and what I first believe to be a small tooth.

I'm about to call a press conference to announce that we have found the "Lost Tooth of The Pharaoh" when Amira points out that it is in fact a small quartz pebble. Perfect shape and color though...

She seems happy with my work and leaves me to my own devices to attend a meeting with Dr. Salah and a visitor. Short lunch break and we return to work until about 1:00 pm or so.

In those few dusty hours this morning I have realized a lifelong dream, one more in an incredible string that once seemed unattainable.

I'm smiling so hard my face hurts.

Later, I wander inside the temple, lingering in those areas that were covered all too briefly with the tour last week. I find my way to the Open Air Museum, where a number of beautiful shrines and chapels -- whose blocks had been reused as fill in the great pylons -- have been painstakingly reassembled. What a treat! This late in the afternoon, I am the only one there. Wonderful!

Mohamed the Potter

I left Denny to rest at the hotel (his fever did break and he says he is feeling somewhat better), and decided to go to the Egyptian Antiquities Organization Ticket Office some two-three miles up the road from here near the Colossi of Memnon. The plan was to buy all the tickets I needed for the next ten days -- one buys entry tickets for each individual site -- so I could just get up and go each morning. First I had thought of getting a taxi ride, but there wasn't any available nearby so I decided to walk, bad hip, messed-up knee and all. Actually it wasn't so bad, the terrain being absolutely level.

Long story short, but at the end of that long walk I learned that one can only buy what tickets are going to be used on the day of purchase. Maybe they issue only so many tickets for each site each day, or maybe it is to discourage scalping. Oh well!

But it was time wonderfully wasted.

I got to stop by at the office of ARCE (American Research Center in Egypt) across the road from the Colossi of Memnon, and briefly meet with John Shearman, director of ARCE for the Luxor area. We have plans to meet again later in the week and see the wonderful things they have been working on here.

Then I meet Mohamed. He is standing proudly in front of his display of rustic pottery alongside the road. His galabeya does little to conceal his rail-thin frame. His eyes sparkle and his smile is genuine. He invites me in and asks where I am visiting from. California I say. I ask about his pottery -- obviously utilitarian in nature -- and what sort of meals are cooked in the bowls and dishes he makes. The unglazed but highly burnished pots are so much better than modern metal pots and pans, which contain harmful mineral and toxins he says. Much better to use unglazed pottery to cook meals. I say that I am a potter too, but use clay to make sculpture. He raises a curious eyebrow. Would you like to see? I have my iPad with me and pull it out of its padded bag.

Mohamed's eyes grow wide. He's never seen an iPad before. They grow even wider when I show him some of my work, especially the Egyptian-inspired pieces with neon. I feel almost sorry as I can feel the synapses in his brain blowing up like so many overloaded power grid transformers on a three-digit summer day in Southern California.

But he recovers quickly. "You are not a tourist", he says, "you come here to work?" I come here to study, I say, to see the wonderful artwork of the tombs and temples, and be inspired by it all. He tells me that he has worked as a day laborer for the French Egyptology Mission, and then we switch to French, which he is better at than English. By this time he is holding my hand like a long-time friend would, introducing me to his assistant and showing me the wares he just pulled out of his kiln earlier in the day. He invites me to come back for tea. We part after many handshakes and a hug or two.

On the way back an old water wheel captures my attention, as do the verdant fields and distant Theban Necropolis, the latter glowing in golden ocher tones in the late afternoon sun.

View from the rooftop

Fellucca sailing by in front of the great colonnade of Luxor Temple. View from our rooftop terrace. :-)

Sunset over Luxor

Arrived back in Luxor shortly before 1:00 pm. Airport near empty. Half a dozen cab drivers fighting over our bags and not even listening to what we want, where we want to go, let alone telling us how much the ride to the ferry will be. Denny raises his voice and tells them to back off. We finally agree on a fee and itinerary with a driver and embark on a white-knuckle ride to the ferry.

Adventure!

At the ferry, same story. Smaller boat operators offer us 'deals' that are really twice the rate of the public ferry (2 Egyptian Pounds or about 35 cents) while trying to pry our bags out of our hands. I think the last time I said 'NO' that many times I was two years old, had just learned the word, and reveled in its power...

Pleasantly rustic, the El Fayrouz hotel -- the name means pineapple -- is a walkable distance from the ferry, but, with my hip acting up and the heavy luggage, I'm glad we took a cab again for the short ride.

We're on the top floor in a dome ceiling room that will be our home for the next two weeks. On the roof terrace above the room, we get a clear view of the great colonnade of Luxor temple, across the Nile to the east, while turning to the west I can see the mortuary temple of Hatchepsout in the distance. After spending the rest of the afternoon mostly relaxing and taking short naps, we catch the last of the sunset from the rooftop before walking down to the garden for a dinner of traditional Egyptian delicacies...

Tomorrow will probably be spent doing a whole lot of nothing. The tour was intense, exhilarating, and exhausting. I need to absorb and process the wonders we've been privileged to see. New explorations can wait until Monday. I may also skip a day or two of blogging and internet, unless the withdrawal symptoms become too strong to bear. No new photos today, the cameras stayed safely in their pouches all day.

Flying back to Luxor

Sitting at Cairo International Airport, waiting for our flight back to Luxor. We are here waaaay early, having taken advantage of the chartered bus ride to the airport with the rest of the group, which was flying back to London. Great group of people. Warm hugs, embraces and a few teary eyes as we said our goodbyes. I'll check in again when we are at the El Fayrouz hotel on the West Bank at Luxor...

Saqqara

This last day of the "Pharaohs of the Sun" tour surely provided a grand finale to what has already been an exercise in superlatives. Like I was saying this morning to fellow traveler Sonia, "I'm suffering from artistic orgasm fatigue". No kidding!

A convoy of Toyota Landcruisers is awaiting us at the hotel this morning, instead of the usual Traveline bus. Denny and I sit with Medhat in the lead vehicle, and off we go.

I have seen the step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara in books and documentaries before. It is reputed to be the first large work in stone masonry ever built in Egypt.

First stop is at the Imhotep Museum at the entrance to the area. It is a very well designed and curated exhibit, at par with the Luxor Museum. An adjacent lecture hall houses a large scale model of the site, made by French archaeologist Jean Phillipe Lauer -- who spent his life well into his late nineties working and restoring the structure. The enclosing compound and its ancillary shrines and other votive buildings is what fascinates me most. These are 'fake' buildings, structures filled solid with stone, of a purely symbolic nature. Their decoration and architectural detail seem to emulate archaic buildings made of reeds and mud, thought to be the original homes of the gods. Many of the defining styles of Ancient Egyptian architecture were first laid out here, and in later dynasties artists and engineers came to study the buildings. At that time the architect Imhotep had already attained the status of a demi-god and was the object of a cult.

From there we go to the pyramid of Teti and the mastaba of Kagemni. WOW! Though its superstructure is mostly dilapidated, Teti's burial chamber is a pure delight, showing a complete, pristine and exquisitely carved rendition of the 'pyramid texts'. Una's sepulcher might have been the first to incorporate those sacred texts and spells, but Teti's the best! What a treat!

Oh, and watch your head when you climb down the ramp to the burial chamber, the ceiling is very low...

Nearby Kagemni mastaba is filled with lively scenes of hunting and fishing in the marshes. I am afraid my fellow tour members are getting tired of hearing me say "Wow!" I'm just getting blown away every five steps I take...

Above a doorway Kagemni is shown being carried in a sedan chair. That would be just my style.

Then come what is, for me, the highlight of the day (Medhat has been pulling strings in the background again): a special permission to visit the funerary complex of Maya, an 18th dynasty official who was treasurer under Tutankhamun. This is beyond anything I could ever have dreamed of, but there it is, and I'm climbing down the steps into it. The elegant carvings, with the figures painted in a golden yellow against the naturally white limestone, show the influence of the post-Amarna style prevalent under Tutankhamun and Horemheb. I am tearing up with joy. I'm not the only one having the time of my life, however. Dr. Barry Kemp is grinning ear to ear and the sparkle in his eyes light up the underground chambers.

My hip is really starting to act up and I find it increasingly difficult to climb up or down anything. The rest of the day will have to be spent on horizontal ground. No more stairs, hills or ladders for this old man.

Or at least that's what I think, until we get to the sun temple of Neuserra st Abu Ghurab... Another hill to climb, but this will be the last of the day!

Dr. Kemp explains the site very well, how what now looks like a dilapidated pyramid was on fact a squat obelisk on a wide base, representing the Ben Ben stone, a powerful solar cult symbol. In front of the Ben Ben is a magnificent offering altar made of massive alabaster. It just vibrates with energy. Damn I am so lucky!

We end the day at the pyramid of king Djedefra at Abu Rawash. I sit with Medhat on a low reconstructed wall while the rest of the group saunters about like so many mountain goats. The site is quite impressive, offering a panoramic view of the entire Cairo metropolis, the Giza plateau and beyond. Though small, this pyramid would have been the most visible of all in ancient times. We bounce back to modern-day Cairo in our now dusty Landcruisers.

The group meets in the hotel lobby, to say goodbye to Medhat. How do you say goodbye to someone who has made your dreams come true, pulled all sorts of strings and favors to produce surprise after surprise?

Simple, you can't. So I give Medhat a hug and say "see you next time."

Pyramids, Sphinxes, Mastabas and, oh, the Museum too!

We were to visit the Giza plateau and the pyramids first thing this morning, and then move on to downtown Cairo in the afternoon to see the Egyptian Museum. After we all board the bus, Medhat announces a change of plans: It is very hazy and the visibility is poor, which would be detrimental to viewing the pyramids properly, so we'll go to the museum now and come back to Giza in the afternoon when the air is clearer. Besides, we'll avoid the worst of the weekend traffic that way -- Thursday is the Muslim world's 'Friday' and weekend getaway time. Good choice.

We arrive at Tahrir Square where we see some remains of the tents and installations of the "Occupy Tahrir" movement. Otherwise it seems to be business as usual, which means unspeakable traffic chaos, constructions sites and the burned out hulks of government buildings, ransacked during the revolution. We arrive at the Museum a bit before it opens, which gives us plenty of time to get the tickets and visit the outdoor displays, especially the restored sarcophagus of Akhenaten. Not much of the original, smashed pieces have survived, but there was enough to reconstitute the way it looked. Quite moving to see and touch such an important monument. We had left our cameras in the bus (no photo allowed inside the museum), but I still had my iPad with me...

Once inside the museum, Medhat and Dr. Kemp give us a quick overall tour, mostly highlighting the Amarna period pieces, but also commenting on the more important artifacts from all eras of ancient Egypt. It's like I'm meeting old friends, even though it is my first ever visit here. I have spent so many hours studying these very pieces in my books throughout my life, I feel I know them intimately. We have a limited amount of time, so I keep reminding myself that it's OK, I'll come back here again in two weeks, otherwise I'd still be there curled up in a ball somewhere, with everybody looking for me...

The Museum is old and dusty, the artifacts poorly lit and displayed. Old faded description cards, some typed by Carter himself in the 1930's, still accompany the artifacts from Tutankhamun's tomb. I can't wait for the new museum to be built in Giza. These treasures really need to be better displayed and curated.

Speaking of Giza, that's our next stop. I cannot say that I feel the same depth of emotional response to the Pyramids and Sphinx as I do to smaller, more intimate monuments and artifacts where I feel the hand of the sculptor, the vision of the artist. Yes they are big, yes they are marvels of ancient engineering, and yes they are at the center of an abominable circus of hawkers, vendors, camel riders and other riffraff. Within seconds of stepping off the bus I am accosted by a vendor who takes the pith helmet off my head and replaces it with a Bedouin headdress, while pushing Chinese-made designer resin pyramids into my hands and shoving cheap postcards under my nose... Denny rescues me just in time, grabs me by the arm and whisks me away! Already I want to get back to the hotel right and forget the whole visit. These people are rude and their tactics are counter-productive. It totally kills any interest I have. I'll probably never want to visit Giza again.

We take refuge in the Boat Museum, home of the 4,500 year old cedar barque of King Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid. It was found right at the foot of the Pyramid, in the 1950's if I'm correct, and painstakingly reassembled. We are asked to cover our shoes with funny looking cotton booties to prevent tracking contaminating dirt inside. I can't believe the size of the timber used in the making of this craft. The cedar came from Lebanon. Those forests are long gone now. The only trees that could supply such lumber today would be the great sequoias of the American West Coast.

Dr. Barry and some of the other tour members show up after a while, and I climb all those stairs again, viewing the boat and engaging in more scholarly discourse.

Medhat has prepared yet another surprise for us. We are to visit two recently re-excavated mastaba tombs that will probably never be fully open to the public. He is really like a magician pulling rabbits and doves out of his hat, except his rabbits happen to be exquisitely carved and painted tombs of the 4th and 5th dynasties. These two visits save the day as far as I am concerned.

Then on the to Sphinx and the Valley Temple of Khafre next to it. The vendors are thick as flies on a rotting fruit. Very aggressive. One calls me "Rambo", another "Osama", while Denny gets the monicker of "Mr. Cowboy", no doubt due to his hat. The Valley Temple is enigmatic with its Cyclopean architecture of immense red granite blocks. Very stark and impressive. Walk back to the bus and short ride to the hotel. We say our goodbyes to Nassir our driver, as tomorrow we will be traveling aboard 4-wheel drive vehicles to Saqqara on what will be the last day of the Pharaohs of the Sun tour.

White Sun of the Equinox

Today is a day of transition and transit. 21st of March, first day of Spring. I get up earlier than needed to photograph the rising sun from the upper deck of the Tut. The sky is hazy, almost overcast. A white sun rises over the east, quite unlike the fiery sunrises of the last few days.

Pack the bags, leave the luggage outside the room door for pick up, go upstairs for breakfast. We have to be on the bus by 7:30. Denny inadvertently sprinkles instant coffee over his cereal, thinking it's cocoa. It's his birthday today, maybe he's losing it... My leg joints are stiff from all the climbing and walking of the last few days. I'm actually looking forward to sitting in the bus for the five hours it will take to get to the pyramid of Meidum. We take the West Desert Road, much faster and unencumbered with rural traffic.

Some Egyptologists claim that the Meidum Pyramid was the first of three built by Snefru -- based on the scant evidence of an 18th dynasty graffiti mentioning that king's name -- and also that it was actually a smooth pyramid before the fill between the steps was quarried for stone and some of the outer layers sloughed off the sides. I remain skeptical about it having ever been a true pyramid... True or false, it is BIG, however, and it inspires awe.

I walk around the pyramid while Denny climbs to the first "step" level. Other members of our group either go inside to the burial chamber or choose to explore Mastaba # '17' right next to it. I stay put. I'm not climbing up or down anything! There is a cluster of stone sarcophagi laying in the sand near the pyramid. These are from much later burials. One large, late period black granite coffin is rather well preserved and quite nice with its decoration intact. Another coffin lid lies broken -- Sonia say that the last time she was here two years ago she saw it intact. What a shame! Some museum somewhere would have been quite happy to have it...

Back on the bus for the last leg to Giza & Cairo. As we enter the tentacles of the sprawling megalopolis, traffic becomes insanely congested. Angelenos should stop ranting about the 405 and the Sepulveda Pass; they have NO idea!

We finally spot the Great Pyramids, approaching from the back side of the plateau, which gives a very different perspective than the classic view we are used to from the National Geographic specials... The city has grown around the site, choking it from all sides now. Denny was here 15 years ago and says none of those buildings and apartment towers were there at the time.

Check in at the Giza Movenpick. A most welcome return to shameless luxury. There are a number of restaurants in the hotel, in addition to the famed Mena house within walking distance. I told Denny he could have his pick for his birthday dinner.

We'll be sleeping at the foot of the pyramids tonight. How cool is that!?!

Amarna, the Sequel

For so many years I have dreamed of Amarna, studied its history, looked up its topography, followed up on the discoveries being made there. For all those years it was to me like a Holy Grail, an impossible quest. The site is not easy to reach and not part of any popular tourist circuit. I had long ago accepted the fact that even if I traveled to Egypt, Amarna would remain out of reach to a mere mortal like me...

When I saw that the City of Akhenaten was included in Ancient World Tours "Pharaohs of the Sun" itinerary, I could not believe my luck. That was the clincher for me.

So here I am, for a second day of exploration. But that's just the beginning of it. Having Dr. Barry Kemp as our guide here is like having St. Peter give us a private guided tour of Heaven. No kidding.

We start the day by resuming where we left off yesterday, looking at the remains of the central royal palace and visiting the Great Aten Temple. The sheer size of the latter is impressive, but hearing Dr. Kemp describing the hundreds of offering altars that filled the inner courts and outer perimeter of the temple inspires awe. The modern-day village is encroaching upon the archaeological site, illegal construction, piles of trash and small cemeteries coming right up to the foundations of the 3,500 year old shrine. The locals do not seem to care about their ancient heritage, using the irreplaceable ruins as a place to dry cow manure in the sun, to be used as fuel in bread ovens.

We board the bus again for the drive to the royal tombs. Yes, the royal tombs of Amarna! The drive is surprisingly long, several kilometres, to reach the tomb of Akhenaten. It truly is a royal tomb of regal proportions. It is also very well appointed with modern amenities; wooden staircases and flooring, good lighting throughout, metal railings and such. Dr. Kemp explains and interprets the surviving decoration in each of the rooms. Fascinating details, poignant scenes of mourning, possible depiction of the birth of Tutankhaten and death in childbirth of his yet unidentified mother.. I stand in the main burial chamber right next to the slightly raised stone plinth where Akhenaten's pink granite sarcophagus once stood (it has now been restored from fragments and is displayed in the outdoor garden of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo). I just can't believe it!

Two more unnamed and unfinished tombs nearby show that intention was to create the equivalent of a new "Valley of the Kings" here at Amarna.

We follow with a visit to the "Northern Tombs", reached at the end of another very long staircase up the cliff. My bad hip and knee are screaming bloody murder but, with determination, self-sacrifice and an ample supply of Advil pain killers -- not necessarily in that order -- I soldier on... I've come all this way, so I might as well do it! Two of the tombs show detailed depictions of the Great Temple, a priceless boon to Egyptologists trying to understand the layout of the actual ruins down on the plain. One of the tombs had been converted to an early Christian Church in antiquity, while the other shows a rare meteorological event surrounding the Aten sun disk, with an inverted rainbow-like halo around it, a unique depiction in ancient Egypt.

Another gruelingly long staircase takes us to one of the boundary stelae that the king had set to delineate his new city. The much ruined monument was carved directly into the limestone cliff. The text is still largely readable, while the stone statues have suffered the brunt of the wrath that followed the return of orthodoxy.

We end the day at the so-called Northern Palace. Dr. Kemp has done extensive excavation and restoration work here. It is all very impressive.

I hope I get to come back here some day, to spend more time.

Amarna

This might be a short one. I am dead on my feet and hurting all over. Yup, the day was THAT good, and I would not have missed it for the world!

One could easily drive past - or even walk through - Amarna and fail to notice anything but a few piles of rubble and desiccated mud brick walls. Under the guidance of Dr. Barry Kemp, however, the ancient city built from scratch by Akhenaten comes alive. We start the visit with some of the southern tombs, including that of Ay, the vizier who later accessed the throne for a short spell after the death of Tutankhamen. This unfinished tomb has one of the most complete versions of the great hymn to the Aten. The decoration on either side of the doorway is quite beautifully done, with exquisite detail on the clothes and hair of the occupants. Ay was not buried here, as he later had a royal tomb made for him in the Valley of the Kings. We enter two additional decorated tombs, one of which was actually use for the burial of its owner. I'm sorry, I'm terrible with remembering names and my notes are way over there on the desk while I'm comfortably sitting in bed. Those tombs will thus remain nameless for now, until I get around to it...

A bumpy ride sitting on wooden chairs on the back of a tractor trailer (literally) takes us near the wash where Dr. Kemp's research and excavation efforts have finally solved a century old enigma: Where were the workers and ordinary people of Amarna buried? Look up any treatise on Amarna and the subject of the "missing cemeteries" will inevitably crop up. Well, no more! Teams of excavators lead by Dr. Kemp have located hundreds if not thousands of individual burials in the sandy banks of a shallow canyon. A long walk across the desert takes us to two workers villages, the first mostly built with stone, the other with mud brick. The ground around both ancient settlements is littered with heaps of pottery sherds dating from the Amarna period. Some are quite large and show decoration. Dr. Barry says there are so many that they do not even bother collecting them anymore.

Later we go to the southern city, where the ruins of a rather large compound is revealed to be the house of the 'Sculptor and Chief of Works' Thotmose. For those not familiar with the man, he is the sculptor responsible for the famous painted Nefertiti bust that's now in the Berlin Museum. Judging by the other works found in his workshop by the German expedition led by Ludwig Borchardt a hundred years ago -- many of which outshine the Nefertiti bust in my eyes -- Thotmose is one of the best portrait sculptors that ever lived. The photo of me squatting behind that low mud brick wall shows the exact find spot where those treasures were unearthed. Needless to say I was all choked up when Dr. Kemp pointed it out to me.

We finish today's tour of Akhenaten's city with a visit of the small Aten Temple, before returning to the good ship Tut.

Draftsmanship

I'm running out of superlatives and we're not even a third of the way into this Egyptian adventure...

This morning, for once, Denny and I were ahead of the game, a good half hour before everybody actually, having miscalculated the times we needed to be out of the room, breakfasted and luggage in the corridor.

First we visit Great Royal Daughter and Wife MeritAmun, a colossal limestone statue just a short distance from where we spent the night. One cannot escape the conclusion that this is an actual portrait of Rameses' daughter. There's very little of the usual tendency to idealize the subject. Her nose is rather large, she has a slight double chin and her square jaw denotes a strong, willful personality. No wonder she rose to the status of Queen. Across the street there are the broken remnants of two huge seated statues of her father. Obviously there is/was a large temple here, and if someone cared to remove 50 feet deep of accumulated debris and a whole neighborhood of low-rise apartments sitting on top of it, one could have oneself a nice archaeological site here... I suspect there are hundreds such buried monuments still to be discovered. Speaking of which, besides some roman era statuary and foundations, a number of blocks showing the distinctive sun rays of the Amarna Aten were also at the site, pointing to an earlier shrine to the Aten nearby. Dr. Barry Kemp explains that the city of Akhmim was the hometown of Great Queen Tiye (mother of Akhenaten) and possibly also of Nefertiti, which would make the presence of an Aten temple very likely.

Medhat invites us to visit a traditional fabric store and workshop nearby. It is really just a few steps away. Hard to describe, but what ensues is what would be best called a shopping frenzy, as most of us pick out beautiful hand-woven linen and cotton fabrics and scarves. I get two pieces of 4 metres each, with an eye towards making a pair of shirts for myself and Denny. We also get to see the looms, which must date back at least several hundred years. The weavers are men, and their level of concentration is amazing.

The big highlight of the day are the nobles tombs of Meir. We drive there using the desert road, revealing parched vistas of a pure mineral nature, before returning to the lush greenness of the flood plain. The area is the most fertile part of the Nile valley, and so it was in pharaonic times. So much so that the governorate would be exclusively given to members of the royal family, specifically sons of the Pharaoh. These high nobles built their tombs high on the limestone cliffs overlooking the valley, a veritable maze of interconnected rooms. It is a long climb up the hill to reach the tombs. The steps are partially covered with sand, which makes progress difficult. But the effort is royally rewarded. Scenes of daily life, fishing, hunting, boat building, sailing, even a wrestling match enliven the walls. One room in particular takes my breath away: an unfinished room where only the outlines of scenes -- to later be carved and painted -- were completed. The elegance, precision and artistry of those black ink drawings is outstanding. The hand that drew these figures and scenes of sailing, hunting and offerings was that of a superb, unequalled draftsman. I have never seen anything like this.

We are in Assyut aboard the Tut, sistership to the Hotep where we stayed last night. Assyut is a large university town on the west bank of the Nile, quite in contrast to the rural village directly across the river.

Tomorrow we go to Tel El Amarna, site of the city built by Akhenaten. First of two days we will be spending exploring under the guidance of Dr. Barry. I just can't wait!