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Published: March 19th 2009
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We sailed overnight and arrived to Edfu during breakfast. After docking alongside the other boats (side note - the cruise boats dock up against eachother so you usually had to walk through the lobbies of two or three boats to get to yours), we got off to go to Edfu temple. Transportation was included in our tour, so Alaa' arranged a caleche (horse and buggy) on the corniche to get to the temple. We noticed that the people were dressed much more tradionally here than they were in Cairo and even Luxor.
Edfu temple was built in the Ptolemaic period (237-57 BC) of Ancient Egypt. Essentially when Alexander the Great came through, he installed one of his generals Ptolemy as leader. To win over the people, the Ptolemy dynasty took on the pharonic lifestyle, and were great builders of temples down the Luxor to Aswan corridor. It is the best preserved temple we saw in Egypt. Unfortunately because we were with all the other cruise boats, the site was quite crowded. At one point Melissa got caught on the wrong side of the crowd at the entrance to the sanctuary. She was trying to get out, the crowd was trying
to get in, but I'm sure the shouts of "Move along" and pushing really helped.
After the visit we went back to the boat for afternoon sailing to Kom Ombo. Melissa enjoyed the hot sunny weather reading, while I spent most of the time watching the banks of the Nile. On the sundeck after tea time, Alaa' gave us another little history about the Nubian people we would be seeing in Aswan. He described the Nubians as a black skinned people, like the "ni**ers". Apparently political correctness is not a big issue in Egypt yet.
We arrived at Kom Ombo fairly close to sunset. Another temple of the Ptolemaic period, it is not very well preserved, but is fairly unique because it was dedicated to two main gods. The grounds also have a fairly imposing Nilometer. The Nilometer was simply a way to measure the amount of water in the banks of the Nile that season. The Egyptians would use that measurement to estimate how well the crops were going to be, and how much tax they would charge the local people. It was also pretty nice to see a temple lit up at night.
Day 5
- We sailed overnight and woke up in Aswan. Our morning tour started with a visit to the high dam. The dam itself is completely boring, but the history behind it is fairly interesting. Short version, President Nasser of Egypt pisses off the US and Britain by essentially playing both sides of the cold war. They withdraw their offer of financial assistance, so Nasser ends up nationalizing the Suez canal, and accepting money from the USSR for the dam. The result is the Suez crisis where Britain, France and Israel attack Egypt. In the end Egypt loses control of the Sinai very briefly, but the dam is completed in 1970 with Soviet money. The building of the dam also created Lake Nasser, which swallowed up a number of Ancient Egyptian monuments on the banks of the Nile. The more important ones were relocated with the help of UNESCO.
From the dam we moved on to Philae temple, one of the monuments moved by UNESCO. Another well preserved temple, it was built in the Roman period, with additions by the Ptolemies and Trajan. It was moved from Philae island (which was covered by lake Nasser) to the current island it's
located, so you get to take a little boat to get there. At this point in the trip our guide Alaa' had give up trying to get us to go to any more carpet or perfume factories, so we were back to the boat for lunch.
In the afternoon we went for a felucca ride to Elephantine Island and some Botanical gardens. So the Aswan tour organizer (who was pretty dodgy in my opinion) picked us up from the boat and walk us and Alaa' over to one of the docks. After about 15 minutes of searching he found our felucca driver. So we set off sailing, after about 5 minutes and some heated Arabic between our guide and the driver, we turn around and are heading back to the dock. Hmmm, turns out we need to get a bigger felucca as they didn't really know where we were going when we got on. So we hop boats in the middle of the river, and off we go again, this time with a felucca that has room for about 30 people.
A quick visit to the botanical gardens, then back on the boat to sail to Elephantine island.
Along the way, we got to see a new version of the Egyptian kids looking for money. They would paddle up to the side of your boat and grab on, and start singing "row row row your boat" or the equivalent in french. Of course they're looking for tips, which I'm sure they make a lot of, just not from me.
Elephantine island had a really top notch museum (see the pictures) and some ruins to look at, but not really that exciting. Back to the felucca and returned to the dock. Of course, I gave the drivers the obligitory backsheesh ($4 US), but apparently they felt it wasn't enough, and let our guide know it. The guide said I could give them more, I chose not to, and we went back to our boat for the night.
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