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Published: March 28th 2007
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View of Nile from hotel
This is the view of the Nile from our hotel room Egypt
We went to Egypt some 3-4 years back. This was the only 'conducted' tour that we have taken so far. Otherwise, we always preferred to travel on our own. After the massacre of tourists at Deir-al-Bahri in 1997, Egypt was not thought to be safe. So, we wanted to travel in a group. More recent bombings at Hurghada has done nothing to assure travellers on the point of safety. However, Egypt is such a magnet for tourists, that they still come in large numbers.
Egypt must be the most 'written about' country in the world. If somebody just collects the written material about Egypt, it will occupy several large libraries. So, I am not going to write much about Egypt.
Just uploading the photos also is going to be a hassle because the photos were resized and sent as a zip-file attachment to an email by Avi to me because he is in Mumbai and I am in Detroit at present.
May be after loading all the photos and posting them, I will edit the blog and put in some information and some personal anecdotes.
Egypt is trying hard to fight terrorist activities. Afterall,
Mask of Tutankhamun
This is the mask of King Tut in Cairo Museum Tourism is it's bread, butter and jam. I wish the Egyptian Government luck in this endeavor.
The Cairo Museum with the Tutankhamen exhibits is a 'must see'.
The next tourist attractions were the the cities of Luxor and Aswan, In fact, the '3-day 2 night' long 'Nile Cruise' is a good way to see most of the attractions -- The temples of Edfu and Qom Ombo, the Luxor Temple and Karnac Temple and the Valley of Kings, the Valley of Queens and that superb Temple of Queen Hatshepsut which is at Deir-al-Bahri, just outside of the Valley of Kings. She was a great woman.
The scene had shifted from Giza to Luxor.
The Age of Pyramid Builders was over and now the kings were buried in this valley near Luxor in small tombs. Avi called this a 'Cooperative Burial Society'.
The treasures that were buried with the kings for their enjoyment in the afterlife were mind-boggling. However, tomb robbers always managed to locate and loot the treasures. The only 'intact burial' of Tutankhamen was discovered by Howard Carter and it is this treasure that you see in the Cairo Museum.
Personally, I cannot see
Coffin of Tutankhamun
This is the outer, wooden and gilded coffin of King Tut in Cairo Museum much point in removing the gold from the gold-mines of Nubian Hills and then burying it in the form of a treasure in the Theban Hills of the Valley of the Kings. This is what the kings did.
I rather sympathize with a tomb robber's philosophy that the gold/money is for the use of the common, living people, not for dead kings, but then, I was always irreverant.
Have you ever heard of Cleopatra's Needle? This is one of the obelisks which was not quarried fully because it was flawed. Europeans took away at least three such obelisks, to my knowledge, because I have seen one in London, one in Paris and one in Rome.
Robbers and Europeans were not alone in pillaging Egypt. Their own kings too indulged in it.
See those two huge statues called 'The Colossi of memnon'? There used to be a very large temple behind those 'Singing Statues', so called because wind whistled through their cracks. The later kings simply took away the dressed stones of the old temple for their own funerary temples.
Why blame the tomb robbers alone then?
The Avenue of Sphinxes which connected the Luxor
Chair of Tutankhamun
The chair of King Tut. The back of the chair shows a picture of his queen annointing him with scented oils. temple and the Karnac temple.
It rather evokes the memory of the scene from 'The ten commandments' where the Egyptian royal ladies find baby Moses in a reed box on Nile.
This last photo taken from the Luxor Temple is my own favourite.
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