A Trip Along the Nile

Our group, now 66 people, spent a day in Cairo visiting the country's most famous and dusty Egyptian Museum, seeing dozens of mummies and the mask of King Tut among its many treasures, and the Citadel and Mohamed Mosque with its great views of Cairo. From there, some of us flew south to Abu Simbel, maybe my favorite area, to see the Great Temple of Ramses II and the smaller temple of Hathor, devoted to Ramses II wife, Nefetari, two temples that had been reclaimed from drowning when a dam was constructed to help with annual flooding. But of course there are consequences. Instead of being able to plant three crops each year due to the richness of the flooded soil, only two crops can prosper with the use of fertilizers, and the mammoth task of deconstructing the two temples block by block to relocate them on higher ground.

We flew to Aswan to start our cruise up the Nile, yes up. The Nile flows north. But before taking off, we got to go sailing—on a one-sail felucca, the traditional Egyptian wooden sailboat. Of course, this is touristy, as were the craft items that were brought out halfway through the cruise. There are hundreds of feluccas on the Nile, just as there are hundreds of small sized cruise ships, hosting around 100 passengers each. We made our way up the Nile, touring land by day, river by night. We visited the Horus Temple in Edfu, a foreboding looking yet best preserved Egyptian antiquity with great hawks guarding the entrance. In Thebes, we first saw the façade of the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, 1515 B.C. and entered to see the ruins of her mausoleum. Onward to Thebes, Luxor and Karnak to see the Valley of Kings, where entrances led down wide etched and painted shafts to where former kings were memorialized in stone vaults; the avenue of the ram-headed sphinxes at the Temple of Karnak; Abydos Temple of Seti, 1318 B.C., seat of the principal sanctuary of Osiris; and Dendera, where I took extra time at the temple dedicated to the Goddess Hathour (300 B.C.). We saw so much in a few days, the significance of the laborious carvings all blurred together in my mind into a meaningless mass.

One night during the cruise we had what seemed like a masquerade party. We all dressed up like Cleopatra and Anthony. Did you know there were numerous Cleapatras, about thirteen of them, maybe that was the unlucky number that led to the death of the Cleopatra played by the late Elizabeth Taylor. The women had dark eyeliner, tinkling jewels and heads wrapped in scarves. The men were in long galabias of various colors and completed their look with sunglasses. One woman chose something even more traditional. She came as a mummy.