From Luxor

Once again, excuse the rush job, including likely typos.


Two Poems, and more

At the Great Temple, Abu Simbel
(My “ Ozymandias”)

So there they sit, the great ones, centuries later,
still sightless, gazing out across the desert sands,
the four of them—well, three and a half of them,
if you discount the one that’s come to pieces,
head off, half his torso gone, tumbled in great,
shattered boulders strewn down below his feet.
Talk about grandeur. Talk about colossal.
Talk about beauty, serenity, mangnificence.
Talk about awe, even—but that’s a hard one,
with a thousand fellow tourists tramping
through the site. Still, words are inadequate.
And who am I to write about them anyway?
Some Johnny-come-lately tourist, protected
in the bubble of my tour group, camera dangling,
trotting along with my laptop after all the rest.
My head is way below even the lowest level
of their great stone feet. I look up, dizzy.
They look out, distant, not seeing, seeing
further than I can imagine, across centuries
of time, way past the pitiless moonscape
of the desert sands, heads in the azure sky,
toward the the stars that only they can see.


The Watchers


I see them watching over us. They stand high
on the rooftops of tall buildings, on the median strip
of highways, spaced at intervals, at the perimeter
of airport runways as we leave. Sometimes I spot them
crowded in speeding pickup trucks, submachine guns
at the ready, watching, ready to protect us from attack.
Oh, if you wave to them, you find they’re friendly:
they’ll wave back cheerfully, perhaps a little sheepish
to be watching you. But they’re still there. Our guide
explains: “We lose just one American, you can guess
what happens to the whole Egytian tourist industry.
Poof!” We have this silent watcher who goes with us
everywhere. I noticed today what I missed before:
he wears a pistol at his waist, and smiles politely,
promising that nothing terrible will happen to us
on our journey. And so we come in gaping droves,
and ride past in our buses and our river boats,
take pictures with our digitals and videocams,
while they, our watchers, never cease to watch.


Wednesday, Later afternoon

Crossing the Nile again in a felucca—this time with an outboard-powered boat, because the wind had dropped—we followed the river upstream to Elephantine Island, so-called, Fadel tells us, because it was the center of the ivory trade between Africa and the civilizations to the north. For the past hundred years, it has been the site of a continuing German archeological investigation, and now has a research center and its own museum.

From our mooring down below, we climbed up, first, to the museum and spent a while admiring artifacts, large and small, recovered from the site: my own favorites were the tiny fetish animals and the exquisite jewelry, though it was also interesting to see the piles of hefty coins that were introduced for the first time to Egypt by the necessity of trade. But the artifacts, Fadel hastened to tell us, are not the primary focus of the archeologist, who digs for information and knowledge about the ancient world. The architecture, layered century upon century, can tell us much about the priorities, the religious beliefs and the daily lives of pepoples of the past.

After the museum, a tour of the archeological dig—in fact, as vast complex of digs, still now in progress after at least a hundred years. Indeed, the German institute is still actively purchasing adjacent properties when they become avaible, in order to expand the site. What they are discovering is the evidence of thousands of years of continous habitation, and they have done a number of temple reconstructions, based on educated guesswork as well as scientific research and computer modeling. Each reconstruction is a jigsaw marvel, with architectural elements replaced where they have been lost, and outlines of paintings and reliefs filled in to complete the picture of how they might have been. Wonderful to see fragments of lovely color remaining fast , sometimes after as many as four thousand years.

Another great tour, then, with expert narrative on Fadel’s part. We left toward sunset, making good progress this time, downriver, back to our boat, the Sun Godess, where we are to spend the next four nights as we travel back down the Nile toward Alexandria.

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Up in good time after a decent night’s sleep on a narrow, but still comfortable bunk, and out to the top deck at around 6AM, where I found myself alone and quite for a few minutes meditation and the time to sketch out the couple of poems, above. Then down to breakfast at seven, a quick effort at getting the cabin tidied up and some of the necessary battery-charging organized, then down the companionway to join the group.

We left, once again, in windless weather in a felucca, this time hitching a tow from a powered across the river to visit the Tombs of the Governors. Moored by a ferry landing site filled with men and women waiting for the next boat to arrive, and disembarked into a dusty landscape where the chief attraction seemed to be the camels lounging—some in the sunshine, some lucky enough to have been hitched up in the shade—waiting for their pictures to be taken. A long climb up an endless, sandy flight of steps to the site ot the tombs, nearly forty of them, Fadel tells us, set high above the river so that their owners will have a vista appropriate to their power.

First stop, some marvelously preserved remnants of Byzantine Christian paintings and Coptic Greek inscriptions, a reminder of the days when the monks comandeered the ancient sites and adopted them for their own desert retreats. Then on into a selected series of the governors’ tombs from different dynastic periods, magnificent architectural environments built into the cavernous spaces, with sculptures, reliefs, and wall paintings everywhere. A more intimate kind of beauty than the grandeur of the temples, but the intimacy itself more spiritual—especially since the images and inscriptions were believed by the ancient Egyptians to manifest parts of the spirit of the human being. As Maria, one of our number, later pointed out, you can’t help but feel honored, being invited to such a place. You can’t help but feel the continuing power these ancients exercise in the sacred spaces they created for their eternal souls.

Well, back to earth-level, or rather to the river for the return crossing. No wind, again, and this time no tow available, so our boatsmen took out their oars and began to row. The oars are just long, rough poles without the flared end that we’re familiar with, but they seem to propel the craft. Pretty soon Fadel gets up to relieve one of the boatmen, then a couple more of us take turns before the wind begins to rise and fill the sail, and the boat takes off, fast and silent, tacking across the river back towards the “Sun Goddess.”

The boatmen offer us their hands, as usual, across the narrow gangplank, and it’s back to the big boat for the first of a useful lecture series (five parts, each brief,) by Craig Smith, author of a book on how the pyramids were built, who has joined our group for the trip and will offer his good insights and information along the way. Followed by a great mneomic game by Fadel: taking turns in the circle, the first person introduces himself with his name and a rhyme “Fadel-Waddle”, and the next person introduces first each one of those who went before him—or her—and then him- or –herself with name plus rhyme: “this is Fadel-Waddle, I’m JoAnn in Siam”, and so on, each having to remember and repeat the names of everyone who went before. Great fun, and a great way for the group to get to know each others’ names.

Next, and welcome, a good buffet lunch. Our boat left around lunchtime, heading north, downstream,and leaving us a couple of hours to rest up. I chose first to get back to this journal, only to be frustrated, minutes later, by a nasty trick my computer played on me, deciding for no apparent reason to start writing everything in red, and underlined. I fiddled around with the tool bar for a while, wasting the time I’d set aside for a nice nap, then went out looking for help. Best thanks to Lynn, who got me going again. Missed the nap, but fixed the problem.

Around four, we moored in front of the Graeco-Roman Kom-Ombo Temple from about 200 BC, the Ptolomeic period—a magnificent colonnaded structure with two sanctuaries, one dedicated to the sun god, Horus, the other to his counterpart, the crocodile god Sobek, representing the eternal struggle in man between good and evil, the light side and the dark. Overlooking a long bend in the river, it has a commanding presence—and certainly commanded the attention of large numbers of hotel boats crammed with tourists. Amazing how they maneuver these huge vessels, stacking them side by side along the quay to allow for multiple embarkations and disembarkations are one time, and backing them in and out like shuttle buses as others need to arrive or leave.

Again, the trusty Fadel led us on a useful tour around the site, which I again shall not begin to attempt to rehash. Go to the history books and the art books for that. Suffice it to add one special, entertaining circumstance: on the way up the hill, we came upon a man and his young son with a basketful of asps, one of which Fadel soon had draped around his neck, encouraging us to try the same. I personally declined at first, but later, gathering courage, tried. A strange and somewhat spooky feeling, especially when the creature seemed to take offense at a quick movement and offered me a sudden thrust forward of the head with an accompanying, distinctly threatening hiss.

No harm done, though. We all made it up to the temple and, after the tour, back down to the boat for tea and cake on the upper deck. And for Ellie and myself, a quick dip in the surprisingly cold—and for that reason wonderfully refreshing dip in the small pool. Then a lounge chair and a book, and nice time to bring this diary up to date before dinner.

No posting today, but Islam promises and opportunity tomorrow. For now, Bush, it’s good reading, and good night.



Friday, April 1, 2005

April Fool’s Day, Bush. I trust you’re on your guard. Wouldn’t do to have anyone make a fool of the President of the United States. Right?

Anyway, over here in Egypt, we’re up early, and ready for an early start by horse buggy. More about that later. Dinner last night with Joanie Baloney, Bill the Pill, Odd Todd, Linda by the Winda, Gar Bear, Maria Nice to See Ya, and of course Ellie Belly Full of Jelly and yours truly, Peter Cheetah (names thanks to Fadel Waddle’s mnemonic game—I’m beginning to remember them, and that feels good. ) I know you use this trick yourself, Bush, and I now appreciate just how useful it can be.

A great conversation over dinner about art and artists, life and death, and good and evil. You’d have felt right at home with the last one, Bush. But Odd Todd asked me whether the temple of Horus and Sobek prompted any thoughts relevant to this diary the conflict between good and evil. I know what he’s talking about, since your administration has made is almost a point of policy to promote what you see to be the good and attack the evil. The thought was more interesting to me, though, because I think I have created of you something akin to what Fadel often refers to as the “lower self”, in struggle with the “higher self” in me. In a sense, then, I have been playing as my Seth, or Sobek, against my own inner Horus. Does that make sense to you?

Ah, well, beyond the philosophizing: we left our boat in a caravan of horse-and-buggys for a wild ride through the streets of Idfu to yet another temple of Horus, the second largest in Egypt after Karnak, and reputedly the best preserved of all. It certainly warranted the reputation on both scores. A huge complex of Ptolomeic structures with a wonderfully spacious courtyard leading up to it, and another just past the main entrance, almost every square inch of the massive walls of its multiple inner chambers are carved with hieroglyphs and bas relief stories. Fadel again did noble work escorting us, pointing out the details of each story as we went—notably the story of the building of the temple itself. Equally fascinating, on one ot the outer walls, was the tale of Horus’s battle with the evil in the manifestation of a hippopotamus god. (Sorry, Bush, the name escapes me. I guess we could call him Zippo the Hippo.)

On the way out, Ellie and Linda stopped at one of the bazzar stores they had spotted as we entered, and I joined them to pick out a white Egyptian shirt and a white headdress for tonight’s costume party. We were soon engaged in a heroic bargaining session over two scarves, two beaded headdresses, and my shirt and head gear—with the advantage on our side, this time, because we were in a rush to get back to our horse-and-buggy before risking missing the boat. The salesman started at eighty dollars for the lot, so we said no, and walked away. He was hot on our heels, of course, and bargaining all the way to the buggy. We eventually settled for two hundred Egyptian pounds and a ten dollar bonus. Probably still too much.

Back through the now busy streets aboard our buggy—the driver asking for more tip on our arrival. Since Fadel had strictly instructed us that all the drivers had been handsomely paid and tipped, we resisted, much to his disgruntlement, and managed to escape him (along with countless other petitioners) and get back to the boat. (A nice custom, by the way, that I haven’t mentioned previously: each time we return to the boat from one of our excursions, we’re greeted with a warm, wet towel, to wipe the dust and dirt from face and fingers. Much appreciated, especially after a windy morning with lots of blowing grit.

Up to the top deck for the second of Craig’s lectures under the awning. We’re fortunate to have him with us, since he’s the source of endless fascinating information about the technical aspect of the pyramids. Today’s topic was the tools and technology needed to make the building possible: everything from existing knowledge of mathematics and geometry to calculate slope and orientation—apparently remarkbly precise--to leveling, quarrying, and cutting tools and means of transportation, with neither wheels nor pulleys to assist the builders. Interesting, I thought, that people who proved so incredibly ingenious in so many ways had not yet figured out such fundamental devices. But there you go. They managed spectacular engineering feats without them.

We have been granted a two-hour rest period before lunch, then off to Luxor. Praise be! I may have the change to get this posted in Luxor, either later today or sometime tomorrow. If not, then not.