Gallivanting Grandma

Thursday – February 7, 2019

Cairo is not a beautiful city.  With almost twenty-five million people, the capital city is crowded with planned and “unplanned” sand-colored buildings. All the streets are congested with too many vehicles and driving from one place to another is a slow process with car horns blaring all around.  There are few traffic lights and no one follows any ‘rules of the road’ or extends courtesy to other drivers.  Below are a few photos I took from our bus this morning:

We arrived at the Museum of Islamic Art with our armed police car chaperones and were led into the museum.  The architecture of the museum building reminded me of structures I saw in Arabia last year.

A car bomb had attacked the Cairo Police Headquarters across the street from the museum in 2014 and caused considerable damage to the building and destroyed many artifacts. The police headquarters is still a bombed-out shell.

The Museum of Islamic Arts had also experienced damage from the blast however it re-opened in January 2017 after extensive renovations.

The museum has a sizable collection of Islamic artifacts including rare copies of the Qur’an, Arabian carpets, coins, rare glass and pottery, and rare silver and wooden carvings.  There were beautiful objects dating from the Fatimid and the Mamluk periods of history through the Ottoman Empire’s control of the region.

After visiting the museum, we drove to the historic Islamic center of Cairo.  The bus stopped and let us out next to a small park near the Al-Hussain Mosque.

The mosque was built in 1154 and is considered to be one of the holiest Islamic sites in Egypt.  It was named for Muhammad’s grandson and it is believed that his head is buried on the grounds of the mosque.

We walked down the narrow street and entered the Khan El-Khalili souk. Historically this was the medieval market and commercial center of Cairo.

There had been terrorist attacks in the market in 2005 and 2009 killing several people. These senseless attacks drove tourists away from the Khan el-Khalili souk and also the country of Egypt for some time.

The gate below was built in 1511 by the Sultan al-Ghuri, the last powerful Mamluk sultan of Cairo.

The towers below are part of Al-Azhar University, Egypt’s oldest and most prestigious degree-granting university.  It was founded in 972 by the Fatimids as the centre of Islamic learning.

Always fun to see a bride:

The women in the two photos below, asked me to take their photos.

After Jeff and I wandered through the labyrinthine streets and alleyways of Khan el-Khalili, we rejoined our tour group and boarded the bus for a drive through another section of the city. Views from the bus:

Our next stop was the Saladin Citadel of Cairo, one of the best preserved fortresses from the middle ages in the world.  The medieval Islamic fortification was located on a hill near the historic center of Cairo.  The complex of mosques and museums is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Salah al-Din, the first sultan of Egypt, fortified the Citadel in about 1180 AD and led a military campaign against the European Crusaders.

There are three main mosques at the Citadel and the earliest was built in 1318.  We visited the Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha which dates from 1830.  He was buried in a tomb carved out of Carrara marble in the courtyard of the mosque

The impressive interior walls and pillars of the mosque were lined with alabaster.

Maged had warned us that it was a school holiday and there would be many Egyptian families visiting from small villages in rural parts of the country.  They were unaccustomed to seeing western tourists so the children like to take pictures with us to take back to school to show their classmates. They especially liked taking “selfies!”  I had had a similar experience in China with rural Chinese tourists several years ago.

We had fun politely posing with lots of giggling children.  Almost the entire extended family posed with us outside the Mohammad Ali Mosque:

We left the Citadel and drove into Al-Azhar Park where families were picnicking and playing games.  We had lunch in one of the restaurants located in the park.

After a tasty Lebanese lunch, we drove to the beautiful Ben Ezra Synagogue.  According to local folklore, this was the site where baby Moses was found.  Although the current building dates to the 1890s, the synagogue was founded in 882 AD.  I was able to take a photo of the exterior of the synagogue, but unfortunately photography was not allowed inside the beautiful sanctuary.

Ben Ezra Synagogue is well known because a treasure trove of 300,000 ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic manuscripts were found there in a storeroom in 1753.  This collection, known as the Cairo Geniza, was divided among several world-wide academic libraries.  In the 1920s, there were 80,000 people in Egypt’s Jewish community.  As a result of emigration to Israel and the United States, today there are less than a dozen people of Jewish/Egyptian ancestry residing in Cairo.  Ben Ezra Synagogue currently serves as a tourist attraction and museum.

We left the synagogue and walked along several narrow alleyways until we reached an arch with a wooden sign which read: “The Cavern Church and the martyrs Serguis & Bacchus known as Abu Serga.”  The church is believed to have been built on the site where the Christian Holy Family rested at the end of their journey into Egypt.

Saints Sergius and Bacchus Church dates to the 4th century.  It is one of the oldest Coptic churches in Egypt and has significant historical importance.  Maged explained that the Coptic Orthodox Church is one of the most ancient Christian churches in the world, founded in the 1st century AD in Egypt by Saint Mark the Apostle.  Copts are the indigenous people of Egypt and are the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians.

Wednesday – February 6, 2019

Officially, Cairo receives “less than 1 inch of rainfall per year, with even less recorded along the corridor of pyramids.”  So imagine our surprise and dismay when we awoke to see gray overcast skies and gentle falling showers.  It was also 57 degrees and windy.

Here is a photo of the ticket area in Giza that I took from the bus.  Notice the wet pavement and tourists holding umbrellas and specks of rain on the window.  This must be a rare sight in Egypt!

Undeterred, our stalwart group ventured out onto the damp sand wearing rain gear and carrying umbrellas.  Visiting Egypt was a first-time experience for everyone.  We had waited our entire extended lives and anticipated this moment with excitement to actually visit the ancient Pyramids of Giza….

In my imagination, I had pictured a vibrant sunny day and a bright blue sky.  Oh well….

Most of the camels and camel-drivers were resting and having an off-day because there were too few tourists.

The air felt chilly and it began to rain more heavily, so everyone went to the indoor Khufu Boat Museum next to the Great Pyramid of Khufu to see the ancient “solar boat.”  The ship had been deconstructed into 1224 small pieces around 2500BC and buried near the pyramids for the king to use in the after-life.

The Khufu ship is one of the oldest, largest, and best-preserved boats from antiquity.  It is 143 ft long and 19.5 ft wide.  It was built of Lebanon cedar and “described as “a masterpiece of woodcraft” that could sail today if put into water.”  This is scale model on display at the museum:

The ship is known as a “solar barge” which was used either as a funerary barge to carry the king’s body from Memphis to Giza or a ritual vessel to carry the king and the sun-god Ra across the heavens.

Imagine seeing a fully intact 4,500 year old boat which could be used today.  Amazing!

Under a soft misty rain, we rode the bus toward the Sphinx.  A mythological creature with the body of a lion and the head of a person, the Sphinx statue was built to guard over the Giza plateau.

Our bus drove around to the front of the Sphinx where chairs, awnings, and speakers were being set up for night-time light and sound shows.  Maged asked the restaurant owner at the site to open a gate so we could have access to a platform to take better pictures.

It started to rain again, so we quickly took a few more photos before running back to the shelter of the bus.

We had stops to see hand-woven carpets and to eat an Egyptian lunch.  At the Akhenaton Carpets School, teams of young people sat in front of large looms.  They demonstrated how to knot the fibers at lightning speed while following a printed pattern of a carpet design.

The young sisters in the photo below, invited me to sit with them and they tried to teach me how to knot the woolen yarn.  It wasn’t easy!

Our next major destination was the ancient burial ground of Saqqara.  There are eleven major pyramids and hundreds of smaller tombs within the four mile long necropolis which served the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom capital of Memphis.  The most significant structure is the Step Pyramid built for the Pharaoh Zoser (Djoser) in 2650BC.  This was the earliest stone monument ever built in the world.

Previous royal tombs were built underground topped by a mud brick “mastaba” – which means bench in Arabic. Zoser’s chief architect, Imhotep, constructed the mastaba into a stone pyramid of decreasing ‘steps.’  All the later pyramids developed from this concept.

We went into the tomb of Kegemni dating from 2340BC which is the largest mastaba in the Saqqara complex.  The walls were beautifully decorated with scenes of everyday life.  Some of the color still remained on the walls.  (no photography allowed)

We also climbed down into another smaller mastaba and stooped along a long stone corridor. This led to two small rooms whose ceilings were decorated with representative stars that looked like yellow starfish. This tomb was not as exquisitely decorated as Kegemni’s but was an archeological experience for me.

Afterwards, we walked to the magnificent Step Pyramid complex where Maged explained the history of the compound and we were able to explore the ruins on our own.

What an amazing day!!!

Tuesday – February 5, 2019

Today is my Uncle’s 95th Birthday!  Happy Birthday Ben!!!

We had a nice buffet breakfast at the JW Marriott Hotel and a “Welcome Orientation” given by our group leaders.  Afterwards, we drove in always-heavy traffic to downtown Cairo to visit the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Tahir Square.  Driving anywhere is Cairo takes a very long time because of the horrendous volume of traffic.

                                                             Cairo Train Station

Our group of 19 intrepid travelers was led by Maged Salib, a knowledgeable historian and Egyptologist.  Seventeen members had traveled with Maged last year to Qatar, Oman, and the UAE.

Maged led us around the museum.  He highlighted the exhibits which focused on the most important events, people, and gods of ancient Egyptian history.

The Tutankhamen Galleries were on the second floor.  Unfortunately, photography was not permitted in the anti-room where King Tut’s famous golden death mask was on display.  However, many artifacts from his tomb were exhibited outside the room.

It was a thrill to see these incredibly beautiful artifacts.  Words cannot describe them.  I vividly remember the King Tut exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1978.  At the time, everyone wanted tickets to see the exhibit and newspapers had said, “Lines of eager museum-goers stretched down 5^th Avenue for twenty-three blocks.”

Here is another view of the center Atrium looking toward the main entrance to the museum.

The Egyptian Museum opened in 1902 and, according to my guide book, many of the exhibits and display cases are the same ones from that time.  Poor lighting and inadequate temperature and humidity controls have been detrimental to the artifacts.  A new museum, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), located near the Pyramids of Giza began construction in 2002 but no-one knows when it will open.  It was scheduled to open this February but has been postponed until 2020.

The photo above shows one of many “guard towers” posted along most roadways near buildings and compounds.  They were manned by young men with large machine guns.  Throughout our entire tour in Egypt, a “tourist police” officer sat in the front of our bus with us and the bus was accompanied by a police car with several more armed officers.  I wasn’t sure if all this security made me feel more safe or in danger.

February 1-2-3, 2019

After traveling for too many hours with a stop-over in Munich, Jeff and I arrived in Cairo Egypt Saturday night. We had two nights to adjust to a new time-zone before joining a Vantage tour group. Our reservation was waiting for us at the JW Marriott Hotel and we immediately collapsed in a large comfortable room.

Although most of Egypt is beige sand, the area around the hotel is green.  Here’s a view of the golf course from the balcony:

The next day, we relaxed and explored the grounds of the hotel.  There were indoor and outdoor swimming pools, play areas for families, tennis courts, several restaurants, and walking paths.

On Monday we wanted to leave the hotel complex and explore Cairo on our own.  We made arrangements with the Concierge to have a taxi take us to the Egyptian Museum, wait two hours, and bring us back to the hotel.  All this for only 450 Egyptian Pounds or $25.

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities is world famous for its extensive collection of ancient historical Egyptian artifacts.  We knew we were scheduled to return to the museum with our tour group, but we wanted to make sure to have plenty of time to see as much of the museum as we could on our own.

The central Atrium is a huge space filled with Egyptian statues and some of the oldest items in the museum, including the Narmer Palette.  The double sided engraved stone from the 1st Dynasty suggests the first union of Upper and Lower Egypt under one rule.  It dates from 3200 BC.

Me with Queen Nofret – approximately 1900BC:

Around the central Atrium are long corridors filled with antiquities and many side rooms with smaller objects.

The Museum has an overwhelming number of antiquities in its collection.  All of the ancient items were breathtakingly beautiful.  It was difficult to imagine that the artifacts were 3000 to 5000 years old.

The rest of our tour group arrived in the late afternoon and we enjoyed a welcome dinner at the hotel.  I had traveled to Arabia with many of the people and it was great fun to see everyone again.