Daily Egyptian Life

Shop selling nuts like cashews, pistachios, almonds and assorted peanuts

On the 3rd day, we visited Edfu and Kom Ombo, small cities in the south of Egypt.These photos were taken when I was riding at the front of the horse carriage giving me an elevated view of the city/town and managing to observe the daily life of ordinary Egyptians. Firstly, the pace of life here is very slow, so it the cost of living (I guess). An Egyptian can probably get by with 3 square meals a day for as cheaply as U$$ 1 - 2. Many of the crops,foods and fruits are grown locally as is the various varieties of nuts. Unfortunately, I did not get to see how the Nubians (Southern Egyptians) live but I heard from the tour mates that they have small brick huts with thatched roofs and bare floors. Running water from taps should be available in most houses and so is electricity, but no so in the countryside.


Karate Kids

Most men dress in the traditional Gallabilya which is a full length one piece gown which covers from the neck down all the way to the ankles. In major cities, like Cairo, the men are dressed more in the Western style with jeans, or business suits worn. I mentioned before the Egyptians are friendly to foreigners and alwyays are curious where we are from. They have a vague idea of geography so when we mention 'Singapore' or 'Malaysia' they exclaim that they know of people who have been to Egypt from those countires but probably think our countries are somewhere in China.



Outside a police station ; people making reports of crimes

The women and normally decked head to toe in black and cover their hair with a Burqa (head scarf). A joke is that they look like overgrown 'ninjas' or Japanese assassins. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism has been around for about 30 years since the Ayatollah Khomeni took over power in neighbouring Iran and there are many powerful Muslim clerics in Egypt as is in the Middle East.


A pita bread shop

Most of the houses here look unfinished and brown in colour or no colour. To me they look like slums but are actually apartments for people, so it goes to show how backward and poor the country is. Many buildings had the top part with the girders sticking out into the sky, as if some part of the roof has not been completed,and they look like buildings with 'work in progress' but people are actually occupying them for some time now.



A typical bazaar or market selling fresh produce

We did not dare venture into the bazaar here as it looked quite dirty and not knowing the language could easily be harassed to buy things which we don't need.




Boys hanging outside school

Lastly, I took this photo of boys hanging outside their school-just like Singapore or any place int the world, the boys would like to hang out with their friends for as long as possible before they go home ! Some things are the same all over the world !

Edfu - Horus Temple ; Dec 10th 2009

Glorious Carvings (Reliefs)

Day 3 started with a visit to the temple of Horus at Edfu. Edfu is a small town south of Luxor by about 60 km. The temple of Horus was constructed during the Ptolemic (Greek/Roman occupation) ages as can be seen by the columns of the temple. The reliefs or carvings were very etched into the walls and I had taken the interest some reading about some of these dead ancient gods which the Egyptians believed. Horus is the falcon god who was the son of Osiris and Isis. The Greeks and Romans who had no beliefs previously started to create temples according to the Egyptian beliefs. This all happened before the birth of Christ and Prophet Mohammad.


Ptolemic (Greek) influence visible as seen by the flowery columns

So Egypt was conquered first by the Persians about 1600 BC, and then by the Greeks (Alexander), Romans, Turks (Byzantine), Arabs (Mamluks) before finally getting their own independence on 28 Feb 1922. A glorious past is all Egypt had and nowadays,most Egyptians are resigned to their standing in the world, a magnificent past but a Third World poor country now with the standard of living no better than say Vietnam.


The huge Relief (carvings) on the First Pylon

As I approach the First Pylon, I am struck first by the size of the reliefs, stretching to about 50 feet high. Secondly, I am also struck by how deep the etchings in the brick are, meaning that they must be etched deep enough to withstand the wind and sand erosion for the many centuries. Many of these temples were below sealevel and some were reconstructed brick by huge brick back to their former glory. I will post another one about Abu Simbel and Ramses II temple to the Nubian peoples.



Temple of Horus with First Pylon

This temple is one of the best preserved in the whole of Egypt and many boatloads of tourists make a beeline everyday to visit this it. At night, the temple is all lit up and there is a sound and light show which further amplfies the structures. In the 1300 BC, the pharoah Ramses II used the stars to pinpoint the magnetic North and also to build his temple at Abu Simbel so much so that the entrance is exactly East facing only 2 times a year.




Horse ride to Horus Temple

Egyptian people are basically friendly but many of them seem to be trying to con tourists into buying cheap goods and stone carvings, T shirts, postcards from them. Even to take a photograph, they will badger me to pay a few pouns (U$ 1 = LE 5) or for the use of the common toilet they want to charge LE 1. This shows how pathetic the country is managed so much so that cheating is rampant amongst everbody else and there is no trust between any groups of people. Its a sad state of affairs given than this country had such a glorious past with brilliant architects and engineers but never progressed from 4000 years ago. This shows how great civilisations of the past can rise to such lofty heights and fall back into the abyss of poverty.

Cruising the Nile ; the best was to see Egypt

Our cruise ship where we stayed for 4 nights, the Ramadis II.

One of the best ways to see Egypt is to take a cruise. A perfect start point is Luxor which is at the centre of Egypt. The Nile has historically been a life giving resource for this water strapped country of 80 million so much so that many towns and cities are built alongside the river to reap from its gifts. The Egyptians celebrate the 'Gift of the Nile' every year whereby the banks of the river overflow with fish and all kinds of sea creatures. These animals when caught can be used for bags (crocodiles and snakes), food (fish and birds) and handicraft (rocks,papytus).


The width of the Nile here is around 800m from bank to bank

Our cruise was on the Ramadis II, a cruise ship operated by the Swiss hotel chain Movenpick. It can hold 300 cabins and has entertainment outlets like lounge / disco, sundeck,computer centre and gym. During our time on the cruise, we enjoyed wonderfully cool weather (13 to 19 deg C) and the sundeck was full of Europeans sunbathing themselves. Our boys also took a dip in the pool and enjoyed themselves tremendously.


Small village with Jetty

The country is essentially made up of 99% Egyptian people (mixture of European and Middle Eastern) and 1 % Nubian (African black) and Greek people. In the southern regions, we tend to see more Nubians who look like African people. It was recorded that during the Yom Kippur war with Isreal in 1973 (for Egypt to reclaim back their lands from the Israelis), the communication code used for their signalling was in Nubian laguage which was unrecognisable amongst the Israelis. So it had a significant advantage for the Egyptians.


Houses on the banks of the river Nile

Egypt is essentially a poor country with a GDP per capita of US$ 2,400 per year. This puts them in the lower middle category of countries. In terms of Human Development Index (HDI) they are somewhere in the middle at 0.70. Singapore by comparison is US$ 40,000 per year (wealthy) and HDI is 0.95 (highly developed. The capital of Egypt is Cairo and there are about 20 million Cairenes living there. The native language is Arabic (as with all other Arab League of Nations - 22 in total) and although the country is predominatly Muslim (85%), there is a significant Christian minority (13%) - called Coptic Christians.

History has recorded that the apostle Mark, in the First Cebtury, came to spread the word of Christ and his followers have built churches ever since.Christian rulers from the Greeks and Romans also practised Christianity so the influence is dominant.


Luxor Beer - Beer brewed by a predominatly Muslim country

A beer on the sundeck, watching the sunset on the Nile, what could one ask for more ?

Luxor - Valley of the Kings

Horus the Falcon god
Today, we visited the site of the ancient kings tombs, namely Ramses IV (4th), Septur and Ramses I. No photographs were allowed into the tombs as the flashes were deemed as damaging to the interior of these rooms which had many ancient paintings and carvings.

The rationale of the latter kings or pharoahs to 'hide' their tombs which contained many treasures such as gold,silver and plenty of coins was to prevent or make it very difficult for tomb raiders to locate the tombs once the funeral of the king was over. The pharoahs went to great lengths so much as to blindfold the workers or slaves who dug the tombs when they were transported to the tombs so that no one, except only the high officials knew the exact location of these tombs which were rich with the finest products of ancient Egypt.


Entrace to Valley of the Kings

So, for the early dynasty kings or pharoahs, who built huge pyramids, like Sneferu,Khufu and Khufre. Those proved to be too easy for the tomb robbers as these tombs stood out like a sore thumb. The later pharoahs, like Ramses I - IX all decided to build underground complexes for their burial chambers and chose this valley, now calle the Valley of the Kings. In total there are 18 royal pharoahs buried here and 44 high officials tombs.

Luxor - Hatshepsut's Temple

The only female Pharoah (ruler) of Egypt in ancient times.

On the second day, we visited the Temple of Hatshepsut, who was the ONLY female ruler of Egypt in ancient times. She was the daughter of Thutmosis I, sister and wife of Thutmosis II and stepmother of Thutmosis III. Although she ruled for 18 years, she was hated by her stepson Thutmosis III so much so that many of the carvings of her in other temples were etched away so as not to show her face.



The temple with thousands of tourists even early in the morning

This temple is really a maginficent sight from afar as the building structure is cut INTO a mountain,with the rock face forming the inner chambers as well as the supporting columns. This tourist site was the location of a tragic terrorist attack in 1999 when Islamic terrorists attacked this same temple and killed 61 people, 55 tourists and 6 Egyptians. The act left the Egyptian people so enraged that they went on a manhunt, taking the law i their own hands and finding and bludgeoning the terrorists to death. Fortunately, the attack is but a memory and the site is still a very popular place to visit for tourists, BUT, there is strong police presence in all the tourist attractions in Egypt nowadays.

3,000 views ; Wow thank you !

When I first started writing this blog on 1st May 2008, my objective was to pen my thoughts about certain aspects about my life and experiences. I have persisted in keeping the blog as easy to read as possible so to provide a diary of sorts of myself and the people around me.Yes, there were certain criticisms of establishments and also about the standard of service in Singapore and around the region but mainly it is meant as a platform to update my friends and acquaintences about what I have been up to and my work,hobbies,travels and interests.

Now 1 and a half years later, its still around and I want to say 'THANK YOU' to everyone who has bothered to view the blog, write comments and say their piece.

Lets continue to Seize the Day !!

8th December - Luxor

The Nile at sunset

The first day at Luxor when we arrived in Egypt was a packed day for the entire tour group, packed because we were to visit 2 sites in Luxor, the early capital of Egypt.
Originally called Thebes, it is packed with many temples of which we visited the 2 of the most well known, Karnak Temple and the Temple of Luxor.As earlier mentioned in my other post, Egypt had 31 dynasties spanning 3000 years BC and they were mostly Egyptian pharoahs or kings who ruled Egypt. There was 1 female pharoah, Hatshepsut and 1 pharoah who died very young, Tutankhamun. The most famous was Ramses II who ruled for 67 years too.


Me and Ramses II

Luxor temple has a very grand entrance facing east and it is fronted by a huge pylon and 2 seated statues of Ramses II. The ability of the Egyptians to acertain the direction East by using the stars as a guide, to a very high accuracy is amazing.In addition, the pylons,columns and statues are easily 60 - 80 feet high and how did the Egyptians manage to build such huge structures when they had no scaffolding ? The normally piled blocks of stone easily weighing 1 ton one on top of the other to reach the perfect height. How did they hoist up the columns and aboelisks ? They improvised by boring at the base of the stone using highly accurate tools and going deeper and deeper to establish some lever. At the top of the obelisk or column, they tied ropes and with teams of hundreds maybe thousands of labourers and slaves, hoisted up the columns with great difficulty.


Huge columns at Luxor temple, the maginificence of these temples even today are still evident

To live in those times as an ordinary person must have been quite terrible as living conditions and working areas were marshalled by many team leaders or chief wardens. Life was probably very cheap in those days and haundreds of thousands would have died from the hard labour after toiling in the desert sun for years even decades. The historians are still debating on whether the labourers were forced conscripts,slaves or paid contract workers.


Obelisk at Luxor Temple, a very similar one was given to France and is at the Place du la Concorder in Paris.

The rulers had all the titles and fanciful names and must have prepared for their deaths ever since they arose to become pharoah, this was evident as the great pyramid must have taken maybe 20 - 25 years to build, and the average lifespan of an Egyptian person in those days was probably 40+ to 50+. The desert climate means that it is hot and dry in the summer June - August and cool and dry in the winter months of Nov. - February.


Statue of Ramses II with one of his daughters at his feet ; Size : 20m (66 feet)

As we checked in on our cruise ship at the end ofthe first day, we were all dog-tired from the 2 visits and ready to rest. I, on the other hand, decided to go for a 5 km run in Luxor just for the experience and it was a run well worth remembering.

I started just outside the cruise ship and ran for almost 30 minutes along the Nile all the way past the Luuxor temple and the Winter Palace and almost to the center of town. Luxor is a smallish city of about 2 million,spread over a wide area. The biggest first impression I got from the first day at the run was that Egyptian people were friendly but could not be trusted, as they had this sense of deviousness in their eyes. It was an interesting start to my tour of Egypt.

Egypt Dec 8th - Luxor I

Karnak Temple Layout, showing the 10 pylons (High Walls)

This is my first blog post of this month, as I was travelling for almost 10 days to Egypt, a country which is an economic backwater now or poor country but was the seat of a glorious civilisation about 4000 to 5000 years ago. This world has few countries with recorded histories as magnificent and well documented as Egypt's. Together with Greece, they can be regarded as the cradles of human civilsation. Our first stop after flying almost 10 hours with a transit of 2 1/2 hours in Doha,Qatar, was to Luxor,in the central part of Egypt. Luxor, with a population of about 2 million was once the capital of Egypt (Tawy in ancient Egyptian or 2 lands) and it was originally called Thebes.

Upon arrival, we met with our local guide Eshyam, who was to be our tour guide to our group of 26 (25 plus 1 tour leader) for the next 8 days.Our group was a mixed bunch of 3 families of diffrent aged youths, several teachers male and female, and some active senior citizens. There was even an able bodied visually handicapped lady who was a frequent traveller with her sister on this tour. It was the 3rd tour they were taking to a foreign country this year !



View from afar to the first Entrance showing the first Pylon (High Wall)

Our first stop was Karnak Temple, which is located on the eastern bank of the river Nile. The Nile is longest river in Africa, and Egypt is a Transnational country which occupies one half of its land in Africa (neighbours to west are Libya and south are Sudan) and the other half in Middle East or part of Asia (neighbours are Israel, Palestine and Jordan). Egypt has a population of 80 million of which 20 + million live in a dusty and chaotic capital called Cairo. The rest of the population live along the banks of the Nile, forming towns and cities from the north (Alexandria) to the middle (Luxor, Edfu, Esna and Kon Ombo) to the south (Aswan).The makeup of the people are mainly Egyptian,Turkish and Nubian (black African) with Asian and European minorities. Religion is also dominant, with Islam being the main religion, and Coptic (Egyptian) Christians being a sizeable (13%) minority. The religions were a result of Egypt being ruled by Greek,Romans,Persians (Iraq today),Byzantine and Ottoman (Turkish) since 300 years BC. It is only in the 20th century in 1952 that Egypt became a republic and Gamal Abdel Nasser was the first President. The last king Farouk was exiled in France as a result of the revolution.

Golden Period
From 3100 BC when Mene (or Mena) first fought and controlled the 2 lands North and South till about 300 BC, the Egyptians were their own rulers with Pharoahs (kings) overseeing this land. Its is said that the Pharoahs were obsessed with death,as for many decades, even from the day he ascended to the throne onwards, many many Egyptian slaves and contract laboureres were building burial tombs like the pyramids of Giza and Saqqara with all kinds of carvings and precious artefacts stored inside. Hundreds of thousands maybe millions of Egyptians were put to hard labour to build these massive structures which to this day still amaze people from all over the world. Each pyramid was exactly 52 deg in slope and the tallest, or Great Pyramid was built by the king Cheops or Khufu during the 3rd Kingdom or 2300 BC time frame.


Avenue of Sphinxes at the entrance to Karnak Temple in Luxor

The most famous ruler was Ramses II and he lived an extraordinary 86 years ; during those days the ordinary Egyptian lived about 40 to maximum 50 years and he lived 2x that (!). In addition, he ruled for 67 years so had the greatest opportunity to build massive temples and structures of himself and of the gods they worshipped, namely Amun Ra or the Sun god. In Luxor, we had the good opportunity to see how massive these statues were. Karnak temple was our first stop and it was dominated by 10 pylons or high walls with plenty of reliefs (carvings) of the great pharoah fighting against Egypt's enemies. The carvings are easliy 20 feet above the ground and are normally about 20 feet high. So 4500 years ago, without any scaffolding or wooden ladders (not invented yet), how did they get so high up ? By pushing and building blocks of bricks together and creating a high structure near the wall to a) build the pylon and b) carve the reliefs. Quite an amazing feat considering that most of Europe (America was just a grassland then) were occupied by cavemen or nomadic hunter gatherers.

Karnak temple has 10 pylons and the first pylon faces due east, so that the morning sun is reborn and shines its light energy at the temple at exactly 90 deg perpendicular to the pylon. The temple was a result of many pharoahs building pylons and hypostyles (columns) reaching for the skies. There were obelisks (stone structures with pointed ends) to represent the sun's rays and hieroglyphics.


One of the many sphinxes lining the Avenue of Sphinxes, Ram's head with Lion's Body

On the leadup to the temple, there are easily 60 sphixes, mythical beings of ram's heads with lion's body lining the entrance to give a feeling of grandeur. One can imagine what majestic ambience it must have been during the pharoahs time as the king would lead the procession from the Nile (maybe for his bath !) back to the temple.

In those days, the pharoah elevated his status to that of a god, as people were superstitious and the pharoad needed to keep everything 'under control' or in order. So the Amun god (a lesser god) was elevated to Amun Ra and the Pharoah was then seen taking the mantle of the crown from Amun Ra. Additionally, as there was no TV, radio, Internet, wireless communication or cellphones, it made sense to make images of the pharoah (occupier of the great house - literal translation) in stone to impress the ordinary people.


Majestic Entrance showing the First Pylon (Entrance) and 2 huge Ramses statues

The pharoah Ramses II also was shown in carvings on the walls as figting wars against Egypt's enemies. One such was was agains the Hittites (Syrians today) and Ramses claimed a great victory against the Hittites, winning the battle and single handedly killing many enemies. How do we know this ? They had no paper but they had the wall carvings and paintings of recorded events showing Ramses II shooting the bow and arrow on a chariot at an enemy as well as another showing him standing over one enemy's neck and raising his spear against another enemy. They had spin doctors even in those days !!


The Inner Courtyard with Egyptians and Statues of Ramses II

Egypt had 31 dynasties divided into 3 Kingdoms Old, Middle and New and Ramses lived in the New Kingdom period or 19th dynasty. Many of his statues show him with a smiling face, standing ramrod straight, right arm carrying something which looks like a scroll, indicating he was a learned man.Also, many of the statues showed him walking with the left leg forward as if marching. He was indeed an extraordinary man of those times.