Egypt Opening Up Again

At the pyramids of Giza

I am very happy to note that the tours to Egypt are reappearing in the Classifieds. It is by far my most memorable trip in my many trips abroad, not least the tons and tons of historical sites, temples, palaces along both sides of the Nile making a tremendous impact to my mind that this is a truly special place, even though the Middle East has always been a place not for the faint hearted.

To say that the Egyptians were a world power some 3,000 to 5,000 years ago is not an understatement, not by a long shot. The architectural and engineering structures they made with immense precision led some to believe that the pharoahs had some kind of extra-terresterial help from outer space. 

I take all these proclaimations by the tour guides with a huge dose of salt. Tour guides says, they say, science and history say and then they correct themselves. This method of deception has always been guided by wrong interpretations of what actually happened and false hypotheses and the greater the lie, the better the story by the tour guides to keep the tourists entranced.

Singapore has a completely made up fireworks show with a BS storyline every night at 8pm outside the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Casino for the last 8 to 9 years. The free laser cum fireworks show tells about some mythical island called Temasek and the story is so far fetched that only telling and retelling it thousands of times, the tourist promotion board may hope to draw more curious and naive people from distant lands to come and see our "Merlion" - another BS figure spouting water from its mouth and it is a combination of a big fish and lion head.

Yeah, right. Maybe in 1000 years people from all over the world will say Singapore actually had Merlions swimming in the canal and prowling the streets everywhere as and when the need arose.  That is the 'history' created by the spin doctors and legacy story writers.  

Felucca at Sunset - Alexandria 

Back to Egypt, I went there with my family in 2009, when Noel was 15 and Andrew 12 ; the precocious pre-teen and mid teen. See the pictures below, they were at that age where history was confined to dusty textbooks and long forgotten empires. Hence, the Egypt trip was mainly a fun trip to hang out in the cruise ship along the Nile river, play with 2 other boys from the tour, kick sand along the ruined out temples at Karnak, Kom Ombo, Luxor and Memphis.  

Andrew monkeying around; As seen from the columns the temple was built during the Ptolemic (Greek) and Roman times,by the Greek conquerers to make peace with the Egyptians, as there were many temples dedicated to Horus and Sorbek, they chose Isis to dedicate.

Isis was the wife of Osiris and not that modern day Caliphate as created by Baghdadi. 

Kom Ombo 

As a first timer to Egypt, I was struck by how worldly wise Egyptian people, and as this was the pre Arab Spring era, the country of almost 90 million was ruled by the then dictator Hosni Mubarak. Since those days, the country has had 2 changes of Government, and now is ruled by an ex-General al Sisi.  

The history of Egypt is rich and before and from the days of Julius Caesar, Jesus the son of God, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra. A visitor can see the influences of Roman and Greek or Hellenistic architecture as seen from the designs on the columns.  

Abu Simbel 

Gods there were aplenty. From Amun - Ra,Osiris,ISIS to Horus (falcon head) and Hathor (Earth Mother) there literally were up to a hundred gods. Pharoahs were like gods too, and from the time they ascended to the throne, the Pharoahs were only interested in building their funeral pyre or pyramids to honour their death.

The beauty of this country is that they can manage to keep their wonderful treasures for thousands of years (with the exception of the looting inside the pyramids) and even had a secret burial ground called Valley of the Kings (and a separate Valley of the Queens) for the lesser kings from the year 3000 BC.

The rise and fall of empires is inevitable so my little red dot called Singapore needs to wake up to the fact that the exceptional leaders of the past (50s to 80s) have gone and all we have in their wake are technocrats and my opinion is that we are facing an era of decline both economically and possibly in the quality of life.