Okey-dokey, I’ll stop doling out excuses. You guys know good old Samuel Johnson, the guy that created the dictionary? He could only work in fits & starts - long periods of indolence, followed by bursts of febrile activity. Just like me. Sadly, my resemblance to Johnson, the literary genius begin & end there.

Since Sukumar has written in detail about ancient Egypt, I decided to write some snippets about modern Egypt. So here it is - Egypt thru the jaundiced eyes of Priya Raju.

Bheja Fry
Wherever we went, we were greeted with shouts of “India!” and “Amitabh Bachchan!” by guides, drivers, waiters, shop keepers & touts. Nobody knew who the Prime Minister of India was, but they knew Amitabh. On our trip to Abu Simbel, the driver declared gleefully, “We love your Minister of Culture”. I didn’t know we had one! Pitying my ignorance, the man added, “Amitabh Bachchan, of course!”. I had a tough time convincing him that - No, Mr Bachchan is an actor not a minister. “Are you sure?” asked the driver sadly. I told him, “He was an MP once, but he isn’t part of the government now”. Not to be outdone, the driver shot back - “Well then, you should make him the Minister of Culture soon!”. I solemnly promised to rectify that lapse as soon as I landed in India.

Our guide Sami was obviously overawed by AB. He asked me, “Is Mr Bachchan a billionaire now?”. “Hmmm - No, he lost a lot of money producing movies. I’m sure he’s a multi-milionaire now”. He refused to believe me & started fantasizing about how much money AB must have in the bank. The adulation was a tad too much. Just to switch gears, I told him that Mr Bachchan was married to acclaimed actor Jaya Bhaduri, who quit acting after having kids. This was received with exclamations of joy - all nice girls quit their jobs after having children, don’t they? My feminist back bristled.

So much that by the end of our trip, I was sick & tired of the (usually) delightful Mr Bachchan. Adding to the Big B overload, I watched “Cheeni Kum” on the way to Cairo & “Shootout at Lokhandwala” (where AB plays a small role) on the way back to Chennai. Ooh, please save me from Amitabh Bachchan. He has invaded & taken over my brain.

Wooden Heads
After a trip to Karnak, we were having a cuppa in our hotel’s restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, was tickled pink. After serving us our coffee, he told us that he loved Bollywood dancing. “I especially love it that both men & women dance in Bollywood”, said the young man & looked at us yearningly. I was half afraid that he expected us to gyrate to a filmy number right then & there, with a heavy dose of Jhatkas & Matkas. “Thank you, that will be all”, I said firmly, much to the disappointment of the waiter.

Now, I hate the term “Bollywood”. That’s a derogatory term coined by Westerners for the moronic cinemas made in India. The subtext is this: Bollywood = Escapist fantasy with lavish sets, running around the trees, half naked women, ridiculously indestructible heroes & unimaginative stories churned by absolute cretins. They don’t use the term “Bollywood” to describe a well-thought out movie like “Droh Kaal”, for example. For some inexplicable reason - my guess is, because we are dumb asses who don’t know when we are slighted - we are proud to call the Hindi film industry “Bollywood”.

Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah also thinks its sheer idiocy on our part to use the term “Bollywood” unflinchingly (Source: Deccan Herald, July 3rd). And for the love of my sainted aunt, regional movies are from “Kollywood” (Tamil), “Tollywood” (Telugu), “Malluwood” (Malayalam) & “Sandalwood” (Kannada).

Woes of a Frazzled Citizen
Our Tour Manager Esam was a pleasant & polite young man.I asked him about the typical problems middle class Egyptians face. He’s getting married in April & he said that the biggest problem in Cairo is housing. “It is very difficult to find a house. Decent flats are expensive & the city has already exploded well into the desert”. I told him, “Yes, flats are expensive in Indian cities also”. He asked me, “Tell me, what’s the Indian government doing to solve the problem?”. I was completely taken aback. In my opinion, India already has a big, regulatory government that meddles with everything & solves almost nothing. I’ll be glad if the government doesn’t try to solve the housing problem. Aloud, I said, “Nothing, Essam”. Sadly shaking his head, Essam said, “Likewise. Our government isn’t taking sufficient interest in solving the housing problem”.

I stared straight ahead. A car with a bumper sticker, “Fuck the System” was directly in front of us. Why blame the system? India’s or Egypt’s housing problem can only be solved by private enterprises. A liberal dose of right-wing entrepreneurship is just what Egypt needs, I thought - but had enough sense to keep my own counsel. A socialist setup squeezes all enterprise from people & leaves in its wake a nation of clerks, waiters & miscellaneous order-takers. As a country, India has started recovering only 15-20 years back. It is ridiculous to blame the British education system for our lack of initiative, fostered under the “License, Quota Raj” - a beast of our own making.

Next Up
That wraps it up for this week, folks. Watch this space. My next post will primarily be on Women in Egypt. And shopping. Why be cruel enough to separate the XX chromosomes from their favorite addiction?

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The Egyptian Museum has over 120, 000 pharoanic artifacts and has been operational since 1902.

Our first stop was before the Narmer Palette - this palette is from 3200 BC commemorating the unification of upper and lower egypt by Narmer (a.k.a Menes). Narmer is the founder of the pharoanic civilization that lasted nearly 3000 years with 30 dynasties. The Narmer Palette is so well preserved that it is hard to believe that it is 5200 years old.

The next stop was in front of a replica of the Rosetta Stone ( we had seen the original in the British Museum in London). Jean Francois Champollion, 23 year old French genius, in 1822, cracked this stone which had the same inscription in 3 versions - Hieroglyphic, Demotic (a commoner’s version of Hieroglyphic) and Greek. After nearly 1800 years, hierpoglyphics could be understood which literally threw the floodgates of Egyptology open. This decipherment of the Hieroglyphics is an epochal moment in the history of mankind. I for one, wait for this same moment to come for our Indus Valley script. I hope it will happen in my lifetime, that is my fervent dream.

Then we see a small statue of Khufu made of ivory - ironically this is the only artifact found of Khufu, the man who buillt the biggest pyramid of all time at Giza which we covered earlier.

Then we saw Zoser’s original statue - we saw a replica of this in the cellar near the Zoser pyramid in Saqqara. This is the one we had to see through a pair of holes.

Then we saw the crown jewels of the Egyptian Museum - the Tutankhamun collection. A few halls full of artefacts from Tut’s tomb which we covered in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.

There are 4 rectangular box-shaped shrines with gold gilded. Each shrine is fitted inside the other like a Russian doll and inside the innermost one were the anthropoid coffins. The outside of the gilded shrines have the book of the dead carved on them.

We also saw the death mask made of solid gold, lots of jewellery and other paraphernalia like furniture, throne, beds. There is even a foldable bed for his expeditions. On the inside back of the royal throne we see a painting of King Tut with his wife Anexshunamun. Anexshunamun later married the high priest Ay after Tut’s death and Ay ascended the throne as the first high priest to become a pharoah.

Priya Raju was wondering that if King Tut who died at the age of 19 had so much gold and treasures buried how much would a king like Rameses II’s tomb have since he died at age 92. Unfortunately, the tomb robbers would have melted all the artifacts and taken the gold without realizing that the artefacts if intact would have netted 100-1000 times the value of the gold in them. Not to speak of all the knowledge of Egyptian customs that was lost How sad.

We saw 365 Ushabtis (we covered this in the mummification process) of King Tut. It is the only tomb where all the 365 Ushabtis were found - they had one for each day of the year.

Tut’s entrails were placed in 4 mini coffins made of gold and then placed inside the 4 canopic jars. The heads of the canopic jars had the heads of King Tut and not the traditional ones I covered in the mummification process.

Then we saw the massive statue of Amenhotep III and his wife Tiy. We then covered the Animal Mummies room - there were 4 kinds of animal mummies - pet mummies of cats, dogs etc, animal god mummies like crocodile, baboon etc, votive mummies and then victual mummies as food for the afterlife. There were some fake mummies also on display. The mummies were placed in a container shaped like the respective animal but nothing inside except some animal entrails. Perhaps, that animal was out of stock as noted in the museum display!

That completed the Egyptian Museum (one could spend weeks here and still not see all the artefacts).

We drove to the Al Azhar mosque a 1000 year old mosque. We went inside the mosque and saw the open courtyard with pillared corridors reminding us of pharoanic temples. I even noticed a papyrus motif on some of the pillars. Then we went inside the huge covered pillared hall, where people were offering their prayers.

Then we made a small donation to the mosque and were lucky to meet the Imam (a.ka Sheikh) - the Imam of this mosque is the highest priest in the Egyptian Islamic order.

After this we went to the nearby Khan al Khaleeli market - loosely translated as Market of the Khaleeli Lane. In olden days, this market was the spice market and with a Spice market in Venice it controlled the entire spice trade (there are shops selling spices here still). It is to break the control of this market on the spice trade that Columbus, Vasco De Gama and others set out to find a direct route to India resulting in the discovery of the New World and as they say the
rest is history.

Today’s Khan al Khaleeli is a tourist trap selling souvenirs. We bought a few souvenirs and then had a cup of Turkish Coffee at the famed El Fishawy coffee house. Egyptian Nobel laureate for Literature Naguib Mahfouz, is known to frequent this place and Priya Raju was determined to have coffee here. So we did it.

That ended our magical tour of Egypt. When we reached our hotel back it was around 5PM. We had an early dinner and hit the bed early.

My sincere thanks to all of you for taking the time to read my moblogs. Special thanks for the interesting questions and comments.

We leave for India tomorrow morning and reach Chennai early morning on Wednesday.

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We first went to the Citadel - one of the largest fortresses in this part of the world built on a plateau that has a beautiful view of Cairo.

The fortress was built by Saladin, one of the greatest Islamic kings around 1176 AD to protect Cairo from the crusaders. During his time he also built a 3 mile long aquaduct to the Nile to supply the fortress with water.

Later the Mohammed Ali family built a palace here (which has been completely damaged by a fire). Mohamed Ali also built a beautiful mosque completely made of Alabaster - a marble like stone which has been used since the pharaonic times. The fountain in the courtyard of the mosque currently not in use is connected to the Nile aquaduct.

Then we went to the Church of St. Sergius (Abu Serga in Arabic) - this is the oldest church built in the 4th century AD in honor of the roman Sergius who followed christianity even before Rome converted. Of course, all of you must know that all of Rome converted only in 395 AD when Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity as the official religion starting the Roman catholic order.

At this point, we learnt some very interesting history lessons from our guide. First, we went to the back of the church to see a stairway leading down below to a small room. It is believed that Virgin Mary and Jesus have visited the room below and stayed for 12 days. Jerusalem is not that far from Cairo, so it is possible for this to have happened. Coptic Church as the church in Egypt is called predates the catholic church. Our guide told us that by 395 AD all of Egypt was christian but they couldn’t proclaim their religion because the Romans persecuted the early christians. They became free to practice christianity openly only after Constantine’s embrace of the faith. This was the first chuch built by the coptic christians.

Then we went to the Ben Ezra synagogue - one of the oldest jewish temples and the only one still open, although there are fewer than 50 jews left still in Egypt. Ben Ezra, a wealthy man, bought a old church and refashioned it as a Jewish temple. His tomb is also inside the temple.

Interestingly, it is believed that the temple is at the original site where tjhe basket bearing infant Moses was found by his foster mother - the pharoah’s daughter!

That covered two of the holiest of holy sites of christianity and judaism.

Then we visited the Roman towers built by Trijian in 98 AD. A church has been built over one portion of these towers and is called the Hanging Church because it has no under structure. We visited the church and in a couple of spots on the floor they have laid some glass for you to see a vast space below most of it empty with the Roman towers below giving it a sense of hanging in the air and hence the name.

Our history lesson continued - by 641 AD a full 20 years after the founding of Islam by Prophet Mohammed, Amr Ibn Ilas conquers Egypt for Islam - a mosque built then still survives. In the next few decades 85 percent of Egypt converts to Islam with the remainder still adhering to Christianity. That ratio 85:15 of muslims to christians holds to this day in Egypt.

From an anthropology perspective, we found it very interesting to note that a group of people had switched from one monotheistic religion Christianity to another Monotheistic religion Islam. Usually, people switch from a pantheistic religion such as the Pharoanic religion to a monotheistic one. Wonder if there are such enmasse conversions elsewhere in human history from one monotheistic to another monotheistic religion?

Then we went back to our hotel, took some rest and then did a short walk around the hotel, had coffee at a small restaurant, bought some souvenirs and went back to the hotel.

Cairo reminds us of any large city in North India - lots of chaotic traffic, liberal doses of grime and garbage. People are very friendly.

On the political front (Joe’s question) - people don’t seem to like Mubarak. Take this with a pinch of salt because we spoke to only our guides and tour manager. It appears Mubarak is pushing his son Gamal to the center stage (sounds familiar, eh!).

Women can’t enter the police force or military or become judges. Mubarak is not doing much to improve the economy - perception here. Elections seem to be gamed to favor Mubarak.

The economy’s main engines are the incomes from Suez Canal operations (masterfully nationalized by Nasser), Tourism and Oil Exports. Gas is quite cheap here - approx 1 USD per gallon.

We are told that it is hard for women to find jobs. Given the general moderate nature of Egypt, we were wondering why no one has thought of using Egypt as the BPO back office of the Arab world.

More to come….

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Day before yesterday, we went to the Temples at Karnak. Our guide Ikram has 27 years experience as a tour guide. She was amazing.

Temples of Karnak, one could say, was the spiritual extravaganza of the ancient egyptians. It is so huge that one has now way of perceiving its size either by reading or by seeing pictures.

These temples were built over a 1500 year period started in the middle kingdom. Most of the work was done in the new kingdom.

At the entrance to the complex is a series of ram headed sphinxes on both sides of the entrance. Apparently, this sphinx studded road all the way to the Nile.

You see the massive pilon (this is the name given to the 2 walls at the front of these temples). This one was done in the 30th dynasty by Nectanebo I.

Once you inside you reach the world’s largest hypostyle hall with 134 columns representing a papyrus forest. The roof has fallen but some are still there including the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Then we saw a temple with a series of Amenhotep III statues standing on either side of the temple corridor. We also a similar set of statues of who else Rameses II. Then we saw one special standing Rameses II which had a smaller statue standing before him - our guide said it is Nefertari his fav queen but another guide said it is his daughter who was also his wife!
But the woman’s statue is still beautiful making us wonder how beautiful the person would have been in real life.

Then we saw the Amun temple - or the Temple of the Theban Triad - Amun, Mut (amun’s wife) and Khonsu (moon god).

We also saw 2 obelisks built by Hathepshut one of which is still very well preserved.

Interestingly the Amun Temple has a big sacred pond (equivalent of a Hindu temple tank). Our guide told us that they also had the tradition of dedicating young girls to the temple.

Cartouche - a signature in hieroglyphic script specifies the name of the king, queen etc. Rameses II’s cartouche is the most seen one because he had the habit of stamping his cartouche everywhere even those that he didn’t build!

Then we reached the Luxor temple. Here in front of the 2 pilons there were 2 obelisks - only one is still standing and the other one is in Paris, France.

In front of the Luxor temple is the avenue of sphinxes - this time with human head. The Luxor Temple was connected to the Karnak complex via a long road a few kilometers long and the entire avenue was lined with these sphinxes.

The pilons I observed for the first time (blame my poor observation) resemble a inverted trapezoid shape with the entrance in the center. It is somewhat like if you just looked at the Gopuram of Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore with an entrance carved to the center of it without the structure below the Gopuram. Our guide said this pilon concept is to symbolize the mountains and the rising sun as the entrance in between.

We then entered the temple and there is a mosque inside but it is at an altitude. It turns out that at the time the mosque was built the temple below had not been excavated.

Inside we have a hypostyle hall with 14 columns. The chapel has a special enclosure built by Alexander the Great - we could actually see Alexander’s cartouche. The temple itself was built by Amenhotep III (the king who is represented by the Colossi of Memnon we covered earlier) from the 18th dynasty.

In the hypostyle hall’s walls you can see reliefs showing the Opet Festival - during this time every year, Amun, Mut and Khonsu (the theban triad) travel to the Luxor temple marked by festivities and dances.

In this temple, we see what is called the Birthing room - the queen is in front of Amun Ra and is touched by Amun Ra and becomes pregnant.
Then she gives birth to the pharoah - god Khnum creates a baby and its shadow on the potter’s wheel. When the boy attains a certain age, a relief shows purification rites being done (a la Baptism rites).

After this we went back to our hotel and took some rest. Then we headed back into the town to see the Luxor Museum.

Lots of artifacts including some well preserved mummies. We saw some artefacts from the Middle Kingdom - in fact Akhenaten’s strikingly different facial features are fascinating. Incidentally, Akhenaten (father of Tutankhamun) tried to move the people to a monotheistic religion with the god Atum. It is still the same Sun God but he wanted only one god. But this religion didn’t last very long because as soon as Tutankhamun ascended the throne he switched it back to the old pantheistic religion.

The museum was pretty good overall.

Yesterday we flew back to Cairo and spent the afternoon in the Coptic Cairo area.

More to come…

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It is dated to 1400 BC and the facade is remarkably well preserved. It has 2 chapels on either side - one for goddess Hathor, the cow goddess and the other for Anubis, the jackal god. .

Hathepshut was a queen who ruled for 30 years and prevented Tutmoses III from the throne. Later Tutmoses gained the throne, married Hathepshut’s daughter and erased Hathepshut’s name from everywhere. But Hathepshut cleverly engraved her name with the offerings to gods and so a few of these weren’t erased! She also created a legend that she was the daughter of Amun Ra (the main god - Sun) and also dressed herself as a man - all this to rule as a pharoah.

Then we saw the Colossi of Memnon - Memnon being the name Greeks gave. These huge statues in seated posture are of Amenhotep III from the 18th dynasty. The statues are in real bad shape having suffered a lot of damage from vandals, tomb robbers and also the earthquake of 26 BC.
These statues could possibly have served as the inspiration for Rameses II’s colossi in the Abu Simbel which we covered earlier.

We came back to the boat, took some rest and went back into the town of Luxor to see the mummification museum.

The museum has the various instruments used and the whole process has been explained here. There is also a well preserved mummy of a high priest and a few animal mummies like baboons, crocodiles etc.

The Egyptians through a trial and error process cracked the mummification process around 2600 BC.

First they cut the body on the left flank and extract the lungs, intestines, stomach and liver. These were then placed in the 4
canopic jars usually made of alabaster - protected by 4 sons of Horus - liver jar by Imesti (human head), Qebehsenuef, falcon head forintestines, Duamutef, jackal head for stomach and Hapy, baboon head for the lungs.

They left the kidney behind because it was not accessible easily and of course they needed to leave the heart behind for the final judgement, which we covered earlier. The most interesting thing, for all their advanced stuff, is that they didn’t consider the brain to be anything important! They used a sharp instrument inserted through the nose and whisked the brain into a liquid and extracted it out.

It is not clear how they drained the blood or did they not?

Then they put saw dust and into the internal cavities. Then they covered the body and the organs in Natron salt for 40 days. Then the body was washed with oils, spices and resins and then the body was wrapped in linen placing more salts and saw dust. They also placed amulets in each layer with appropriate recitations of holy texts by the priests.

After this the mummy was placed in decorated coffins which was then placed into a decorated sarcophagus with the canopic jars.

They also placed small statues of the deceased called Ushabtis into a wooden box. These Ushabtis are there to take the place of the diseased during various encounters in after life.

They also placed mummified animals, treasures, replicas of furniture, dresses, sandals etc to be used during the journey in the after life.

Once the process was complete, when the mummy is ready for the funeral procession, they do a ceremony called “Opening of the mouth” which they beleived breathed senses back into the body for the journey in after life.

The museum also had several instruments for cutting the body, removing the brain etc.

On the whole a fascinating trip into the mummification process.

Today we visited the Temple of Karnak - the most important site in all of Egypt and the Luxor temple.

More to come ….

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