The Craftiest Workshop

Last year, on Valentine’s Day, we left on a trip to Egypt with another couple. This was just before our Global Pandemic and the COVID-19 crisis. We stayed at a hotel in Cairo and toured a bit but also took a five day river cruise on the Nile.

I was trying to decide how to capture our Egypt trip in one post. I thought that perhaps I would share some of the things that surprised me about the country and its history. These things may also surprise you.

Precipitation and air quality (I am Canadian so I first must talk about the weather)

Egypt gets on average 8 cm of rain each year and there were only about 15 days on which it rained last year in Cairo. Their yearly average rainfall is equivalent to the average monthly total rainfall in most Ontario cities. The air is dry and smells like the environment as it rarely gets refreshed by rain. In Cairo, you smell the vehicle exhaust and garbage. The garbage gets thrown in ditches situated in the middle of roads and into the Nile River. There is a constant haze in the sky in the city from pollution.

Transportation is varied and uncontrolled

You see compact three wheeled cars, buses, vans and carts pulled by donkeys in the streets. There are no lane markings and if there are, no one follows them. There are no street signs or traffic lights. Pedestrians cross at their peril and cars seem to let them weave through.

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There is security everywhere

On almost every street corner there is a police or military presence. At every tourist attraction, there is a security checkpoint, most with bag scanners or someone checking bags. Tourists are encouraged to not leave their hotel or tour group without a guide.

Egypt does have agriculture

Along the Nile River crops are plentiful, drawing water from the river to irrigate crops. Crops such as sugarcane, rice, wheat, cotton, beans, citrus fruit, stone fruit and some vegetables are grown. When we saw market stands in the city, the fruit and vegetable choices did not look that much different from ours.

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Egypt maintains ancestral craftsmanship

As part of our tour we were taken to a school for rug making, a stone gallery and a papyrus shop. We were shown the methods that they use, following ancient traditions, to create articles to sell to tourists.

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Temples are for the living and Tombs for the dead

I did not realize that a temple was built by a living Pharaoh to honour the gods. These temples were always built on the east side of the Nile River. The east is where the sun rises; the living side. On the west side of the Nile River is where the pyramids and tombs are. The pyramids were the oldest tombs of the first Pharaohs. Later Pharaohs were buried in underground tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

The temples and tombs are not well preserved from tourists

From our very first stop, we could tell that the Egyptians are not very concerned with preserving the artifacts, statues and monuments that they have. You can climb on things and touch pretty much everything. The Cairo museum was slightly better in that some things were encased in wood display cases behind glass. We could have climbed onto the pyramid and I was able to bring back stone from the ground below the Step Pyramid.

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The only spot well roped off was the Sphinx.

We were only able to take pics from a spot beside it.

The Egyptian Hieroglyphs were very colourful and deep

I had seen pictures of hieroglyphs and always thought them to just be carvings in stone with no colour. The colour has simply been worn away by age, weather and humans. Inside the tombs and on the inner ceilings and walls of temples, you can see the vivid colours that were used 2000 years ago. When visiting the temples, you can touch the hieroglyphs and run your finger in the groove of the carvings. The outside carvings have no colour but were once just as vibrant.

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There are interesting tidbits that you might miss without a guide

a. There are columns at all the temples. They all have plants carved into them at the top. They were either lotus flower, water lilies, papyrus reeds or palm leaves.

b. The direction a hierglyph is read is determined by which direction the birds are facing. If they are facing left, they are read right to left. If facing right, they are read left to right. If they are lined up vertically, they are read from top to bottom.

c. There are statues of the different Pharaohs at every temple. Some of the statues have them with their foot forward and other with feet together. If their foot is forward, the statue was carved while they were still alive; if the feet are together, it was created after their death.

d. The Egyptians had symbols that represented numbers

God with hands = 1,000,000

Fish = 100,000

Pointed finger= 10,000

Bent reed = 1,000

Rope=100

Heel bone=10

Staff= 1

Tutankamen was not an important Pharaoh

Everyone knows his name but he only ruled for ten years and was not an important Pharaoh in Egyptian history. The reason he is famous is because his tomb was found intact; the mummy, canopic jars and treasures were still in the tomb. The contents of the tomb are now at the Cairo museum. Below are King Tut’s canopic jars buried with him to be used in the afterlife. The four jars contain his stomach, intestines, lungs and liver. The heart remained inside the mummy to be weighed against a feather in the afterlife.

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The conversion of Egyptian pound to Canadian Dollar

The conversion rate is 100 E.P. = $8 Cdn. For some reason I really had trouble wrapping my head around it. The money we exchanged gave us denominations starting at 5 E.P. This amount was used mostly as our potty money. When you were not on the ship and you needed to use the washroom, you were expected to pay. There were women working at the toilets that would give you a few squares of toilet paper and let you in if you gave them money. Each bathroom trip cost us $0.40 Cdn. Another item we were surprised by the price of was pop; it was very expensive compared to what we would pay in Canada; $4.50 for a small glass of Pepsi at a restaurant.

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Water is a precious commodity

We take it for granted in Canada that we have fresh, clean tap water to drink everyday. As a tourist, you only drink bottled water when in Egypt. We even had to pay for the bottled water while on our cruise boat. We would by a big bottle and then fill up our water bottles for the day. We were even encouraged to use bottled water to brush our teeth. Although we tried to be careful, I still got quite sick at one point in the trip.

Egypt was always at the top of my list of places that I wanted to visit. We visited Memphis, Saqqara, Valley of the Kings, Karnak, Luxor, Aswan, Edfu, Kom Ombo and other tourist spots in Cairo. The history is very interesting and we feel like we saw most of the highlights of the country during this trip. We only missed going to Alexandria and Abu Simbel.

One of our bucket list destinations is now checked off.