Egypt, Part 1

An Egyptian farm outside of Cairo
Another farm with an animal-driven water wheel
A market in Cairo defines "teeming"
One of the colorful shops in old Cairo
A tenement district in Cairo
The donkey is the most valuable animal in rural Egypt
The Nile and its inevitable felucca
An Egyptian farmer (in galabiyah) loading his faithful donkey
Another donkey fully laden
The "step" pyramid at Sakarra
This tourist policeman demanded "baksheesh" for the photo, to which I responded "no baksheesh"
If you didn't see this earlier, here we are on "ships of the desert"

The classic view of the pyramids
A close-up of the face of the sphinx: a little scary!
Nice head dress
Did you ever wonder what the rear of the sphinx looked like? It has a real tail!
The discarded statue of Ramses II (apparently defective, found in a ditch)

The interior of the Mohammad Ali Mosque with Joyce and our guide Nadia (sorry, a duplicate follows)
Interior of the Sultan Hassan Mosque; the photo below shows the
imam's seat in the Sultan Hassan Mosque, inlaid with ivory The crypt of the Holy Family
Joyce and Nadia
The Citadel built by Saladin to fend off the crusaders
The exterior of the Mohammad Ali Mosque in the Citadel
The clock tower in the Mohammad Ali Mosque
The interior of the Mohammad Ali Mosque
The ceiling of the Sultan Hassan Mosque

One of the streets in a souk in old Cairo
Another view of the street, with Joyce visible in her Tilley hat
Not all Egyptian women wear an abbaya
The same young women
This Egyptian is enjoying his hookah

Once again we find ourselves roughing it, this time in Cairo at the Four Seasons (with five restaurants, a pool grill and a bar) on the Corniche alongside the Nile.

On Friday we visited the pyramids and sphinx at Giza. I cannot add to the magnificence of these architectural achievements: up close they beggar any word description, and I think that they are best summed up by saying "see them in person." We took the obligatory camel ride with a guide who called himself Moses, and he was more than willing to lead us to the promised land, or at least to Libya. From Giza we traveled to Sakarra to view a small museum with a discarded statue of Ramses II, followed by a visit to the earliest "step" pyramid. Along the way we had a good view of Egyptian rural life, including such sights as an animal driven water wheel and a continuous procession of donkey carts. Unlike India, where the fields seemed to be worked predominantly by women, the fields outside of Cairo seemed to worked mostly by men in galabiyahs ( a caftan worn by Egyptian men). The rural villages are an interesting mixture of new and old; according to our guide, Nadia Ghanem, the government is engaged in a program to move farming families out of their traditional mud brick homes into homes that are more in keeping with Western traditions. But it is evident that much of the heavy work is done by animals, not by machinery, which is probably a function of both small plots and lack of capital.

On Saturday we visited the Citadel, the Muhammad Ali Mosque inside the Citadel, the Sultan Hassan Mosque, and the crypt where Jesus, Mary and Joseph are supposed to have spent time in Egypt, followed by a visit to the Egyptian Museum. No pictures are permitted in the Museum but if one saw only the Tutankhamen treasures it would be more than worth the trip to Cairo. The story of the discovery of the Tutankhamen tomb is a must. It is easy to imagine the thrill that Howard Carter and his co-workers experienced to find the only unlooted Pharaonic tomb in Egypt, in 1922 or since.

After lunch at Naguib Mahfouz Restaurant in the Khan El Khalili Bazaar in old Cairo, we spent a few minutes browsing the narrow streets of the souk and enduring the entreaties of the merchants who stand outside of their stalls and literally buttonhole all passersby, with special attention to tourists. Please be assured that we are not bringing home replicas of the pyramids, sphinx or mosques, and it is now too late for any reader to request such a souvenir since we depart early tomorrow morning (Sunday) for Jeruasalem via Amman.