Day 1:
Evolution of a revolution
Our first trip to Egypt after the Egyptians call the ‘25
January Revolution’ or simply the ‘Revolution’.
So what’s different? Well, visually, we’ve spotted tanks, passed lots of armoured
personnel carriers on the road on our round trip to Aswan, over 200 new sleeping
policemen (in Egypt that can mean a number of things) at every junction, a
local roadblock and election posters everywhere. Troible – not a sign.
Speaking to people, it’s also clear that some wrongs have
been righted. In Luxor, the Mubarak Mayor and some of his cronies have been
arrested and sentenced. These are the people who bribed their way to success. A
good example is the guy who owns the restaurants on the lower walkway along the
Nile. It turns out he had no alcohol licence, nor permission to build his
restaurant on the banks of the Nile, so he was sentenced to 15 days in jail and
is now keeping a low profile. Land has also been colonised by poor people who
see an opportunity to better themselves. On the whole, people seem less afraid
of the police and willing to stand up to them when they perceive that their
approach is wrong. We saw this during the night at a checkpoint, where our
driver challenged the need for us to be ‘escorted’.
In general, people are positive but nervous; nervous about
the results of the election. They know that the Muslim Brotherhood will gain a
large share of the vote but also say that this may be no bad thing. If the
Brotherhood fail or push too far in the direction of religious strictures, they
will be seen as failures and voted out. Many simply crave the sort of social
and security stability that the Brotherhood promise. Luxor, Aswan and Upper
Egypt in general, is a long way from Cairo, and Egypt is not Cairo.
Nevertheless, even those who are critical of the continuing chaos seem glad
that Mubarak and his kleptomaniacs have gone.
On the other hand, each evening we saw TV and web images
from Cairo with women and men being beaten savagely, some dying from gunshot
wounds. Al Jazeera were, once again at the forefront of the news, the BBC and
CNN miserable failures. Al Jazeera was so active that their journalists were
sought out by the regime, their cameras smashed and personnel beaten. This, of
course, is massively counterproductive, as the military are now losing ground
as a force for good.
But the big difference is the absence of tourists. They’re
thin on the ground and we often found ourselves alone in sites or on the road.
The Nile boats have a handful of people as they pass. This is a real shame as
many Egyptians rely on tourism to feed their families and many have lost their
jobs. In an admirable gesture, the European managers at our hotel have
sacrificed their salaries for two months to keep their staff in employment. As
Tim says, “We have to visit their past ruins to support them in the present,
and stop their future from being ruined”.
Day 2: Luxor Temple
Luxor Temple in the morning with Tim and Sarah, who are
visiting Egypt for the first time. I’ve been to this temple many times and it
never fails to impress. Still standing after more than three thousand years,
it’s a great place to witness the huge sweep of Egyptian history. Built on
earlier structures (to be seen in the open air museum at the back), what you
see today is the result of two of the greatest Pharaohs (Amenhotep III and
Rameses II), as well as the man who played a huge role in changing Egyptian
history, Alexander the Great. There’s also extensive 4th century
Roman work as the Temple was a Roman fortress, the remains of Byzantine
churches and a mosque reflecting the great 7th century shift towards
Islam. And today we saw election posters on its walls, a Syrian market on the
east side and the citizens of Luxor out with their children in the new park on
the east side. The Temple is still the focal point of the town.
You may wonder why it lies on a N-S axis, when most Egyptian
temples lie E-W? This is in response to its religious function as a destination
from Karnac to the north, via the avenue of the Sphinxes, which is now almost
completely uncovered. The earliest part of the Temple is at the back, a block
of rooms, renovated by Alexander, who depicted himself as a Pharaoh. You can
see his cartouche on the walls here. Amenhotep III originally built this block
as well as the huge, adjoining, peristyle court. His work was interrupted when
Akhenaten decided to abolish polytheism for sun-god monotheism, and moved his
capital north to Amarna (now that WAS a revolution). But the experiment was
short lived and Tutankhamen continued what Amenhotep had planned, with the
pillared colonnade. Half a century later the shy and retiring Rameses II, not
to be outdone, added another huge court, a pylon, four statues of himself and
two obelisks. After several hours, we emerged ready for some beers in Sinbad’s
Café (the cheapest Stella in town 10 LE - but watch out for the 2.5LE sales
tax!).
Thoughts on obelisks
It’s a shape we’re all familiar with, graceful needles of
stone covered in hieroglyphics. The remaining obelisk at the entrance to Luxor
Temple was one of a pair, the other is now in the Place de Concorde in Paris.
Rome, Paris, London and many other cities have been graced with these fine
monuments, often outshining modern, public sculpture. But few know much about
their purpose. How many graves and war monuments mimic this form in the UK?
Of course, everything in Egypt starts with the sun and this
is sun inspired art, lightning rods for the sun. As a nation it is largely a
river that runs through a desert, so it hardly ever rains. The sun is a
dominant presence. Obelisks pointed to the sun and were designed with electrum
and gold tips to reflect the sun. Their pyramidal tips are part of the same
iconography as the great pyramids of the old Kingdom. They are, in many ways,
the great emblem of Egyptian art; simple, monolithic, soaring pinnacles to the
sun.
Day 3: West Bank
Medinet habu
Medinet Habu by taxi with the redoubtable Tim and Sarah.
This is Rameses III, who wanted to emulate his father, so we have huge battle
scenes against the Sea Peoples and Libyans. Row upon row of captives, with
their hands bound behind their backs and their place names in cartouches. The
battle scenes are a mixture of the abstract and naturalism, Rameses shown as a
giant figure but the battlefield a mass of thriving and dead bodies. But it’s
the post battle scenes that shock, with piles of chopped off tongues, hands and
penises. Rameses III was well aware of the possibility of erasure, so chiselled
his name often four or five inches deep to prevent them from being wiped and
overcut. You have to imagine the canal that came up from the Nile almost
touching the walls. Again, every temple tells a story through reuse, and this
one was used by the workers who built the tombs and was a full blown town as
well as containing a Byzantine church. Two bee-eaters were zipping around the
Nilometer, which is well worth a visit on the north side.
Deir el Bahri
This huge temple complex is ramped with famous scenes from
Hatshetsup’s expeditions to Punt. I don’t particularly like this temple as I
think it fails to provide the reveals and sense of place of other sites. The
cliffs, however form a superb backdrop, the cream rock sharp against the deep
blue sky.
Thoughts on Egyptian art
David Hockney, in his new book, claims that Egyptian art is
the high point of human art. That’s a challenging statement so can it be
defended? There’s several features of Egyptian art that have to be recognised
as important.
First, its ubiquity.
Barely a surface is free from painted or carved art. Entire walls, pediments
and columns are covered in hieroglyphics and relief carving. Even their tombs
are saturated with high quality images.
Second, its permanence.
Blessed with an abundance of limestone, sandstone, granite and other rock types
such as alabaster and basalt, close to a navigable river that has continuous
northerlies ND floods once a year, access to huge amounts of building stone was
an advantage. But they built for eternity, their temples and tombs designed for
the infinity of time. There is nothing half-hearted about Egyptian art. It’s
produced to be part of a never-ending future.
Third is the exquisite use of colour. Mineral colours were used giving a permanence that organic
colour does not. So the ruins that were uncovered in the 19th C had
much of their original colour intact. Unfortunately, much has been, or is still
being rubbed or eroded away. It’s still hard to imagine the riot of colour that
the temples would have shown in their time. The use of foreground and
background effects, along with transparency in clothing is still there to be seen.
Fourth is the idea of text
as art. No written language I know of is as beautiful as Egyptian
hieroglyphics, their columns of pictures and symbols, so representational that
they fooled linguists for hundreds of years into thinking they were just that –
pictures representing words. It took the genius of Champollion to realise that
they were a mixture of representational symbols and sounds. At time, especially
in Seti’s Abydos, the hieroglyphics are executed in relief with astounding
precision and artistry.
Fifth is intent.
There is no ‘artist’ as such, only art with a purpose, that purpose being
mostly life and death. In this sense, there is little art for art’s sake or art
as a thing in itself but it is this freedom from fashion that is so compelling.
They were not interested in temporary, temporal art only art that was eternal.
As to the charge that’s it’s formulaic, repetitive and therefore
a little tedious, you need only visit the tomb paintings in the British Museum
or the battle scenes at Medinet Habu to see otherwise.
Day 4: West bank
ferry and cycling
Across on the local ferry (10p) and up to Mohammed’s Bike
Shop for our usual bike hire (£1 for the day!). You get accosted by taxi
drivers here, but it’s all a bit of a laugh and they soon leave you alone. We
have two cards with the words ‘Taxi Drivel’ and ‘Taxi Diver’ which prompted the
later reflection that these were a deliberate ploy to catch the eye and get a
laugh. In Luxor, where the rich and poor collide, everyone has an agenda.
Then off to see the new excavations at Amenhotep IIIs temple
(the one fronted by the statues of Memnon). We weren’t allowed on the site so
used binoculars to see the stele and newly excavated statues, This was a huge
complex, and reckoned to inspire the greatest
production of statuary in our history. The guardian asked to try our
binoculars and was delighted, clearly his first time as he was clearly startled.
‘Everything big’ he shouted.
Temple of Ay and Horemheb (almost completely ruined),
Tutmose III (recently excavated), then down into an excavated section of the
processional way from Deir el Bahri, where the guardian sneaked us in for some
baksheesh. There’s the finely finished walls of the processional way and the
site is littered with hieroglyphic covered blocks.
Haggling on the move
We also visited three tombs in the almost deserted Valley of
the Queens, where I bargained for a set of canopic jars on the way out. We came
down from 180LE to 70LE but my final offer was 50LE, so I walked off, sure in
the knowledge that it was not over. Sure enough, as we cycled way down the
road, after a couple of hundred yards, we heard the motorbike. It was the guy chasing
after us, so we negotiated on the move. I got them for 50.
Back alleys and fields
We cycled back through the sugar cane fields and villages,
along dirt roads and immaculately and incongruously dressed locals in what look
like squalid houses. I really recommend this mode of transport on the West
Bank. You get a real feel for the landscape, smells, people and sites, and
nothing but smiles and waves.
Caleche crash
Sitting in a bus waiting to go back to the Jolie Ville, we
heard a crash, turned and saw a caliche crash into the back, the horse rearing
up onto the pavement. The caliche driver carried on as if nothing had happened.
This meant we had to act as witnesses and gave a written statement to the
Tourist Police. As you can gather, driving is a skill that is in short supply
in Egypt. As it turns out this was not the only crash we’d see this week.
Day 5: Caleche
Morning in
Luxor at Gaddis (great bookshop) where I bought ‘The Complete Temples’ by
Richard Wilkinson. I’ve read its companion piece ‘The Complete Pyramids’ and
this is just as well written and Illustrated. We threw in a couple of alabaster
candle bowls.
Pizza Roma
It may seem odd eating pizza in Egypt but this small
restaurant’s a real find. Besides, we managed to fix up a drive to Aswan with
the waiter (another Mohammed) who showed us his car and gave us a good price.
Deal done. I hate using foreign tour companies here. The locals deserve our
support.
Caleche
You can’t come to Luxor and not take a caliche. It’s a
black, horse-drawn buggy driven by Luxor’s famous hasslers – the caliche
drivers. They will pester you, follow you and cheat you if they can (no change,
money for the horse etc.) But to be fair, some of them are fine, and great
characters. In this case we got one all the way back to the hotel. I made the
mistake of climbing on board first, and while picking up the reins for a
photograph, it took off! The driver was none too pleased but after an apology
we were off, clipping along under the stars, Sarah driving. On previous trips
we’ve has chariot type races, a wheel fall off and an overshoot past the hotel
entrance that had our horse slam on the hoof brakes. This was just a pleasant
saunter in the cool night air – wonderful end to the day.
Day 6: Aswan
Up at around 6, in our friend’s grey Hyunda, It was around
£12 for each of the four of us for the entire day and I mean the entire day as
we had him and the car at our disposal for over 15 hours and over 400 Km.
Esna
When we first visited this temple, 22 years ago, the
interior was still full of unexcavated dirt. It sits right in the centre of
town underneath the houses. In fact, what you see is only a fraction of the
temple complex. It’s Ptolmeic and has a number of cartouches representing Roman
Emperors. Inside the forest of pillars is impressive and some colour remains.
Tim bought a rather fine cane. I recommend the caravanserai just back from the
Temple entrance. It has some finely carved woodwork.
Sugar cane
A pit-stop for some sugar cane juice. The guy pushes a few
stalks of sugar cane into a grinder, where water is added and out pours a light
green liquid that is cool and sweet. The vendor wanted our photos and up popped
an old woman with bottle-bottom glasses who insisted on being in the photo. She
was great, so we snapped her on Tim’s iPhone and showed her the photo – she
howled with laughter.
Roadblock
Beyond Esna, we came across a local roadblock. Men in
Jalabas and big white turbans had put barriers across the road but they saw
that we were tourists and waved us through. These disputes are common, we hear,
as people express their newly found freedoms. This one, apparently, was about
the lack of gas canister deliveries and rising gas prices. I suppose I was
surprised at this, as the Aswan Dam must supply plentiful electricity. Cooking,
I suppose.
Crash
How would you describe the driving in Egypt? Erratic,
chaotic, downright dangerous? All of these and more. Rather worryingly, our
driver explained that many, including himself, had never sat a test - you get a
licence by paying for it. He also explained how he liked the occasional spliff!
On roads where you have to contend with boys and men on donkeys (up to three at
a time) donkey carts, bicycles, motorbikes, tut-tut taxis, dolmushes that stop
and start along the entire road, buses and articulated lorries, and pedestrians
jumping on and off these vehicles as well as walking and crossing, is it
surprising that accidents are common? There’s a sort of ‘inshallah’ attitude to
driving. In any case, while crossing yet another sleeping policeman, so high
they often scraped the bottom of car, a crazy guy in a pickup got impatient and
tried to overtake on the speed bump. Unfortunately, there was not enough space
for him to squeeze through so he smashed along the entire side of a new car
coming in the opposite direction. The last we saw was the car driver heading
towards the pickup – we scarpered, as it’s unwise to be involved as witnesses.
By the way no one has insurance.
Kom Ombo
We were the only people here, at this famous double-entranced
temple, famous for its medical instrument carvings, which we found (again with
great difficulty). The huge sugar acne factory was not operating today, so the
usual fumes were absent.
High Dam
This is a huge construction and the view back over Lake
Nasser stretches off towards the Sudan. A product of the now forgotten cold
war, built by the Russians to stymy American foreign policy, it transformed
Egypt providing much needed electrical energy and control over its agriculture,
through irrigation, rather than inundation. A vast temple to a Godless world?
Past tanks to Kalabsha
Having been
to Philae several times, we decided to try the Temple of Kalabsha, also on an
island. The problem was getting past the tanks! We stopped staring right down
the barrel of of a camouflaged tank and asked the guy with the Kalashnikov
whether we could pass to hire a boat to the island. I heard him say ‘La’ (no)
but our intrepid driver persevered and he let us go on to the next obstacle,
some soldiers manning a gate. Again some sweet talk and we were through. Vive
la revolution! We negotiated with boatman and he sailed us across a calm and
flat Lake Nasser to the island in the evening sun. This temple, like Philae,
was moved here when the dam was built. It is Ptolemaic, dedicated to Augustus
but has some interesting Greek inscriptions from the 5th C AD and
Christian crosses from the time it was used as a church. It’s unfinished and
you can therefore see exactly how they dressed the walls and carved the outer
reliefs. There’s also a Nilometer within the Temple, almost identical to the
one at Kom Ombo.
There’s a
smaller temple on the back of the island which Ken and I walked round to, Beit
el-Wali, with Rameses battles and carvings of an ostrich, elephant, giraffe,
baboons and antelope. This is a Nubian monument and you get a real feeling for
the proximity to central Africa. Other early pre-dynastic rock carvings and two
other temples are on the island. This was well worth the effort. On the sail
back as the sun set, we were all in that Twilight zone, when the light is warm,
the water calm and no need to speak. Then back past several tanks, which we
surreptitiously photographed, and back down into Aswan.
Meeting mum
Our driver had a surprise in store. He drove us into a poor,
residential area full of honking cars and donkey carts. The cacophony from
their horns and general traffic chaos, was quite dirfferent from the clam of
the lake and temple. We stopped and started past little shops, hanging meat and
eventually through the back streets to mum’s house. This was a flat entered
through a dark close and she was great, feeding us fruit and tea. It was a real
privilege to meet her. We did the usual showing each other pictures of sons,
daughters and grandchildren. Mohammed went of to pray at sundown.
Mosques
Aswan has two fine mosques, one cream coloured in the centre
of town, that sits atop a hill, a beautiful and graceful building that crowns
the hill with two minarets and a domed hall. An even larger one, similar in
design, in pure white marble, sits on the north side of the town. We saw this
at night with its pure white interior and gold trimmings. It was spectacular.
German motorcycles
On the drive
back (nearly three and a half hours without stopping) we saw Egypt at night.
Men with shishas in cafes, groups watching TV as in a mini-cinema. It rarely
rains here so life is lived outdoors. There’s blokes everywhere but few women
to be seen. Blokes tend to sit in small groups or watch in groups as one bloke
does some digging There also appeared to be a shortage of blokes in some areas
as they were being transported in batches up the road hanging onto the back of
trucks. We reckoned on a ‘bloke’ apprenticeship of around two to three years,
perfecting that middle-distance stare and relaxed demeanour.
As we neared
Luxor we were stopped by the police and told to wait. Apparently, a local
village head had got a bit agitated and threatened to have a go at us tourists.
Our driven was non-plussed and argued with the two policemen – how things have
changed. He argued that it was fooling to have all of your eggs in one basket,
an argument of which I wasn’t entirely convinced. After 15 minutes a siren
driven police truck arrived and off we went, the BMW motorbikes roared off too
fast for the police escort and we were left behind as the police escort tried
to catch the Germans.
Day 7: Dark clouds
Over the last few days we’ve seen women almost beaten to
death by clubs, a girl in a black burka stripped to her underwear and attacks
on women unheard of in Egypt, but not, unfortunately Bahrain. Soldiers fired
into unarmed protestors. Military leaders appeared on television sounding just
like Mubarak. The revolution is far from over. I spoke to two young women who
were full of hope but also full of apprehension. There may be few tourists in
Egypt but it is history and not holidays that matter. The tourists will return.
It remains to be seen what sort of country they return to.
Art Nouveau 1 and film set
Way out from the ugly buildings of the EU is Brussels south-west,
Art Nouveau district, where we visited the Horta House then went on a long walk
Art Nouveau house spotting. These (last) turn of the century houses are mostly
tall, narrow rectangles set with fantastically curved designs that whip across
space, in metal wood, concrete and stone. What you see is straight from the
pen, not the drawing board and it’s not just decorative, it’s an entire aesthetic.
These people were not just painters but artists who wanted to infuse everything
with beauty. Art was to be lived and lived in. The3 scope of the movement is
astounding in typography, posters, graphic art, Paris metro signs, furniture,
painting, sculpture, ceramics, jewellery, clothes, architecture, even fixture
and fittings. The Horta House is therefore the perfect showcase, an orginal Art
Nouveau house designed and lived in by perhaps the premier Art Nouveau
architect. This is a far cry from the Glasgow Mackintosh style, as there’s less
symmetry and no rectangles and squares. It’s full of light and the steel
structure gave him a chance to be more open plan. The Hotel Tassel, often seen
as the first truly Art Nouveau building is just round the corner and is as
shocking now as it was then. It’s all Bruxelles Art Nouveau, free-flowing
organic forms. It takes a couple of hours to cover the whole set of houses in
this area but they are an absolute joy. In among the often dreary Brussels buildings,
a façade just jumps out. All the rules are broken; of symmetry, size and standards.
In many ways I’ve enjoyed this more than the Secessionist Art Noveau
architecture in Vienna. However, I’ve been told that the finest Art Nouveau
buildings in Europe are in Riga of all places, so that’s next.
After the
success of our first Art Nouveau walk, we ventured north to another district,
packed with these amazing houses. What makes the walk so fascinating is
‘surprise’, as every single one was a unique creation. This is also true of the
detail, the letterboxes, door handles, coat hooks, windows, doors,
candleholders, even keyholes. Every functional object was an opportunity for
curved embellishment. This is the antithesis of English architecture, where
replication and repetition is the norm; Georgian facades, Victorian brick
terraces, council housing, high rise flats. The English love conformity and
eschew show. 
