Sites of Ancient Egypt

We have had a busy couple of days taking in the sites of ancient Egypt. We explored the pyramids of Giza. I was surprised how close these pyramids are to the city of Cairo -- in my mind I thought they were way out in the desert, but they are really right in the middle of everything! We wandered around the pyramids, climbed around a bit, but decided not to go inside. This proved to be the right decision, confirmed after everyone else in our group did decide to pay for the entry ticket and regretted it after. Then the sphinx is very close to the pyramids, but you can't actually see it from the pyramids (the reverse is

not true since the pyramids are so tall and the sphinx is in a valley).

Since we didn't go into the pyramids, we decided to "splurge" (about $4 each) on a short camel ride through the desert to get a panorama vista of the pyramids. It was an experience and totally worth it! The guide took us out and posed us like every other tourist who has visited the pyramids probably since photography began. But it was fun.

In the afternoon of that day, we visited the Ancient Egyptian Museum. There is a new museum -- the Grand Egyptian Museum -- scheduled to open two years ago, or last year, or last month, or later this year, or....! Much of the collection has been moved to the new and not-yet-opened museum, but we did get to see many of

the treasures from Ancient Egypt including the entire King Tut collection. Honestly, it is a bit overwhelming to see how much is there and try to take in so much at once! There are also really interesting questions / discussions around who (which country in most cases) has the right to own and display artifacts, many of which were taken from their native sites during colonization. For instance, the British Museum has the Rosetta Stone while the Egyptian Museum must display a replica.

This morning we flew from Cairo to Aswan after a very early wake up call. We went straight from the airport to a port near Aswan to get on a boat to take us out to Philae Island (in the Nile) to visit the temple to Isis there. It is a breathtaking complex with several "layers" of temple and extraordinary carving and relief sculpture covering nearly

the whole place. This temple is about 2300 years old and has hosted visitors throughout the centuries...and it turns out humans have acted out in similar ways that whole time! In the temple, there is graffiti from Coptic Christians who used the temple as a church, from Arabs who ruled Egypt over a thousand years ago, and from French and British colonizers.

Both days we had quick lunches of Egyptian falafel, made from fava beans here as opposed to chickpeas. Delicious! Tonight, from Aswan, we visited a Nubian village on Elephantine Island and were hosted by a family there for dinner. The food was also delicious (we'll admit that we were skeptical at first) and a great opportunity to be in a local village and in a local's home. We learned of some of the differences between Egyptian and Nubian culture.