Welcome to our little home on the net. We are Steve & Rosemary and live in Buckinghamshire, UK. This is a blog of our life, sometimes interesting, but mainly boring. It is very picture orientated as Steve loves to take pictures, especially of wildlife. Sometimes he has his arm twisted by Rosemary and takes the odd snap of a weed.
I also add photographs to a shared google photo album which is here
Today the SS Misr set sail at 4.00am to Qena. A lie in today, breakfast at 8.00 am. Just before arriving at Qena we passed under a bridge which was too low, so the sunshades and funnel were lowered. The usual ship’s hand was on deck to check the height of the bridge. I had to jump to touch the underside of the road bridge.
Shortly afterwards we docked at Qena and boarded our coaches, along with the German contingent who were still in tow. We all wondered where the coaches went at night time, the guides always brought on some food for the drivers. I think some passengers were mystified as to why we had to remove all our possessions. Anwar joked that the coaches went off to Somalia for the night.
The short bus trip had us at
The Temple at Dendera was fabulous with excellent engravings. A not-to-be missed is the zodiac on the ceiling of a chapel in the Temple of Hathor. This was originally taken to France for examination. The Egyptian Government asked for it back. Several years later it arrived and was placed back in its original location. Later is was discovered to be a plaster of Paris copy, the original stolen (?) one by the French is in the Louvre.
Back to the boat for lunch, which set sail for Luxor where we were to spend the next couple of nights. Just before tea we had a tour of SS Misr. This took us in to the galley, which had several separate rooms various different preparation, such as meat & pastry. The galley looked very clean and very stainless steel. They showed us the bottled water they used.
We then went, much to R’s delight, to the engine room to see the two steam engines which provided the propulsion for the boat. The SS Misr was launched on 28th May 1918. She was built by Lytham Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Preston, Lancashire. The boat was owned at one stage by King Farouk when she was converted into a luxury yacht. She has been renovated, but still uses steam engines for propulsion. There are two engines, each with two cylinders, one high pressure and the other low pressure. The boiler is a modern diesel fired boiler that can generate 4.2 tons of steam an hour at 10 bar. She now carries tourists up and down the Nile from Cairo right through to Aswan, and destinations in between.
There was a diagram of the original boat before it has three floors added in the restoration, extended in height and width. I can understand how to add the height, but how do you make the boat longer and wider, surely there can’t be much which is original? Of the three floors added, I expect one is considered to be the deck at the top, or maybe it’s the crew quarters below the main floor.
I now know what the loud noise is outside our cabin. There is a powerful fan which sucks in cool air to be blown into another plant room which has generators and other equipment. Unfortunately, our cabin on the lower deck, is on the same side as the fan and nearest to it, so it is affected the most by the throbbing noise. People on the other side, further forward and higher up would not hear it at all. Note for when I take the Aswan to Cairo cruise, don’t book cabin 201.
Before Dinner we had another George Hart lecture, this time on the “Valley of the Kings”, where we would be visiting in the morning.
Today was meant to be a very early morning start for out boat, 3.30, but somehow it was delayed an hour or so. We arrived at Al Balyana along with the German boat. They made it to Abydos before us, but we were told they would be rushing on elsewhere. The coach trip to Abydos was slow with the convoy of several coaches being herded through the narrow streets to the temple. These streets ,with the milling, waving people, are not designed for traffic, especially large coaches.
As well as us and the Germans at Abydos, there were crowds of Egyptian school children. Anwar showed as the mud walls and the smaller temple of Rameses II first. We had just finished with this before we became inundated with school children. A quick look at the Nilometer, and then up on to the roof of the Temple of Seti I. Next a tour of the temple, with huge columns, and high ceilings. Where the roof had been cleaned of black mould, there were delightful coloured ceiling paintings. The more able also visited the catacombs which entailed a short ladder, followed by a low three foot drop on entry. Our tour leader advised it was not for short legs, so R declined. (We were told that a Nilometer was used to check the level of the Nile from which the priest could determine the amount of tax to be paid by the farmers.)
The engravings on the limestone, and even the sandstone were exquisite. It is such a pity that the Roman/Christians disfigured so much of what they thought was inappropriate. There was also a wall carving listing the cartouches of all pharaohs up until that time, excluding five (Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Smenkhkare (who was perhaps Akhenaten’s wife Nefertiti), Tutankhamun & Ay). We should have remembered these five cos they formed a question in the quiz.
Some lovely large bats were also roosting in the temple. By this time we had the temple almost to ourselves, the Germans and school children had all departed. I really did need a human figure in some of the pictures to show the true scale of the temple.
Back at the boat, we continued our cruised south with the Germans behind. We passed
We then travelled on to the town of Naga Hammi (aka Abo Homar) where we moored up outside a restaurant blocking the view of the Nile from the diners. Here we had dinner on our boat, waiting for the two large swing bridges to be opened, a road bridge and a rail bridge.
Everyone was in bed before the bridge was opened, but I noticed at 11.00 pm we had started to move, so rushed up on deck to witness the passage through the bridges. Three large boats had waited, us and the Germans and another boat travelling north in the opposite direction. The bridge opening was late in the evening to reduce the chance of the bridge sticking from the expanded rail tracks from the day time heat, or was it because there was less traffic and no trains coming by?
We shortly moored up again for the night on the south side of the bridge. The reception & waiting staff, who were normally well-dressed, appeared now to be all in dress-down, jeans and T-shirts. Think they were surprised to see me prowling around with a camera.
Today was a cruise day, the second in a row. (Yes, R slightly shocked by it.) We left Asyut early in the morning. Shortly after we set sail, I stood on the cabin balcony in my shorts and admired the still water, the bank and dawn. A reflective photo opportunity. The police boat alongside must have wondered what I was doing at 5.30 in the morning. Strange we were due to leave at 6.00 am, and we must have already been travelling for 30 minutes.
Back to bed for a couple of hours and then breakfast. Keeping with my breakfast diet, fruit most days with the odd omelette every other day.
Good opportunities to photograph river life as we travelled on to to Sohag. A break for lunch, and then a documentary about the Rosetta stone which provided the key to translating hieroglyphs. The same text had been written in Egyptian and Greek, along with the addition of Coptic script, so the code was broken. Alas in this competition to be the first to break the code, the French won.
More river bank watching, it never gets boring, so much to see, the birds, the people, the children waving. Teenage boys, even pause in staring at their phones to wave at us. Strange. Then tea was soon upon us followed by a lecture by George, entitled “
Soon dinner was upon us. I can’t remember exactly which days, but we did have some themed Egyptian meals. Instead of
After supper we had another opportunity to have a walk around alocal town, this time Sohag. The boat which had been following was also moored up, we was alongside. This
Egyptian Salad
Baba Ganoog (sesame salad)
Sesame, Onion, Aubergine, Parsley, Olive Oil
Goat Cheese with Tomato
Fresh Cream, Feta Cheese, Tomato, Parsley, Olive Oil
Mesh
Fresh Cream, Parmesan Cheese, Blue Cheese, Olive Oil
Fried Aubergine
Fried Green Pepper
Fried Green Pepper (spicy)
Potatoes (French Fries)
Brown Beans
Falafel
Brown Beans, Celery, Onion, Fresh Coriander, Parsley, Sesame
Grilled Chicken
Grilled Kofta (Beef)
Dessert Mahalabia
Milk, Fresh Cream, Cornflower [sic!], Coconut, Butter, Sugar
Today was a cruise day, so a relaxing day with lots of unnecessary food to eat. SS Misr was scheduled to leave at 5.30, and arrive at Asyut before sunset. We had a lock to go through just before arriving at Asyut. The barrage and lock had been built by the British in 1902, and a hydroelectric plant was added in the 1980s. Since then, new locks have been built.
Before dinner, there was a talk by our guides Anwar & Sharif about Modern Egypt. He mentioned he was a Muslim but went to a Christian school. The result was he had more holidays and didn’t have to go to school on Fridays and Sundays. His friends and work colleagues were both Muslim and Christian. He painted a very rosy picture of the relations between Christian and Muslim. The country is 15% Christian, while the city of Asyut where we were heading was 50% Christian.
On education, Anwar mentioned there were public schools and private. In many areas, in the public schools, the children were divided into morning or afternoon pupils. I think children should be educated until
With health care, the state provided a very basic level of health care. Better quality health care was available with insurance premiums and schemes run by the companies you worked for.
Though Muslim men could marry up to four women, this was not considered normal and was frowned upon. Sometimes it was good in that you could marry someone in addition who had been widowed and thus could support them. It also seems from what Anwar said, women could earn and keep their own money, while the men had to earn and support their wife. A wife could divorce her husband if he was not supporting her properly. She could complain to the courts if she was asked to pay for example for the electricity bill, which her husband should be doing. She would also get the house, all the furniture and maintenance after the divorce. It was noticeable how many of the women in the audience paid close attention to this part of the lecture.
After the lecture we went through the lock at Asyut before docking in our secure mooring outside the Security Diretorate.
On the trip, I managed to grab some pictures of river life, fishing boats, birds and people farming.
The SS Misr left El Minya early in the morning and we made our way to Tell El Amarna. The morning was spent eating breakfast, a late one at 7.00am, then a lecture by George Hart on the “Arts in the Reigns of Akhenaten and Nefertiti”. An early morning lecture, so wide awake for this one.
If we were not full enough after breakfast, it was an early 11.30 Lunch. We arrived at our destination of Tell El Amarna and moored up in a small compound next to the waterside archealogical museum.
The whole of the afternoon was spent touring, first were two sites to see close to the river. The first was the small temple of the Atun (Aten). There was not much to be seen, some mud walls and a rebuilt column. A breeze blew and there was a small sandstorm over the walls There had been considerable archaeological research here, and now the site was becoming buried again with sand. Probably a good thing, the mud block walls are very friable, and at least the sand protects them.
Next we drove a short distance to the Palace of Akenaten. We had seen the remains of the decorated plaster floor at the Eygyptian Museum in Cairo. This had been removed because the locals of this village had started to destroy it, fed up with tourists traipsing over their land. We could not get into the site, viewing it from one spot. George was allowed by the guides to speak here. Apparently the archaeologist who excavated the palace had been George’s Mentor.
Back on to the coaches to see Northern Tombs. The coaches split, we went first to see the Boundary Stelae of Akhenaten. This was a huge carving in the mountain, decreeing this to be the boundary of Akhenaten’s land. There were some steps up to the Stelae and a good view of the flat desert to the Nile.
Next stop was a drive up the Royal Wadi to the tomb of Akhenaten. It was nearly 8K along the wadi. Unfortunately, the tomb had been damaged by flash flooding. It was quite dark there, despite lots of lighting, most of which were not turned on. I think the generator had broken, and a small portable one was being used in its place. Large tomb with a long walk down, some anti robber and flooding
Next, we drove to the Northern Tombs, parked in the bus park and walked up to the tombs with our guard. These tombs were high up on the cliff, good views across the desert to the Nile.
Tomb 4 – Merya/
Tomb 5 – Penthu served at court during the 18th dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. The quality of the wall carvings here were poor.
Tomb 6 – Panehesy Chief servitor of the Aten in the temple of Aten in Akhetaten. This tomb again had some good wall carvings, and columns.
These tombs were high up on the cliff and required a short walk up steps to access them. Again good views across the desert to the Nile. Pit it was always hazy.
Our final stop was the museum where there was a reconstruction of rooms from houses and palaces in the region. We were able to walk to the boat and were soon ready for cocktails and dinner. Another boat moored up next to us in the evening.
