Pharaonic rerun

“Thebes is the greatest word in any language”

So said Jean Francois Champollion, the obsessive French mathematician who, with the help of the Rosetta Stone, managed to rediscover the meaning of hieroglyphics. And Thebes, now more commonly known as Luxor, is where I am now. Again. This time I'm in the middle of the post-training trip of my second summer school, and though we've been revisiting a few of the same monuments that I wrote about in the old email, I'm a lot more clued up on them now, and have been appreciating their less well-known charms.

We began the trip by taking the train from Cairo to Aswan, during which, by a lovely coincidence, I bumped into three of my classmates from medical school. I knew that they were in Alexandria on a different summer school and we'd tried to arrange to meet up in Cairo, but we were all in a rush and agreed to get back together in London, so it was a very pleasant surprise to find that they were also heading to Aswan and had a similar itinerary.

We had taken the overnight train and arrived the next morning, and after dropping off our bags we headed to the Temple of Philae. This is a beautiful complex that for hundreds of years was a centre of worship of the Pharaonic deity Isis, the goddess of magic. It was originally built on the island of Philae, but when the waters of the Nile rose with the completion of the Aswan Dam and then the undertaking of the High Dam, the temple was in danger of being flooded, and between 1972 and 1980 was moved piece by piece to nearby Agilkia Island. Organised by UNESCO, the relocation was completed so that the new positions of the structures corresponded as closely as possible to the original layout, and it was wonderful to walk through the site and see the elegant buildings and hieroglyphics. And the felucca ride required to get from the Temple from Aswan's east bank provided stunning views of the island setting.

Following lunch at one of the many waterside Nubian restaurants, we made a quick jaunt to the Aswan Dam and the huge (but, for the tourist, slightly disappointing) High Dam. Built over eleven years (1960-1971) and occasionally plagued with difficulties, this was Egypt's post-revolutionary message to the world that it was still capable of undertaking and completing projects of a massive scale. The Dam was proposed to counter the unpredictable flooding of the Nile (the old Aswan Dam was only big enough to regulate the flow of water) and to generate hydroelectric power, but the plans were initially ridiculed as being an impossible dream. However, over thirty years since its completion the 3600m long, 980m wide and 111m high Dam remains amongst the largest in the world, and the four hundred and fifty-one people that lost their during the construction have left an imposing legacy. Though the benefits have been huge, however, the results of its completion have not been all positive: many towns and villages have been submerged, artificial fertiliser use is on the increase as fields no longer receive the Nile's silt, and the number of schistosomal infections has rocketed as farmers now wade in continually full irrigation canals. It's a big factor in why so much of Egypt's health budget has to be set aside for bilharzial prevention and treatment strategies.

The next morning the group left for Abu Simbel, but I wanted to see a part of Aswan that I hadn't visited before, and instead went to Elephantine Island, home to a vibrant Nubian village, the Aswan Museum and the ruins of Yebu. It was nice just to walk around the island and get a flavour of life there, and the museum contained some really impressive mummies. The most memorable moment of my trip, however, came a little later, when I was exploring Yebu. I was contentedly strolling around the excavation site, looking up the history of the place in a guidebook, when this dog appeared from behind a stone wall and began barking violently at me. I'm petrified of dogs (a bad childhood experience), and as soon as I saw him my sympathetic system kicked into action, the adrenaline started pumping and I began to run and scream, waving my hands wildly in the air. Luckily the ruins I ran towards had been fashioned like steps, and I quickly clambered up them, out of the reaches of the dog and his growing group of friends. A guard arrived a minute later to see what all the commotion was about, and with a shout of "Ish!" managed to scatter the canines in seconds. I was still recovering, however, when I met yet another girl from my university, a second-year med student that I know from my volunteer work with the St.John Ambulance. I had no idea she was in the country, and, after swapping tales we've arranged to meet up in Cairo later to go to a famous coffeehouse and sample some traditional Egyptian dancing. Should be fun.

Our last night in Aswan wasn't very joyous, however, as I joined the two Taiwanese girls in our group, Mary and Yvonne, to check out the local souq. The market catered solely for tourists, and as we passed every stall the merchants would physically try and bundle us into their shops, "just to look, not buy", of course. I've left with the impression that the Aswanese(?) are definitely the rudest Egyptians I've met, very different to their fellow nationals, but I guess it was a memorable experience.

Anyway, we're out of there now, and sampling the delights of the New Kingdom Pharaonic era. The legacy that Amenhotep III and pals left is still incredible to me, and revisiting the Valley of the Kings (but to different tombs this time), was definitely worth it. On that note, I'll sign off, as we're going to the Sound and Light show and getting reacquainted with Karnak Temple tonight, and I need to get ready.

Moc