Our Egyptian Experience continues.
The next stop was in Aswan, we arrived here by boat along the Nile. A very large river that is relatively clean which is surprising when considering the cleanliness of Cairo. But most things are not seen from the river and it requires you travelling on buses all the time.
But what was still amazing me was how these massive structures were being constructed with the use of some very basic tools. We visited a quarry where many obilisks were constructed and there was one partially constructed in the ground.
These are over 40 meters in length and weigh over 150 tons, so one's mind boggles as to how they would transport them at these times and then stand them upright. Here below are some of the hammers that were used. Another rock? See below. But what also amazed me that a number of these monuments are made out of very hard rock and they were able to get them supper smooth. That would take a massive amount of work. See two down.
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Here is a statue that was in Aswan, made out of one solid rock, and yet they have determined that the rock type was from Cairo area which is over 700 kms away.
Not to be out done, a number of countries acquired an obilisk and moved them to their country, another real feat just to pick them up, transport them around the world a couple of hundred years a go, then stand them up.
Some acclades for the modern generation was the creation of the Aswan dam, holding back the waters of the Nile, which is one of the biggest dams in the world. It was done with the help of the Russians another massive feat. But in doing so they had to flood some archilogical sites, and so that could not be done, so they picked up the structures, some totally as one piece, and others stone by stone and reconstructed them, as they were but on higher ground. See below one of the sites. Also, in the picture below, on the left hand side, you can see that the carvings had been mutilated by chiseling out the images. This was done by the Romans in 20 AD or so. We saw that at a number of locations. We still have people like that today, who cannot create such marvellous things so they destroy instead thinking that their greatness is better.
Also, in Aswan we visited a beautiful hotel, which is where Agatha Christie wrote a number of novels whilst staying there and I believe you would have seen in the movies of Death on the Nile and also on TV with the Poirot series. It is the very famous Old Cataract Hotel. The hotel was very impressive decor, and the surroundings were amazing.
The view from the balcony where we had a coffee.
Back to Cairo we go. Not a nice spot, too dirty and everyone at you for a tip. We visited the new National museum which was fantastic and learn so much more about the Egyptian civialisation. There was another civialisation even before the pharoahs.
So 5000 years BC there was a civilisation that was growing crops and even baking bread like they do as today. They made models of the way of life in those days, the bread is on tge top side of the home model, how incredible. Had something to teach our Aborigines.
We spent our last afternoon on the Nile in one of the old sailing boats called Feluccast, the graceful wooden sailboats with distinct triangular lateen sails.
Well, this was the end of our Egyptian part of the trip which in someways was a relief. It was in many ways, very dirty, a constant concern as to what you were eating but the biggest concern was the constant demand for tips from everyone you dealt with, whether it was hotel staff or nearly everyone you came in contact with. It was not relaxing. Buying anything was always heavy negotition with not knowing the real price. Anna and I, are not tour people and even though we had a great group of people in our tour group, we were not in control of our time. With a number of very early starts, we often thought, is this really a holiday. Would we go back to Egypt, a definite NO. But with that said, there was so much that we saw that we will never forget. So we are glad we did it, and got it off our bucket list at long last.
We are off to Malta.