We arrived safely home with one last gift, courtesy of Egypt air. That was a case of the Norwalk virus which managed to peak during my five hour flight home from New York. But hey, I got to be evacuated off of the airplane by EMTs and ride in an ambulance to the hospital. It wasn’t as much fun as you might expect. They wouldn’t use the siren. But I’m okay despite the total lack of care by the medical establishment.
Mount Nebo is where Moses stood and looked across the promised land. It is also where he was buried, as I’m sure you all know from your bible readings. It was prophesized that Moses would not be allowed to enter the promised land and he wasn’t. There is a statue erected commemorating the Pope’s visit in the year 2000. it commemorates the books of all religions and says that we are united under one God, except of course the Catholics who still believe in Vatican II. Apparently, we are bordering on heresy. I have to say that I was touched looking out over the Jordan Valley. Below me on the Jordan river was the site where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptized. And nearby was Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Jericho, and the Sea of Galilee. I was amazed how how small it seemed for such an impact on the world. I also wondered why it took Moses 40 years to get there, but then as Golda Meir stated: “Moses wasn’t such a great leader. He wandered over the Middle East for 40 years and settled down on the only place that didn’t have oil.”
Shobak was a crusader fortress built during the first crusades in the twelfth century. The crusades were, as you probably know were launched to protect the holy lands from the infidel Muslims. A rational that conveniently overlooks the fact that the holy sites had been identified and were in the hands of orthodox Christians since the second century. The crusaders eliminated this embarrassment by slaughtering every Orthodox Christian they could find and there by wreaking more havoc on Christianity in the Middle East than the Muslims ever did.
We had a great lunch in Madaba is a resturant famous through out the Middle East. It had every appetiser know to Middle eastern man as well as a well stocked smoke shop for after lunch, but Madaba is equally famous for its mosaics. Christianity spread rapidly through the Middle East in the second century, despite Diocletian's many attempts to martyr the believers. Mosaics are in general quite durable since they are made of stone, but the greatest threat to the mosaics was man. The iconoclastic movement of the religious inadmissibility of displaying human or animal images. Several mosaics have survived because politically correct mosaics were created over them. The most famous mosaic is in St. George Church crated in 560 AD is a map of the holy land. It is about 50 feet by 20 feet and contains over two million stone tesserae.
I have wanted to visit Petra ever since I was twelve years old and read Richard Halliburton’s “Royal Road to Romance.” the rest of you may have been inspired by the Indiana Jones movie where Harrison Ford is racing down the Siq on a white horse. The temples really are “rose pink and half as old as time.” and their sudden appearance after walking a mile in a narrow slot canyon really is magical. But even without the temples it would be beautiful. The rocks contain red, blue and white stripes. Except for the sky, blue is a color almost never seen in nature, but then Petra is a place that was made by genies. The Bedouin children are beautiful work animals all seemed a lot healthier than they were in Egypt and the sellers less aggressive. It would be easy to make this a lost Eden and in fact a woman from New Zeeland has lived their for twenty five years and just completed writing a novel titled “Married to a Bedouin.” Autographed copies are available for twenty Jordanian Dinar or 17.95 at your local book store
Like so many good things in the Middle East, Jerash started to take off with Alexander the Great. Once Pompeii took control of Syria for the Romans, he made it one of the great cities in the Decapolis League, which contained cities such as Damascus and Philadelphia (Modern day Amman).All went fairly well until earthquake demolished the city in 749 AD. It was deserted after that and covered with desert Sand. Sand is the great preserver in the Middle East. Almost all ruins in a well preserved state are that way because they were buried in sand until the eighteen or nineteen century. Excavations started in in 1925.
Jordan is the place to go if you want to see complete grecco roman towns, walk in the foot steps of Moses, see where John the Baptist baptized Jesus, or just eat the lettuce without getting amoebic dysentery. It has incredible sights crammed into a small area, modern facilities and excellent guides. I had gone there to see Petra, but there was so much more. At one small museum in Amman was the oldest statue made by man, early wall paintings and fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And that was just the first afternoon. The next day was Jerash, a town that was part of Rome’s Decapolis, ten trading towns established through out the empire. Its mile long streets are lined with columns and temples.
Alexandria was literally a breath of fresh air. We were happy to breath the cool ocean air after two weeks of sand, sun, and the stale air of three to four thousand year old buildings. It is relatively young having only been started by Alexander the Great around 300 B.C. It served has the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt and featured a light house that was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. Its library was the most extensive until it burned down in 600 A.D. It was allegedly set on fire by Christians because of their dislike of the pagan documents by such writers as Plato, Aristotle and, Pythagoras. The churches distrust of science started long Galileo or the creationist evolutionary debate. They have rebuilt the library and it is a magnificent building. The wall is covered with writing from every written language known to man. The windows are shaped like the eye of Horus. The light house was knocked down by an earthquake, but the stones were used to rebuild castle at the end of the pier. The Islamic conquerors moved the capital to Cairo because of their dislike of the sea. Egyptians still don’t like living on the beach. They say it is cold and damp in the winter and the salt air ruins everything. Alexandria is considered the most European city in Egypt and in the nineteen century it was filled with villas and resorts and a life style that only exists in movies about the Victorians. The twentieth century is a story of slow and continuous decay, but it was a great place for sea food and our last days in Egypt were spent in its slightly weathered splendor.
Karnak is the temple you think of when and ever you think of Egyptian temples.. The columns in the hypostyle has a forest of 134 columns, each over sixty foot tall. The main sanctuary was dedicated to Amun , a local god of Thebes. In the new Kingdom, the god became important as it was linked to Re the Sun God. His ascension to a national deity was greatly aided by the local Theban rulers who united all of Egypt to form the New Kingdom. It also has temples to Mut, Khonsu, Montu, Ptah, Osiris and several Pharaohs. One of the great accomplishments of the Egyptian priests was to link all of these local deities into a single consistent theological construct, which allowed everyone to worship their personal god while still supporting the greater overall good. It would be nice if someone would do that in this century.
Karnak is the temple you think of when and if ever you think of Egyptian temples. The columns in the hypostyle are a forest of 134 columns, each over sixty foot tall. The main sanctuary was dedicated to Amun , a local god of Thebes. In the new Kingdom, the god became important as it was linked to Re the Sun God. His ascension to a national deity was greatly aided by the local Theban rulers who united all of Egypt to form the New Kingdom. It also has temples to Mut, Khonsu, Montu, Ptah, Osiris and several Pharaohs. One of the great accomplishments of the Egyptian priests was to link all of these local deities into a single consistent theological construct, which allowed everyone to worship their personal god while still supporting the greater overall good. It would be nice if someone would do that in this century.
Luxor and Karnak were religious centers or party towns. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. The name in ancient Egyptian name meant southern harem. The main purpose of the temple was to provide a setting for the annual opet-festival which lasted two to four weeks. The inner sanctum behind the boat shrine represents the bedroom of the god Amun. The story on the wall tells of Amenhotep’s mother Queen Mutemwiya being impregnated by the God Amun and the resulting child, Amenhotep, is then presented to Amun. A brilliant solution of having a divine Pharaoh being born of a human mother. But that problem seems to arise quite often in eastern religions. A ritual impregnation occurs every year to the reigning Pharaoh’s mother is a secret ritual. There is a mile long walk way between Karnak and Luxor with one thousand stone lions lining the sides. Images of the gods are marched once a year from Karnac to Luxor The Egyptians are restoring the walk by removing all of the villages and houses that have been built above it in the intervening two thousand years. I do not believe you can dig a hole in Egypt without uncovering a temple, statue or fortified wall. Egypt tries to catalogue and restore everything, but progress s slow in a country where you can’t put a barbeque pit in your backyard with out calling the Department of Antiquities. And then you run the risk of having your house condemned and torn down to save the antiquities.
Hatshepsut’s temple was a funerary temple with gardens and pleasant spaces for the spirits of her friends to gather in the afterlife. After all, what is the point of an afterlife if your friends aren’t there to share it with you? Hatshepsut ruled Egypt for twenty years which was unusual for a female. Her statues always show her as a male, but that is because the priests insisted that a female could not be Pharaoh, though there did not seem to be restrictions on cross dressing females. Her chief priest and architect was deeply in love with her and when she died, he wanted to design a funerary temple that was dramatically different than any other funerary temple. Looking at the pictures, I think you will have to agree that he achieved his goal. Its has three tiers and long staircase are unlike anything that went before or since. The architect wrote many poems describing her great beauty and limitless wisdom. Her mummy was recently discovered and she was short, very heavy , had diabetes and was generally not in good health. But as Henry Kissinger noted, “Power is a great aphrodisiac.”
The ancient Egyptians built temples for two reasons. There were funerary temples where the body of the deceased was prepared for the after life. Places were set for friends to eat food, statues were made so the spirits of servants could come join the deceased and food was provided so the spirit would be nourished in the afterlife. These were built on the west side of the Nile. Temples were also built to honor Gods. These were built on the east side of the Nile. The Egyptian Gods get a little complicated. Old gods were never discarded as new ones were added. The Greeks and Romans came and added their Gods. The temples could get pretty crowded with all of these supreme beings, but the Egyptians some how managed to keep harmony. Apparently Egyptian gods were happy with supreme power over their domain and didn’t have the ego that kept them striving to be the one and only god. Philae is near Aswan. It was built to honor Isis, who could be considered the goddess of love, to honor her dead, but not gone husband Osiris. There is also a temple to Horus, the loving son of Isis and Osiris. Well he is a loving son most of the time except for when he killed her in a fit of anger. And there is a temple to Hathor who is the goddess of fertility except when she gets angry. Then she turns into the lioness Sekhment who is the goddess of destruction. However, she can be calmed down with wine validating the poem by Ogden Nash that states: “Candy’s dandy, but liquor is quicker.” And you thought your family relations were complicated.
We left Aswan and headed down the Nile River on another cruise boat. Two things become readily apparent when on the Nile. The first is the lush Eden like conditions disappear quickly into dessert a few feet away from the banks of the Nile. The second is that except for rubber tires on the donkey carts, life is pretty much the same for Egyptian farmers as it was three thousand years ago. Families tend their stock, work their fields by hand and carry produce to market on donkeys. The crops I saw were date palms, sugar cane and vegetables.As the boat moves down towards Cairo there are groups of boys playing soccer and every Egyptian farmer now has electricity. But the rhythm of life is still tied to the Nile and the growing season.
