Well, we’ve finally reached the end of the A to Z Challenge and the end of your virtual tour of Egypt. I hope you enjoyed this series and that you learned something new about Egypt and Ancient Egyptian culture, and most importantly, I hope that my summaries of our adventures helped you to feel like you were actually there.
While this may be the end of the challenge, it definitely is not the end of my Egyptian travel diaries. There are so many more stories I could share about our travels, and maybe I’ll post short fictional vignettes inspired by those stories on this blog sometime in the future. For now, I’m zonked, and I hope to get some rest before diving into the next challenge (StoryADay May).
So, to close things out, I want to go back to the beginning…
Not the beginning of this series, but the beginning of pyramid building in Egypt.
Yallah! The A to Z Challenge is coming to a close. Just two more letters left to go! I can do this. I can do this…
Whenever I travel, especially if I’m going overseas, I like to learn a few words and phrases in that country’s language to be able to communicate with the people there in case I ever get lost.
I studied Spanish in school. So when I traveled to Spain, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, I had no problems getting around. And in the Maldives, though I was unfamiliar with the language, many of the locals we met spoke Hindi, and I’m learning Urdu, which is Hubby’s native language and sounds a lot like Hindi, so we could still hold a conversation. However, as we were staying at a resort, the staff all spoke English, so we actually didn’t need to exercise our Hindi until we were back on the main island.
That being said, when visiting another country, you really shouldn’t assume that everyone understands and can speak English. Besides, people tend to be more welcoming when they see that you had the common courtesy to try to learn their language before coming.
Three words/phrases that I’m most likely to say no matter where I travel (either foreign or domestic) are:
Hello
Thank you
Where’s the bathroom?
Greetings, gratitude, and hygiene. Those three will get you far in any country.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really study much on my Arabic before leaving for Egypt, which is uncharacteristic of me. But then I realized that I actually know more Arabic words than I thought. When you watch as many foreign-language television series as I do, you eventually start to pick up on certain words and phrases.
As-salaam-alaikum/wa-alaikum-as-salaam – Peace be upon you/and unto you peace (a common greeting among Muslims)
Shukran – Thank you
InshaAllah – If God wills it
Habibi – My love/my dear
Mubarak – Congratulations/celebratory expression paired with holidays (eg, “Eid Mubarak!”)
Of course, social anxieties prevented me from practicing my language skills while in Egypt for fear that my Southern American accent would mispronounce a word. Plus, call it ego or pride, but Brother can get a bit testy whenever you present yourself as knowing more than he does, and he was growing quite the big head by impressing our tour guides with all his Egyptian knowledge not originating from a movie (unlike mine).
But I don’t care. I’ll continue to watch The Prince of Egypt, The Mummy, and even Gods of Egypt and point out all the imagery I recognize from actually being there.
Speaking of The Mummy, I finally know what Ardeth Bay is saying in this scene, as our tour guides would shout it as they herded us along at each stop on our sightseeing tour.
This April for the A to Z Challenge, I’m sharing my experience of traveling to Egypt last month. These posts likely won’t be in chronological order, depending on what memory each letter strikes up, but if you’d like to follow me on this journey, subscribe below.
So this post was almost titled “X-rated” for some highly sexualized statuettes we spotted in the gift shop at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Call me a prude, but given the conservative culture in Egypt today as it relates to sexuality, I was quite shocked to see something so explicit…
After doing some research, I learned that this is the Ancient Egyptian fertility god Min, who is often depicted with an erect penis. I guess the disproportionately large penis is to show his potency. Legend has it that women would touch the erect penis in hopes of getting pregnant.
Now I’m not saying I touched it, but “shark week” did not come at the scheduled time the following month, and I nearly lost my mind. There’s no way, I thought, there’s simply no way!
So is it real? The legend had to come from some truth, right? All I know is I’m not going anywhere near that penis again because I’m not having any babies I didn’t ask for.
I’ll stick with the God I know, thank you!
By the way, Min wasn’t the only sexually explicit figurine we saw. Earlier that day, while shopping in one of the stores in the market, I spotted a whole shelf of phallic incense holders, and the shelf below it had incense holders depicting various sexual positions. There were sensual ones, such as the man behind the woman cupping her breasts, and others more pornographic in nature, such as the woman positioned face down, ass up, and the hole for the incense stick exactly where you’re thinking.
I didn’t take a picture of those, as the shopkeeper was lurking over my shoulder every five minutes, and I didn’t want him to think I was interested in buying any of them. What would Mom think?
To be honest, I don’t think this question ever crossed my mind until our tour guide explained to us the requirements for entering the inner sanctuary of the temples (also called the holy of holies).
Only the priests and the pharaohs were allowed in the inner sanctuary, and in order to enter, they first had to purify themselves. This involved the pouring of oil over their heads—similar to the anointing of the Jewish priests—and their being completely clean-shaven. That means no body hair and no hair on their face or head—for the kings and the queens.
They came to the gods just as they had come into the world: bald as a newborn baby!
And so came the headdresses, the wigs, the false beards. Quite innovative if you ask me!
Tour guide explaining the purification ritual at Kom Ombo temple
This April for the A to Z Challenge, I’m sharing my experience of traveling to Egypt last month. These posts likely won’t be in chronological order, depending on what memory each letter strikes up, but if you’d like to follow me on this journey, subscribe below.
I feel like I’ve been talking about the Valley of the Kings at length since “R is for Ramesses.” What more can I say other than this was the only word I could think of that starts with “V”?
So I’ve decided I’ll use this post to talk about things I haven’t mentioned yet.
The Valley of the Kings was the New Kingdom pharaohs’ solution to the pyramids’ looting problem. They wanted a more secure burial site and so opted for tombs cut deep into a mountain in a remote valley of the desert that no one could get to.
More than 25 kings from the 18th to 21st Dynasties were buried here, and this particular location was chosen for the triangular peak of the mountain, which functioned as a natural pyramid to replace man-made pyramids built over the individual tombs.
Did you know that the pharaohs began the construction of their tombs as early as year 1 of their reign?
Why?
Well, the construction of a royal tomb required a lot of tedious work:
Deciding on location
Digging deep into the mountain (such as for tombs in the Valley of the Kings) or carving and transporting large blocks of stone from quarries across Egypt up and down the Nile (such as for the pyramids or for sarcophagi and other funerary objects inside the tombs)
Finding skilled laborers to chisel and paint the walls
And most importantly, finding an architect to design the whole thing and a vizier to oversee the process
Whenever you travel internationally, especially as an American or someone from a “rich” country visiting a “poor” country, you will inevitably be humbled by your experience and begin to appreciate the luxuries you have in life.
For me those newly appreciated luxuries were clean, free bathrooms with fully stocked toilet tissue (see “L is for Luxor,” linked at the end of this post) and strict traffic laws.
Because lemme tell you… seeing Cairo traffic was truly a culture shock!
Seti I of the 19th Dynasty was the father of Ramesses II. His tomb in the Valley of the Kings is one of the most decorated tombs in the necropolis, with nearly all surfaces, including the ceiling, intricately painted. It’s also cut deep into the mountain and so is one of the largest and deepest tombs.
Ramesses, the name of not one, not two, not even three, but eleven pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.
But of course, the most famous Ramesses was 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great. He was one of the greatest, most powerful, and most celebrated pharaohs in Ancient Egyptian history. He had many successful military campaigns, reestablishing Egypt’s borders and reconquering lands lost to the Nubians and the Hittites. He even achieved one of the earliest peace treaties in world history with the Hittites and married at least two daughters of the Hittite king.
He is also believed to be the pharaoh of the Exodus, which would make sense! He’s said to have commissioned the construction of more and greater cities, temples, and monuments than any other king of Egypt, such as his administrative capital at Pi-Ramesses in the Nile Delta, the Abu Simbel temple in Nubia, and the Ptah Temple in Memphis. More statues of Ramesses II survive than of any other pharaoh. Somebody had to build them, right?
Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. Lover of Julius Ceaser and Mark Antony. Powerful ruler and strategist. One of the most infamous queens of the Nile and one Hollywood has a particularly creepy obsession with, as there’s a movie or series made about her every generation, and it always stirs up controversy…
We actually didn’t learn much about Cleopatra on our trip. Our tour guides had a wealth of knowledge regarding the histories of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms of Egypt and only occasionally mentioned the Greco-Roman period, particularly the influence in the architecture of the later temples we visited: Kom Ombo, Philae, and the Temple of Horus at Edfu.
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