Third blog report, March 26, 2012

I write this message from my apartment in Iraq.  To state the obvious:  I have managed to return to Sulaimani uneventfully.  Walking into this apartment felt like being home after being in a hotel in Cairo for a week. While I intended to post more from Cairo, it was just too difficult to try to manage the Arab language version of Blogsite, even though I had more time then than I have now.  If you look closely at the last message, the periods of the sentences at the ends of paragraphs are all in the wrong place.  That’s because I tried to justify the paragraphs to the left side of the page, not the right side as the default was set up for Arabic.  I was unable to put the periods in the right place and  I could not read the tabs at the top of the page.  This is better.   

In this message I will say something about some of the sites I saw in Cairo.  As I mentioned in my last message, I employed a guide who stayed with me throughout the week.  [Note correction from my message of last week:  his name is Mina (pronounced Meena).]  On my first day, we traveled to Saqqara, the site of some of the earliest funerary monuments, called step pyramids, that date back to around 3,000 BCE.  There is an indoor museum containing hundreds of artifacts, but no photography is allowed, so you’ll have to trust me that I saw them.  The outdoor parts do not look like what I, in my ignorance, associated with these monuments.  The scale is much smaller than the huge pyramids at Giza, and what I am told exist at Luxor.  But they are “the first” in many ways:  first use of architectural arches, first use of post and lintel construction, etc.  It was a real learning experience since photos of Saqqara are rarely included in photos of Egyptian art and architecture.   

From there we went to Giza which now sits at the edge of greater Cairo.  At that site are three pyramids, one quite large, and two smaller ones.  Near the smaller pyramids sits the sphinx.  By paying $18.00 beyond the price of entrance to the pyramid complex, you can enter the largest of the pyramids and climb up into the inside of it, as long as you don’t have claustrophobia.  The passage ways are narrow and low in height.  Having spent a fair amount of time climbing around the interiors of large castles in England, I can say that there’s nothing that begins to equal this experience.  You just have to marvel at the ability of humans to engineer something when they put their minds to the task.   

On my second day, Mina and I walked through the Cairo downtown to the National Museum.  If you watched any of the video feeds coming from Egypt during the revolution last year, you would have seen this museum as it sits at the edge of Tahrir Square where the revolution began.  It is a large building built around 1900 of a distinctively salmon-colored stone.  It really stands out from the beige buildings around it.  The museum contains Egyptian artifacts that date from as early as 3,500 BCE to the time of Roman occupation – around 100 CE.  There is so much to see, but the crown jewels of this museum are the artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamen.  For many years I had in my library a book on the discovery and opening of the tomb by a British archeologist named Howard Carter.  In spite of the book’s wonderful color photos, they paled by comparison to the real things.  The golden mask of King Tut is truly guarded like the crown jewels in the Tower of London.  But the other materials including chariots, sarcophagi, and items from everyday life made the trip truly worthwhile.  Unfortunately no photography is allowed in the museum, so you will just have to come here some time to see it.   

On my third and subsequent days in Cairo, I asked Mina to take me to the most important sites for the early Christian and Islamic periods.  These included everything from the Coptic Church of the Virgin Mary, also called the Hanging Church because it is suspended over two foundations dating to Roman times, to the 19^th c. mosque and mausoleum for Muhammad Ali, the first modern leader in Egypt who broke from Ottoman rule and established a line of rulers that ended with King Faruk in the 1950s.  In between these two buildings chronologically were a number of mosques and schools (madrasas) that figure prominently in Egyptian and Islamic history.  Along the way on one of the days, we went to one of the first streets built in Cairo when it was established in the 10^th c.  Called al Mu’izz Street, it is in a larger shopping precinct called Khan al-Khalili, one of the largest bazaars in the Middle East.  In Khan al-Khalili is a famous tea shop on Al-Fishawy Street.  In this shop, the Nobel laureate winning Egyptian writer named Naguib Mahfouz sat, drank tea and wrote about life in old Cairo.  For many years I required students in my Middle East history course to purchase and read one of Mahfouz’s novels called Midaq Alley, so it was of great significance to me to be able to sit in the room where he wrote.  Unfortunately the shop owners of Khan al-Khalili are so in-your-face about trying to get you into their shops to buy things, it is almost impossible to stroll through the narrow streets and enjoying just looking at all of the products for sale.  They don’t easily take no for an answer. 

Cairo is a crowded, at times dusty, at times trashy, at all times noisy, but endearing city.  The spread of wealth from very, very poor to very rich is quite evident.  On one of my several unguided walks, I met a fellow who had lived for many years in New York until the events of 9/11 killed his business.  He moved back to Cairo to be close to his family.  He has great admiration for Egyptian people, who, as he says, can get by on next to nothing.  After observing life in Cairo, I can understand his admiration. 

 Photos attached this time:  1, the step pyramid at Saqqara; 2, the large pyramid at Giza; 3, the Sphinx;  4, the National Museum;  5, the Hanging Church; 6, the Nilometer, a device used to measure theheight of the Nile when it flooded;  7, the mosque of Al-Hakkim;  8, the mosque of Ibn Tulun; 9, the madrasa of Barquq; 10, mosque of Sultan Qalawun; 11, the Muhammad Ali mosque; 12, night scene on al-Mu’izz Street; 13, the tea shop on El Fishawy.  (If you click on a photograph it will be enlarged for better detail.) 

I deliberately choose to write less than more about my travels, as not everyone wants to read a travelogue.  If you have questions, please feel free to respond and I will address questions.  As always, thanks for reading.