How Doth the Little Crocodile...
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 10 ~ January 29 ~ Aswan
We've reached the end of our Nile cruise.
Farewell, Royal Cleopatra.
There are subtle hints at the purpose of the Aswan High Dam.
We have a short stop and I think this is the first solar panel installation we've seen in the whole country until now!
Another thing we've noticed but finally get around to asking about here. These number plates that look like they have been fixed over the top of some other plate entirely, in this case a German one. They are actually made like that: it's some kind of weird fashion statement that we completely fail to understand.
The soil is just red dust except where these huge centre-pivot irrigation booms create circular crop fields.
This is Abu Simbel from behind. Nothing much to look at, and certainly no indication that it is a (literally) monumental feat of engineering.
Naughty people.
Now you can't read that sign at this resolution, but it says,
Climbing monuments is a crime [Arabic stuff]
[Arabic stuff]
Climbing monuments is a crime punishable by no less than one month imprisonment and a fine of no more than One Thousand Egyptian Pounds, additional penatiles will be imposed when the above crime is perpetrated in conjunction with public indecency or acts against the state.
So don't go this way, and definitely don't have sex with revolutionaries where everyone can see you. [In fairness, I don't think they are going to be subject to additional penalties.]
The Great Temple of Rameses II. The BIG statues are Rammy-boy himself, while the ones that are merely more than life-size betwen his feet represent his wife Nefertari and some of his children.
It's hard to believe that this entire temple was moved hundreds of metres from its original location, now submerged by Lake Nasser after the building of the High Aswan Dam.
No, I didn't take this picture! It's from 1967.
Goodness, it's another statue of Rameses II.
It is unknown who first said, "You can never be too rich or too thin" (variously attributed to just about every wit who ever lived, with the possible exception of Oscar Wilde), but it seems likely that Rameses II would have declared that you could never have too many statues of yourself.
Rameses making an offering to Horus.
Even the Small Temple is quite big. If that was his, this is hers, where "she" is Nefertari.
Here she is being blessed by the goddesses Hathor and Isis.
You might think the two goddesses look more like mirror images than different people, and it seems that the two were often depicted as near identical twins, only distinguishable by their names in hieroglyphs. So if you look at the left-hand figure and follow the right-hand horn, you come to the hawk-in-a-square symbol that means "Hathor". Likewise, on the right, the thing that looks a bit like the Statue of Liberty with a couple of blobs by it is "Isis". The oval with the symbols in the middle, of course, is Nefertari's cartouche.
[I imagine there are probably more egyptologically respectable ways to describe hieroglyphs than "bit like the Statue of Liberty with a couple of blobs by it". Perhaps something like heraldry: I mean, "argent, a fess gules" could as well be Ancient Egyptian to those not versed in that particular art. What? That's not you? Sorry, it translates as "silver with a red horizontal band".]
And another thing. Before coming to Egypt, I'd always assumed that the Ankh cross (the life symbol) would normally be held in the same way as the Christian cross, by the lower vertical. But no, as you can clearly see here, and in many other pictures, the loop is used as a handle.
Enough digression. To our hotel now for a slightly late lunch.
A Nubian ecolodge no less!
Amanda is still feeling distinctly unwell, and isn't up to lunch, so she just goes straight to the room.
The hotel staff are concerned though, so they make up this beautiful little plate of fruit for her.
Later Amanda's feeling better and we take a little stroll from the hotel. This is Abu Simbel from behind again. We're going back this evening for a sound and light show.
It's distinctly chilly. Everyone's wrapped up against the cold but the wind is quite strong too. The main soundtrack is going to be in French (it varies depending on whichever the largest language group is), so the rest of us have radio headsets to receive the English translation. Amanda is feeling fully recovered now and is able to join us, but her headset doesn't seem to be working very well, and the wind noise also makes it more difficult to hear. That said, the narrative is fairly bland travelogue stuff and not really critical.
It's a mixture of abstract light patterns...
...and projected images.
It's a bit of fun, but we would have definitely enjoyed it more on a warmer evening.
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