How Doth the Little Crocodile...
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 9 ~ January 28 ~ Nile
It's our last day on the boat. Our destination this evening will be Aswan.
First thing, the temple of Kom Ombo.
Note that there are three pillars at the entrance forming two side-by-side passages. That's because this temple is built in two mirror halves, one dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek and the other to the falcon god Haroeris, or Horus the Elder.
It seems the Egyptians had quite a few Horuses (Hori? Horoi?). The Global Egyptian Museum website says this about Haroeris:
Greek name for the Egyptian god 'Her-wer', which means 'Great Horus' or 'Horus the Elder'.
Originally there were several gods called Horus (which means 'the far-away one') in Egyptian mythology. One of them was one of the five children of the sky goddess Nut and thus the tenth member of the Ennead of Heliopolis. He was born immediately after Osiris on the second of the five epagomenal days added to the year.
Then there was also the god Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis (thus the fifth generation in the genealogy of Heliopolis). To differentiate between them, and to ensure that these different gods did not lose their individual identities, the latter was called Harsiëse (in Egyptian 'Her-sa-Aset', Horus the son of Isis) and the name Horus the Elder was used for the god who was actually his uncle. The gods usually called the Sons of Horus (Amset, Hepi, Duamutef and Qebehsenuf) were the children of Haroeris and Isis.
Haroeris is the sky god whose eyes are the sun and the moon. In various myths, however, he is also identified with the sun god, or functions as his son. This latter step resulted in him being identified with Shu. Thus Haroeris is also involved in the myth concerning the distant eye of the sun god, which he brings back from a far-off land. In some versions Tefnut is this eye.
Because Haroeris was sometimes regarded as the sky god himself, whose eye was the sun, and then again as his son, there are not only versions of the myth in which he takes possession of the eye himself but also some in which he gives it back to its original owner. The particular way in which the Egyptians regarded their world meant that they saw no contradiction in this.
By ancient Egyptian standards, this is a pretty recent construction, begun in the early reign of Ptolemy VI around 180 BC or so.
One thing we've not seen elsewhere is this very deep well.
And something we see almost everywhere - ongoing excavation work. Wikipedia's brief article about the temple mentions significant finds reported as recently as 2018.
There's also a small crocodile museum here.
If mummified crocodiles are your thing, this is your place. Otherwise, maybe not.
Back to the boat for lunch.
Now, I remember these drinks being significant for some reason, which I why I took the picture, but I can't for the life of me remember what that significance was. Even Amanda can't remember, and she is much better at remembering than me.
Anyway: here are the <something> drinks which are <something> <something>.
Sorry about that.
After lunch, we're off in these little minibuses to the town of Daraw. First stop will be the camel market.
As we enter, we pass a man selling all manner of camel accessories. Stakes and ropes are easily identifiable in the picture, and if you zoom in, you can see that there are harnesses and bits, knives, manacles and more.
Yesterday was the main trading day, and we gather that far more camels would have been filling the enclosure. It's all relatively quiet now, although some business is clearly still being done.
There are some raised voices and we're not quite sure whether they are just haggling over the price or having a furious argument. It's noticeable that to the British ear, even friendly conversation between Egyptians speaking in Arablc can sound like an argument.
We understand that these camels are mainly for meat rather than pack carrying or racing. We ate camel meat in Oman a few years ago and weren't terribly impressed it must be said.
We don't buy any camels. Now to the vegetable market, where we do indeed plan to buy some vegetables.
As always, navigating the roads can be an adventure in itself.
Traffic in town is no better.
I give you: The Cauliflower Queens!
Rawya is picking out a local leafy vegetable for a classic Egyptian soup dish that she's been telling us about called "molokhia". The plant is "Jute Mallow", Corchorus olitorius for the scientifically inclined, and it's quite the superfood it would seem.
We're going to have to work for our supper, though. The leaves need to be stripped from the stems when we get back to the boat. I don't have any photos of this, because I'm busy stripping (so to speak) and Amanda is feeling a bit unwell and has gone to our cabin. But Rawya is videoing the action on her phone, and so for the first time ever, I'm putting a video clip in my blog!
Strip those leaves!
[Spoiler alert: the molokhia will turn out to be interesting enough, but won't win me over as a convert.]
We pass under a half-built bridge. The place is called "At Twaysah" and slightly to my surprise I can find almost nothing whatsoever about it online. The Google "satellite" view is labelled as 2024 but shows it in a less nearly complete state, so presumably work is progressing despite the complete absence of any visible workers.
Further along, we stop at a little beach for swimming and kayaking after lunch. Amanda is feeling too unwell, which is a great pity for her. I'd have had a paddle in a kayak myself, but I'm not hugely fussed.
I don't know what this strange tin chute is all about. It's not really clear what the sign says, even zooming in on the original, but it doesn't appear to be connected.
This is what dahabias need to do when going under some bridges, rotate their yards to the horizontal.
Oh dear - I have just realised I need to make another digression. Listen carefully now...
I first wrote "yardarms", not "yards", and then I thought to myself, but do lateen sails – the triangular jobbies – have yardarms the way that square-riggers do? Better look it up, and ah... oh dear... Yes, they have yards, just the same, but the yard arms are the tips alone, not the whole thing. Indeed, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yard_(sailing):
Parts of the yard
- Bunt
- The short section of the yard between the slings that attach it to the mast.
- Quarters
- The port and starboard quarters form the bulk of the yard, extending from the slings to the fittings for the lifts and braces.
- Yardarms
- The outermost tips of the yard: outboard from the attachments for the lifts.
Note that these terms refer to stretches of the same spar, not to separate component parts.
So what does this mean when asking if the sun is over the yardarm?! It does seem to be a proper traditionally nautical saying, but in context can really only mean the yard as a whole. According to the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, and supported by many other references,
"It was generally assumed in northern latitudes the sun would show above the foreyard of a ship by 1100, which was about the time in many ships of the forenoon ‘stand-easy’, when many officers would slip below for their first drink of the day."11am is a bit earlier than we landlubbers generally think of as time for a drink (assuming we're not total alkies, of course) and until now I had always thought (as I imagine most do) that it referred to the early evening when the sun was sinking down to that level.
This is the bridge we need to get under, the New Aswan City bridge.
It's probably too soon after the last digression to do more than say that this is a cable-stayed bridge, and not as some thought, a suspension bridge. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-stayed_bridge for further information about the differences.
We tie up shortly after passing under it, a little way outside New Aswan itself.
We have a slight problem, though: the crew's tip has not been included in the pre-trip kitty. Not a big deal except we're a touch short of cash and we've not been anywhere near a cash machine. Rawya thinks that there's one about ten minutes' walk from where we are moored, but on closer examination, it's a fair bit more than that. We should be able to get a taxi though, so Rawya and I walk from the boat to the road and start trying to find a taxi.
We're lucky and one turns up almost immediately. A short drive – which would have been a long way to walk – brings us to a hotel where they have an ATM. (And as it happens, this is the same hotel we'll be staying at in a few days time.)
We both withdraw some cash and then try to get a taxi back, but it seems we had real beginners' luck the first time.
Then a car pulls in for us. No, it's not a taxi at all, it's just a couple of local guys. They not only give us a lift, they go round in a bit of a circle so we don't even have to cross the road at the other end, and won't accept a penny in payment. Rawya later tells me she would never have gone just on her own, but while I don't know if my presence actually made a difference, the people we met couldn't have been kinder.
As it's our last night, Chef has made us a rather fabulous cake!
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