Valley of the Kings

 

El-Qum, the pyramid mountain at Valley of the Kings

Today we go to the west Bank of the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. Here are buried the pharaohs from the 18^th to 20^th dynasties. There are 64 Royal tombs dug in the 16^th to 11^th Centuries BC. under el-Qum mountain that looks like a pyramid. The length of each tomb roughly corresponds to the length of the pharaohs reign. Deep underneath they used a series of mirrors or candles to provide light for the workers. Most have 3 different levels with pictures and hieroglyphics containing the prayers of the dead and phrases for the king to find his soul. The tombs typically have 3 corridors at the bottom one filled with furniture for the afterlife, another the offering room for the burial, and finally the burial chamber itself. Each of the pharaohs were mummified. The internal organs were removed except for the heart and put in jars. The body was cured for 40 days and then wrapped in linen.  

Tomb of Ramses III

The pictures describe the journey of the dead. They journey on a boat through the 12 gates of the night. A monster is at each gate, they must have the password for each gate. The snakes gain more heads as we go deeper. The final test for eternal life is that the heart must be lighter than the sword of justice, otherwise a monster called “yum yum” will eat the heart. In the end passage, the king finally meets the gods.

One and three headed snakes

We saw these stories in five different tombs. Rameses IV was re-opened only two years ago. Ramses VI, Tut Ankh Amun the small tomb, Merenptah also known as Ramses I, and Ramses III. Given the 3500 year age of these drawings, they have amazing colors.

We then had traditional lunch at the home of a local farmer. Our host, Taha, was an 18-year-old grandson of the matriarch of the family. He has 4 uncles and 5 aunts as well as 44 cousins. We had at least 6 cousins around us ranging from 2 to 16 years old. The grandfather and grandmother moved from Aswan to this island 52 years ago. It used to flood regularly, so they brought in sand to raise the island. Now the entire family lives nearby. They grow wheat, alfalfa, sugar cane, vegetables, and fruit in three different fields. They also have 30 sheep, 2 cows, chickens, ducks, pigeons, and a water Buffalo for milk and cheese.

On their house there was a boat and an airplane commentating that the father had gone to Mecca twice. The first time, he went with his wife and 8 other women. It took 33 hours by boat and bus. The women immediately walk around the Hague the traditional seven times. They spent 2 months in the area.

Taha and relatives

Taha has been attending the Koran school, a private school. His hope is to become a doctor, but that requires a 98% grade on the final test, which he takes this Spring. He almost got a scholarship to an American University in a spelling bee in English. He reached the Egyptian semifinals but came in second after 70 rounds.

Feluccas on the Nile

We ended our day by sailing across the Nile on a felucca. We flew back to our ship that afternoon. The day ended with the Captain’s Dinner. That night we sailed from the Gulf of Suez to the Gulf of Aqaba.

The temples of Luxor

 

We docked in Hurghada about 9 AM. This is a resort town of about 250,000. The drive to Luxor takes about 7 hours, so we flew.

Luxor, then known as Thebes, was the capital of the New Kingdom. Our primary visit was to the Temple of Karnak, meaning fortified village. The temple was built by numerous pharaohs from 1971 BC to 30 BC. The temple is dedicated to a 3-god family with Amun-Re as its head.

Entrance to Karnak Temple

We start with the newest structure, two gigantic walls or pylons, which are unfinished. Behind the walls, there are remnants of the brick ramp used to place the stones of the wall. These walls have no carvings. Just inside are 3 small temples to the 3 gods. Opposite these temples is a side temple built by Ramses III. We know because his cartouche has his two names, his birth name, and his coronation name. 

Cartouche of Ramses II

On the right side, we see him with the red crown of the lower Nile receiving the sword of bravery from God Amun while killing his enemy. On the left side is the same scene, but the king is wearing the white crown of the upper Nile. Inside the courtyard of this small temple, we see the king receiving the symbols of long life, stability, and power. The next room is the garden with stone plants holding up the ceiling. Returning to the main temple, we see two statues of Ramses II. One has him stepping forward, saying he was alive when it was carved. The next has the feet aligned, meaning the king had died. From here we enter the garden area, called the Great Hypostyle Hall with 134 columns each column represents a papyrus plant. The center columns have an open flower, since the windows would have these flooded with light. The inner columns on each side would hold the stone roof, here the flowers are closed. In the last few years, the soot around the temple has been removed, letting the ancient colors appear. 

Great Hypostyle Hall

Here are two of the obelisk built by Queen Hatshepsut, the tallest in the world at the time, the largest weighs 323 tons. Finally, we reached the Holy of Holies where only the chief priest and pharaoh could enter.

Later that evening, we walked to the Luxor temple, built with the same structure, but smaller built in 1400 BCE. We watched as the lights came on as darkness approached. Within the temple is the Abu Haggag mosque built in 640.  Our hotel that night was the Sonesta St. George with the Nile in it’s backyard.

Luxor Temple

The Pyramids of Giza

 

We are docked at Ain Sokhna, the closest port to Cairo, built in 2008, as Egypt’s primary container ship port. This whole area was just desert, now industries like steel and chemical plants are being built here.

The Pyramids of Giza

Modern Egyptian History and Rehab’s story

After the Ottomans left in the late 19^th century, Egypt became a kingdom until the revolution of 1952. Gamal Abdel Nasser became the second president after the revolution. He nationalized the Suez Canal to finance the building of the Aswan Dam. The dam provided protection from flooding each spring for many farmers but buried ancient monuments and many Nubian villages. After Nassar was assassinated, Hosni Mubarak became President for 30 years. The Arab Spring occurred in 2011. After 18 days Mubarak resigned. The first elections occurred, but members of the opposition parties had been eliminated earlier. The only alternative to the Nationalist Party was the Moslem Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi was elected in 2012. The economy plummeted and within a year a military coup made Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the President.

Our guide, Rehab, participated in Egypt’s Arab Spring. Here is her story: Beforehand, there had been a call on Facebook to protest the police beating of a man. On January 25^th, Police Day, I joined the protests against police violence and government corruption. My family thought I was crazy, but we had had 30 years of Mubarak. We went to Tahrir Square and were shouting and praying. The police surrounded us and began shooting. We ran to a nearby mosque, but the police fired teargas through the windows. I managed to phone my family to discover that a curfew was being imposed. We slept the night in the mosque. We lost internet and phone service. I joined the protests for the next 18 days. A CNN camera caught me in tears, and this was televised worldwide. That is how are mother who was visiting Spain discovered that I was protesting.

There are 127 million people in Egypt, 25 million live near Cairo. Only 4% of Egypt’s land is occupied. 90% are Muslim and 10% Coptic Christian. The education system consists of public schools which are poorly funded and with large (60) class sizes and the private language schools, where children are taught in English, French, or German.

The Great Pyramid of Giza

Our activities today

We passed the New Administrative Capital of Egypt which is being built out in the desert, south of Cairo. There are 18 administrative buildings being built, the largest mosque and cathedral in the world, parks and neighborhoods. It’s still under construction.

Heading to the burial chamber

There are some 90 pyramids, built near the old capital of Memphis. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built about 2600 BC with 2.3 million limestone blocks of 2.5 to 5 tons. 148 meters tall, it faces true north. It took 27 years to build with both permanent workers and farmers working seasonally. Nearby are the two other major pyramids (Khafre and Menkaure) as well as several smaller ones built for family members. Char and Ann were our adventurous party members, visiting the burial chamber inside as well as riding a camel. We concluded our visit at the Sphinx and its nearby temple with red granite walls (from Aswan). Then we had a delicious buffet lunch at the Mena House Hotel overlooking the Pyramids.

View from Mena House Hotel

Traversing the Suez Canal

 

We entered the Suez Canal about 4 AM in the second of two convoys going South. According to the accords signed in 1888, any ship from any nation, commercial or military can traverse the canal. The Egyptian army controls the land for 3 km on each side. It was interesting to see the Suez Canal Bridge because it is closed from 5 AM to 5 PM for security as the convoys pass through. 

Suez Canal Bridge

The canal is 120 miles long can handle ships that are 254 feet wide and a depth of 66 feet. In 2014 a project was completed to build a second canal for about 25 miles, which increased the capacity of the canal. An average of 44 ships traverse the canal each day. The Clio pays $40,000 to cross the canal, but the charge depends on your tonnage and type of cargo and could be as high as $1M. Last year the canal at $8 B in revenue. 

Ann, John, Bob, and Richard on the Suez

When we reach Bitter Lake about halfway through the canal, our convoy will pass the first convoy, and our passenger ship will be the first to exit the canal after about 10 hours. Pilots can only work for 6 hours. At Bitter Lake we also saw the Northbound convoy.  

The canal dig was started in 1859. 120,000 men died during its construction and a million people were involved out of Egypt’s 4 million. The canal opened in 1869. 

Building the Suez Canal

Haifa to Port Said

 

Captain Orsat Luetic on the bridge tour

We started our day with a tour of the bridge. The captain demonstrated how much the electronic systems have changed in the last 60 years. He also explained how everything has duplicate systems and backup after backup. For example, leaving Haifa last night, all their electronic systems were jammed by a military exercise, and they had to rely on their eyes, binoculars, and channel markers to navigate. We ended our day in Port Said.

Port Said

Golan Heights and Capernaum

 

We’re off to visit the Golan Heights; this area was captured from Syria in the Six Day War in 1967. In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, 48 Israeli tanks, held off 500 tanks by controlling the heights. They ran out of shells, but remained in position, tricking the Syrians. The US supplied the Israelis with new equipment and ammunition, eventually securing the area. From Mount Bental, we could see the caldera of the volcanoes as well as the border roads between Israel and the no man’s land with Syria. Within Israel there are Agricultural fields and windmills as well as the kibbutz village of Meram Golan. Yop, a local sculpturer had several unique sculptures along our path.

Sculpture along our path

We had lunch in the cafeteria of the kibbutz. The kibbutz was founded as a socialist community, where people worked for the various businesses and shared equally in the benefits of housing, food, schooling, and health. The government provided the original investment in 1977 as an effort to settle the Golan Heights with Israeli’s. The UN considers this settlement as illegal under international law. Originally children were housed and cared for in their own dorms. Parents could visit them daily between 4 and 6 PM. In the 1980s, the system was privatized to pay wages, pay rent, buy your own food, and care for your own children. The businesses now include agriculture, orchards, a 70-room hotel, and a quarry. The kibbutz is a tightly knit village of 160 members who run the town and its businesses. Here we had lunch in their cafeteria.

Capernaum excavations

We then visited Capernaum along the Sea of Galilea, now owned by the Franciscans. Jesus spent most of his 3-year ministry in this area. At the time, it was a very Jewish area and along one of the major trade routes. Five of the apostles came from this area, including Peter. Here we toured the ruins of a 4^th century synagogue built of white stone above another built of basalt.  Excavated here are buildings from the time of Christ including what is believed to be Peter’s house since a stone inscription had the names Peter and Jesus. A 5^th century octagonal church was built above the house. Octagonal because eight represents something new, in Jewish tradition. Above the town. We visited the Italian church built in the 1930s on the summit of the hill where the Sermon on the Mount was given, overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

Sermon on the Mount church

We returned to the Clio for a 5-course dinner and lots of wine.

Our dinner aboard the Cleo

Caesarea

 

Statue of Augustus' Wife

We left Tel Aviv this morning headed north along the seacoast to Haifa. Today, Israel has a population of 10 million in a country the size of New Jersey. It has one of the highest birth rates among first world countries and soon will be the most densely populated country in the West. All the land is owned by the government and leased by the people. Why? Zionism was a socialist idea, since many of its earliest followers had a Russian heritage. It also removed a lot of problems about ownership between Jews and Moslems. Like many western countries, the health system is provided by the government at a rate or $70/month or lower.

Our primary stop was the ancient city of Caesarea, the world’s first artificial port built by Herod the Great in the 1st century B.C. They filled boxes with volcanic ash and sank the boxes to form the port. Herod the Great was an interesting man. Born of a rich Edomite father, whose ancestors had converted to Judaism, and an Arab princess, he grew up in a Greek/Roman culture. He became king of this region by appointment from Caesar Augustus. He honored Caesar by naming the city Caesarea and erecting a Statue of Augustus and his wife in the center of the port. He also erected a temple for the Roman God’s and built a hippodrome for horse races. The temple was converted to a Byzantine church, then a mosque as control of the city changed over the centuries. All was destroyed after the crusades. Herod also built a Palace here where we can see the remains of his pool. The Roman theater is actively used each year. A key find here was a stone tablet with the words “Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judea, (erected a building to the Emperor) Tiberius”

Pool of the Herod's Palace

We then climbed into the hills to visit the Druze village of Daliyat al-Karmel. The Druze are a religious sect formed by an Egyptian Iman who broke off his group from Islam. Their communities exist in the mountains of Northern Israel. Syria and Lebanon. The sect has about 2M members, and they only marry within the sect. The men usually where white caps and sport mustaches, the women have a white scarf over a black kaftan. In recent years, almost all are highly educated and even the women can be professionals. We had our lunch at the store of woman owned store, who sells health products such as soaps and lotions that she makes herself.

Druze store owner

Then on to Haifa. We had a photo stop of the Bahai Gardens. The Bahai International Center is in Jaffa and the founder is buried on the 13^th terrace of the gardens. Upon reaching Haifa, we boarded our 89 passenger ship, the Cleo. 

Bahai Gardens

Jaffa

 

Today we heard from Yuval Roth. In 1993 his brother was kidnapped and killed by Hamas, the Palestinian movement which wants an Islamic state in Palestine. In 1994 Yucal heard about an organization that was working to reconcile the Jews and Moslems. Yuval joined in 2000, and held hundreds of dialogue meetings in local high schools. One of the Muslims asked whether Yuval could help get his brother from the Palestine border to an Israeli hospital. The care was financed by the Palestine government, but the brother couldn’t pay for a taxi from the border to the hospital. In 2006, he founded Road to Recovery. Today, 1400 volunteers transport 140 patients per day from Palestine to Israeli hospitals. The money raised is used to cover the expenses of the volunteers.

Egyptian Triumphal Arch 

Then we explored the old city of Jaffa. Jaffa is 4000 years old and is mentioned in the book of Jonah. We saw the remains of the walls that protected the city. Here was found the remains of an Egyptian triumphal arch from the time of Ramses II, 3^rd century BC. After Jaffa failed to pay the Egyptian tax, the army attacked, but couldn’t breech the walls. The general disguised himself as a merchant and offered trade goods to the town. They let him into the city but soldiers came out of the carts, instead of goods, conquering the city, as told by a papyrus scroll discovered in the 1920s.We continued up the hill to a modern artwork, the Statue of Faith. The Floating tree is an Orange tree, this area used to be filled with orange groves , but are disappearing as the city grows.

Synagogue reopened in 1948

A highlight of our day was visiting a synagogue with separate sitting for men and women. We learned about the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, read through the year at services. It also has the 613 Jewish laws. The Talmud is the second key book for Jews. It shows the deliberations of Rabbi over generations on religious questions. The Talmud was completed 1500 years ago, but such debates still occur to date as technology changes create new questions of how to apply Jewish laws.

House of the Tanner

In the Acts of the Apostles, Jaffa is where Peter had a dream with all the animals both clean and unclean. God spoke “what I have made holy, you shouldn’t make unholy”. This led to the decision to break away from Judaism and all its laws. We visited St. Peter’s church and also saw the tanner’s house where Peter stayed in Jaffa. Down the hill we passed by the Jaffa Great Mosque and the Ottoman fountain. We had a traditional Mideastern lunch of salads in a restaurant on the edge of the flea market. From Jaffa’s clock tower we walked along the beach to our hotel. For dinner we returned along the beach to the Manta Ray with excellent dishes of steak and fish.

Tel Aviv

 

Balza siblings and spouses

A video of this trip is available on youtube. 

This is a unique trip for us, we’re traveling with my brothers, my sister, and our spouses. Our first foreign trip together thanks to our parents whose inheritance we are spending. We booked this trip 3 years ago and then Covid happened. We’re headed to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Scattered across the U.S. we all met in Chicago for our flight to Tel Aviv. We arrived at 4 PM the next day. We had just enough time to get our bags in our room at the Royal Beach Tel Aviv Hotel before heading out to a nearby restaurant, Baba Yaga, for a delicious, but expensive meal.

The next morning, we began our tour walking the Neve Tzedek neighborhood, created in 1887 by Sephardic Jews (expelled from Spain) outside the port of Jaffa. The area was soon filled with orange trees. The first public buildings erected were a boys and girls schools. The first high rise erected in Tel Aviv was on the site of the former boys school. Now when a high rise is built, they must restore one of the old buildings. Just north of this area is where German Jews settled in the 1930s, building in the Bauhaus style with white curved buildings.

Founding Fathers of Neve Tzedek

A video of this trip is available on youtube.

Tel Aviv, (Hill of Spring in English) is where Ben Gurion declared the new independent State of Israel on May 14th,  1948 after the November 29^th, 1947 vote by the U.N vote to create a Jewish state from portions of Palestine and the end of the British mandate. A day later, the surrounding Arab countries attacked.

In the afternoon, we toured the Yitzhak Rabin Center. Rabin became Israel’s first prime Minister who had been born in Israel. Born in 1922, he graduated from the Kadoori Agricultural School in 1941. He had planned to study in Berkeley, but instead joined the Israeli Defense Forces under the British protectorate. This force then fought against the Arab countries in the War for Independence. One percent of the Jewish population died in the War for Independence. While the Jews were vastly outnumbered, they won the war largely because of better technology, and the financing provided by Jews throughout the world. They gained most of the British mandate except for the West Bank and Giza. Over 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled.

Changes after War of Independence

With the Jewish state established, Jews immigrated from throughout the world, tripling the Jewish population to 3 million by 1950. The immediate task became providing food, shelter, and jobs the people in what was largely barren country. And assimilate these people with a common Hebrew language. In 1967, Nassar, Egypt’s leader started threatening Israel with a second Holocaust by invading from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Rabin, now head of the defense forces proposed attacking first. They eventually did by an air attack, destroying all three air forces while they were still on the ground. This began the Six Day War, where Israel took over the Sanai, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Jerusalem. Rabin went on to become Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. The Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979 returned the Sanai Peninsula to Egypt. Rabin later became Prime Minister, best known for signing the Oslo accord with Yasser Arafat in 1993. Because of his military background, he was trusted by many to negotiate with the Arabs for peace. Unfortunately, he was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish radical. The mid-East lost an opportunity for a more permanent peace. The Israeli’s still occupy significant portions of the West Bank.

Oslo Accord