Exploring Egypt – A sun-lit journey through death, life and everything in between

A wish, a dream to return to the mother continent of Africa and this time, to visit Egypt, an intriguing nation renowned for its antiquity. This is the only nation, where an ancient wonder of the world still stands tall! 

Things finally fell in place after many misses in the past year. Even before beginning the travel, I understood that Egypt had two different faces – one, the place of the past, ruled by dynasties of Egyptian pharaohs, and another, the modern republic of Egypt – both so very different and so very alive, and I hoped to return with a sense of both.

Egypt, being an Arabic-speaking country, we were sure to need assistance to manage our day-to-day activities. We found a great team there who took care of everything from the minute we landed in Cairo. At the airport, we were received by Tarek, and met our Cairo driver, Ziggy. Right on the first ride from the airport to our hotel, got a taste of the happy and humorous nature of Egyptians, for there was much teasing between the two of them and amidst all the laughs, made us feel quite at home. This team also came up with such a thoughtful choice of Egyptologists, to guide us in all the places we travelled to. Without their focussed explanations and patient answers to my many questions, the words that follow wouldn’t be there at all.

On pyramids and pharaohs:

The first step of the exploration started with the world-renowned Giza pyramids, guided by our knowledgeable tour guide, Mohammed, a certified Egyptologist, and a pro photographer as well. Drove there early in the morning before the crowds commenced, learning that this most famous pyramid was built by Pharaoh Khufu. Decided to do the trip inside the pyramid to see the burial chamber of this king from around 2500 BCE. When walking inside, I felt very much like being in the belly of a Meghalaya cave. But it was nothing impossible as I had feared, reading about claustrophobia warnings. Within, there’s the stone pit where Khufu was buried, although the mummy and the precious items stored therein are long lost, believed to be stolen by tomb thieves before millennia. 

Walked on to the second pyramid of Khafre, the only pyramid with the limestone casing on top. Learnt that all pyramids were covered with this shining limestone coating but was stripped by later rulers to decorate their structures. So, why was the Khafre pyramid’s casing left alone on the top like melting icing on a cake? Only because it was so steep that no one could get to it. Lesson for the future – If you want something to survive for long, make it hard to reach. Returning, we drove past the last of the three pyramids built by Pharaoh Menkaure, when there was some decline in the kingdom and so it is the smaller of the three, yet was said to be covered in black granite, also stripped away in later centuries. You should know that the three pyramids were built by a father-son-grandson trio, reminding me of the father-son builders of Chola living temples in Tamilnadu! 

After gazing at these pyramids to our heart’s content, we moved on to take in a magnificent view of the Sphinx, a mythical representation of pharaoh and lion, said to signify the strength of the animal and the wisdom of the human. I had been thinking that the Sphinx was a female, maybe because of the stylish headdress. But learnt that the Sphinx is always male because it represents the pharaoh, who had to be a man, per the royal decree then. Then, we visited the valley temple built of pink sandstone, specially brought all the way from Aswan in the south. Here, our tour guide explained how in ancient times, they would prepare the bodies for mummification in a 70-day process. Just imagine the amount of faith in the successors to do so much for a king who is no more. This was because the ancient Egyptians firmly believed that there was an afterlife. Just like the sun arose, set, and arose again every single day, death was only a night, and the day of life was sure to return. When it did, the pharaohs wanted to be as prepared as they could be. 

How this idea of mummification began has much to do with the soil and weather of this region. Most of Egypt is covered by the sands of the Sahara. It’s a dry climate without a shred of moisture in the air, as our chapped lips showed us sensorially. So, what’s not so great for lips from humid places seems great for dead bodies. When ancient Egyptians, before historic times, buried their dead in this desert sand, the bodies seemed to be naturally preserved because of such weather conditions. Also, the desert jackal had a unique way of feeding on only the vital organs of the dead body and for having taught this to the humans, the animal was crowned as the god of mummification, Anubis. 

The process of mummification begins by cleaning the body with natron salts and sucking out the brains through the nose, which were thrown away. It’s all in the brain, modern scientists may vouch, but according to these ancient scientists, the dead needed not their brains for their afterlife. Then, so as not to damage the heart, a hole was made on the right side of the body and all the organs were carefully taken out and preserved in separate jars. Then, the corpse was stuffed with linen with meticulous care and tightly wrapped. This was the detailed effort taken for the body. When it came to the spirit, the priests then spent a lot of time in reciting spells to guide the dead soul of the pharaoh. Intricate care was taken in carving the sarcophagus, the containers for the mummy, in accurate detail, depicting the face of the king, so that the returning spirit would identify itself when it came back. After all this, the king was buried in his tomb within the pyramid with all the treasures he would need to lead the life he always has, in the afterlife too. In the beginning, even living servants were buried along with the king but with time, this gruesome practice was modified to statues of servants.

It was the unshakeable belief in this theory of an afterlife in not just the king, but all his subjects, that the pyramids were built. Now, the question, why pyramids? That’s because these ancient Egyptians seem to believe that their Sun-God Amun-Ra birthed himself inside one such pyramid and that these structures were in the shape of the sun’s rays. Only if they were buried in such pyramids, could they spring back to life, like the sun, believed these pharaohs, and they made their subjects believe that too. So strong was this faith that there are 121 pyramids throughout Egypt, built by ruler after ruler in successive dynasties, but none as famous or intact as the pyramids of Giza. Unlike what many people believe, the pyramids were not built by slaves. It is said to be built by farmers, to whom this was the occupation, during the season when the Nile flooded. They could do no agriculture by the banks of the Nile during this season, for they had to wait for the Nile to retreat after this annual task of leaving behind the rich silt before they could begin their farming. And so, during the flooding of the Nile, they were happy to be doing good work for their pharaohs. In a way, a labour of love for their god-like king. For it would take a lot of conviction in these living men to move these tonnes of stones for a king’s home of death! 

After the visit of the three pyramids, we visited another suburban region called Saqqara, where there were two pyramids of prominence – one, the pyramid of Unas, with the first writing on the walls of a pyramid, and another, the Step pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser, the first ever builder of pyramids. We seem to be talking of the pharaoh as if he himself took the stones and decked them one after the other. However, it was commissioned by Djoser and the brains behind the operation was a man of many skills, Imhotep, architect, physician, priest among other things, who brought in the idea of building a pyramid, and this person was later revered as a God of architecture and medicine in not only Egyptian mythology but also that of the Greeks and Romans. 

To me, this ancient structure seemed like the first steppingstone in the journey of human innovation leading to the skyscrapers that touch the heavens and even the space rockets that venture beyond. Everything begins with a single step, they say, and it seems to have begun with this Step pyramid. How this was the beginning of everything and it’s a changing world order was evident in the architectural nuances here. For in some of the temples and tombs in this complex, we saw how they had carved the stone ceiling in the style of curving wooden blocks because that’s what they were used to seeing in their huts. Also, starting with the building of pillars and feeling not so confident if these pillars would stand on their own, they had supported these by extending the same as walls. 

The other stunning aspect was the artwork. Real-life scenes seemed to walk out of the walls of the funerary temples, all depicted in perfect proportion. Learnt that the Egyptians had designated specific number of squares for every form and that’s how they all turn out to be so proportionate no matter which wall you are looking at. Also, curiously there was ancient Graffiti from 3000 years ago.

This pyramid complex, being more than 4500 years old, seems to have been visited by an ancient Egyptian tourist. The visitor has written in a language called Demotic used in ancient Egypt by common people mentioning he had visited this place in such and such year. Quite like modern graffiti that we looked down upon and shake our heads in disbelief at their vandalism of public structures. Curious how both monument and graffiti has become democratised as objects of interest in the hands of time!

Then, the final stop in the exploration of pyramids was at Dahsur, where the pharaoh Snefru did some experiments with pyramids, first with the odd-shaped Bent pyramid and then finishing off with the first true-form pyramid, the Red pyramid, within which we ventured in the style of swashbuckling tomb raiders, crawling down, bent at our hips into a 125-step steep descent to see the burial chamber of this pharaoh amidst the rocky bed. We were the last at this pyramid and it was a true adventure to climb down the steps and go up some wooden stairs and peer down at the rocky burial chamber of this ancient king. Loved the layout of this day of pyramids which started and ended with being in the heart of a pyramid! 

A taste of Islamic Cairo:

The next day was about understanding the Islamic side of Cairo, which is also the religion of most Egyptians today. Visited ancient mosques and an Islamic citadel built by a 19th Muslim ruler, Muhammad Ali, the one known for gifting away monuments in Egypt to European countries. Case in point, the Luxor Obelisk standing in the Place de la Concorde, Paris. 

Leaving politics behind, sensed the serenity within the walls of the mosques and learnt a little about Islam. Our tour guide, Mohammed, explained how there are three things that a Muslim person can leave behind to speak of their name and these were Children, Knowledge, or Charity. The warrior kings who seemed not to have time for the first two, built mosques and hospitals as part of their legacy, he said.

We happened to visit Egypt in the month of Ramadan, when most of the people here are fasting from sunrise to sunset, and it is no ordinary food fast, for not even a drop of water must pass through their lips. On one such day, inside a mosque, I made a blooper. When we eat or drink something, it’s almost instinctive in my culture to offer that to the person next to you, and this instinct overtook my recent knowledge about Ramadan fasting. After Haiku and I had a sip of water after a hot walk, I offered some to our tour guide and he said, ‘No, I mustn’t drink’. It was such a facepalm moment for me and I apologised profusely but Mohammed was so understanding and said, ‘Don’t worry about it. It is good to share’! I understood that what is kindness is one place is not necessarily kindness everywhere. 

Flying from the Old to the New:

Having seen pyramids plenty, it was time to journey towards Luxor. I had not thought much about the order of cities in Egypt to visit. Only a logical north to south plan. Realised what a fortunate decision this was, when our tour guide, Hussein, told us know the plan to go from Cairo to Luxor and then to Aswan, followed the path of the changing reigns in Ancient Egypt. 

For pyramids belong to the Old Kingdom (2700 – 2200 BCE) and our next stopover at Luxor, the Valley of Kings belonged to the New Kingdom (1500 – 1000 BCE). Centuries had passed, but the pharaohs of Egypt were still following the process of mummification and encasing them in pyramids. There were lots of ups and downs in the reign as is the inevitable consequence, when the entire system rests on a single individual, the pharaoh in this case. The Middle Kingdom in between came and went by, with a lot of trouble, as can be sensed in the depiction of careworn faces in statues from this period. But a total revival happened only in the New Kingdom, the age of empire building and exploration. It’s from this era, the names we have often heard such as Tutankhamun, Rameses II, Hatshepsut belong, and they followed the new process of tomb building. Why? Didn’t these pharaohs believe in the pyramids anymore? Of course, they did. That’s a belief they were not ready to give up. But when sighting upon the limestone mountains on the West Bank of the Nile in a place called the Valley of Kings in Luxor now, the solution presented itself to them. For when you pause and look at these mountains, they will seem exactly like pyramids. So, these later pharaohs decided that nature had built their pyramids for them up there and they are going to simply bury their mummies in tombs built under these mountains.

Being limestone, making tunnels within these mountains was no big deal for the skilled workers of this era. And so, king after king, and a queen too, built deep tombs laden with riches for their afterlife here. Much has been looted by thieves over the centuries, and the most complete one excavated was the tomb of Tutankhamun, a boy pharaoh who ruled for 10 years and died at the age of 19. Here, the team headed by Howard Carter discovered 5000 different artefacts and more than 100 kg of gold, which took them 10 years to just catalogue. This tomb is famous not because this pharaoh was the richest or the most beloved but because somehow this tomb had escaped the eyes of thieves over the millennia. When you visit the valley of kings’ entrance hall, you need to kneel before the exhibit of limestone mountains and look under. Here, they show how the tombs of different kings and queens extend beneath the surface of the earth. The deepest tomb is that of Seti I. Queen Hatshepsut’s would have been deeper, had she connected to her temple on the other side of the mountains, but she died before that dream of hers could be fulfilled, we were told by Hussein, our Luxor Egyptologist.

Who is this Hatshepsut (pronounced as ‘hat-ship-suit’ as another Egyptologist I met later told me when I was fumbling with the name) that we keep hearing about? She’s a woman who made history. It was ordained by Pharaonic law that only a male of royal blood can be the ruler of Egypt. She was indeed of royal blood, but being a woman, the throne deluded her. After a couple of misses at seizing the throne, she finally got a chance when the next ruler Tutmosis III was not hundred percent royal blood. So, she decided to take the throne and towards this, with the aid of priests then, she wrote a new story about herself. She portrayed herself as the daughter of Amun-Ra, the sun-God of the Egyptians, and depicted a story of how this god breathed into her mother, and Hatshepsut was thus born, as a rightful heir to the throne of Egypt. These are not mythical stories cooked up by later people but imprinted by Hatshepsut herself on the walls of her temple, in a modern graphical novel style. Apparently, all it took was this temple to Amun-Ra and the story to convince the nobles and commoners, and there she was, first woman ruler of all of Egypt!

In her reign, she built many temples to her father Ra, and on the practical side, was also an ambassador to distant countries such as Somali. Again, how do we know this? Depictions of expedition to these countries, in the form of images of animals they met on the way, such as monkeys, giraffes, sharks, and manta ray can be seen on this temple as well. She even depicts the king of Somali as living in a little hut, perhaps to contrast it with their opulent palaces. Also, the queen of this other nation is depicted as a rather plump woman with sagging flesh. Perhaps this Somali queen was simply of a voluptuous build owing to her different ethnicity, different from the svelte build of this Egyptian queen. But seems like queens can be nasty to each other and evidence of this is on the walls of this queen’s temple! This could be the most ancient travelogue, written in stone, I guess. The curious thing was that this queen gave gold, found in abundance in Egypt, to buy silver, which was not found in the region. The very idea now seems unbelievable, but it depicts a truth in economics that the worth of something depends more than anything on its availability. That’s Queen Hatshepsut for you, a colourful character, who dared to change the story of her life to go towards her dream and she captivated my interest more than all the other New Kingdom rulers I read about. 

The deep belief of ancient Egyptians in their gods meant that not only are they building tombs for their afterlife but also temples for the Gods, whom they believed to be very much alive. Such is the Karnak temple to the sun God Amun-Ra and the Luxor Temple to Ra’s wife Muut. The curious thing is how they always depict the Gods as a trinity – the God, his wife, and his son – a concept, which is found in many later day religions. Speaking of religions, I will take this point to digress and take about a maverick king during the reign of the New Kingdom – A pharaoh called ‘Akhenaten’, the father of the famous Tutankhamun, who suddenly got it into his head that he’s not going to believe in all these thousands of Egyptian gods and decided to declare there is only one God named Aten, who symbolised the sun’s rays. Not only that, but this king also threw away the perfectionistic portrayal of pharaohs in sculptures and carvings and went with depicting him in a unisex and more realistic style, with the face of a man and a body of a woman. Liberal thinkers in these modern times would love Akhenaten, but such is the fate of a man who is born before his time, for his name was even attempted to be removed from the list of kings for such a blasphemy. After his death, things went back to being polytheistic, but this brief period of monotheism in Egypt could have sown the seeds of modern monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam.

Returning to the real, the temple at Karnak is an architectural marvel, the pillars there, are seen to be believed. Every atom in you echoes with awe as you look up at these pillars that are standing upright after all these thousands of years. Intricate carvings and hieroglyphics soar on these pillars as they seem to rise to the very heaven of the Gods for whom they stand.

Our tour guide, Hussein, explained how a procession would start from Karnak temple in three groups – The king and priests carrying the God’s statue by boat, the nobles by chariots and the common people by walk, and all three would go to Luxor temple, so as to let that God meet with his wife. Although the common people walked, they were the first to arrive, so as to clean and adorn the temple for the arrival of the others. Also, just so that it was easy for priests to move the statue to the boats, the Nile was brought to the doorstep of the Karnak temple, with inbuilt dams to make sure when the Nile flooded, it would not damage the temple statues and carvings. That’s modern-day engineering being done with primitive technology!

Segregation was rampant in this society as we learnt of how the sanctum sanctorum, holy of the holies, could be seen only by the king and high priest, and the commoners couldn’t even gaze at God’s carvings outside, for these were covered with wooden planks. Could this be the origin for the caste system in India? The priests in these temples were accorded special status and lived close to the temples in separate communities. Like the tanks in modern Indian temples, these temples have tanks too, where the King purified himself before giving his offerings to God. 

Stepping away from the negativity of these instances of caste divisions, I was heartened by a beautiful story of three different religions co-existing at one spot. This is a wall in the Luxor temple. Over the years, sands buried these walls, and the temple was not visible at all. Here on those jutting projections at ground level, Coptic Christians built their church and later with the consent of that church, a Mosque was built here too, and after archaeologists finally excavated this temple, now, one can see the three different religious structures standing on top of another, a living record of how the different religions overlap on the fabric of this nation’s history.

Although we were supposed to do the Hot air balloon ride over Luxor in the morning before visiting these sites, thankfully it got postponed to the next day, for then we had a clear understanding of what these ruins below meant, from the air. An unforgettable experience of soaring in the air to see the past spread out before your eyes. The Nile, the green of its fertile banks, the limestone mountains in the desert beyond, and all the structures of ancient rulers built for glory of the sun, came alive in the morning light. 

A Sail on the Nile:

From air, we dropped to the waters and took a boat ride on a Dahabiyya, the kind of sailboat used in 19th-20th centuries, a slow and relaxed way of exploring the sites along the Nile. With us, there were three other couples, from Germany, Belgium/Rome, and Mexico. A delight to see the past with eyes of people from different parts of the world. From the moment we entered, we were made to feel at home by our energetic tour-guide and Egyptologist, Hamdi.  He introduced the ship’s captain, also called Hamdi, the talented chef, Muhammad and the patient waiter, Ibrahim, and made us all feel like a family from the word go. Long conversations at mealtimes kept this feeling growing.

The slow and sauntering sail on the Nile was peppered with visits to Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo temples, which belonged to the Graeco-Roman period, after Alexander’s invasion of Egypt in around 300 BCE. These Greek rulers decided to honour the Egyptian Gods and built temples on the ruins of the old, with the advice of priests, who still followed the ancient Egyptian religion of Ra. Didn’t the Greeks have gods of their own? Didn’t they think those gods would be offended? Somewhat forward thinking of them to try to win the acceptance of the conquered people by honouring the old gods! 

Another interesting site we visited was a sandstone quarry, the place from where tonnes of stones were transported up the Nile to build those pyramids, tombs, and temples, living on, even today. The quality checks for rocks and the organised way of chipping away and transporting these blocks wowed us no end. It’s all engineering and it’s all explainable indeed. But walking there in the sweltering heat, it made me wonder, why do so much? What makes you do so much for so little? For it’s not the kings who are working here. It’s the common people and later in the era of empire-building, slaves, the prisoners of wars from enemy nations, spending years together at this backbreaking work. So, what kind of faith and devotion to your work you needed to have to chip away at these mountains and move it too for the whim of a ruler!

It was not only sites on the Nile that made these few days, a magical exploration of Egypt. Watching the sun rise and set over the Nile on many days made me understand the significance of this celestial object in the lives of ancient Egyptians. Even today, all the technology in the world cannot diminish the mystic beauty in a sunrise and a sunset and so it must have seemed to the ancient Egyptians. It was indeed the sun that inspired their philosophy entire and made them build these structures that continues to wow their descendants even after 5000 years. With such an inspiration, no wonder the art of ancient Egyptians is timeless!

And here, I also felt the bond of connecting with strangers. After a mere four days, I felt that I could relate so much to all the travellers on this boat, share comradeship and laughter and even feel the tenderness of parting away. This made me think that in the end, we are all undoubtedly one people. No matter how creatively rulers of the past or politicians of the present may divide us with fictions of race, religion, nation or culture, and no matter the differences in the outer skin, we can always find that oneness within!

Nubian Perspective at Aswan:

After bidding farewell to our co-travellers from around the world, we got an opportunity to see the history of this land from a different perspective, that of the Nubians. They are the darker-skinned people of Egypt, with African features of thick lips and broad nose, which you could also say are found in the people of South Indian villages. The Nubians have a history that extends equal to or perhaps even longer than the ancient Egyptians. They may not have written records of their language and solid historical evidence like the ancient Egyptians, but they are always portrayed as being captured and won over by these pharaohs that we infer they should have been around for long. 

In the Kalabsha temple, learnt how a Nubian God, Mandolis, was honoured in the Roman period, a way of winning the hearts of these people. Also learnt, like the Indian villages that had to move away from their way of life when dams were built to power the modern nation, the Nubians too had to relocate because of the building of Aswan Dam and the flooding in the region to create the huge man-made lake Nasser. The deserts, where they were relocated to, were not suited to the lifestyle they were used to, and the Nubians returned to the banks to abandoned villages and began their life there. 

Our Nubian guide and Egyptologist, Fatima, explained how the Nubians were the last to convert with each religion change. They were the last to accept the religion of Ra, and then when Coptic Christians came, while most of Egypt changed its colours, Nubians were steadfast to Ra, and slowly with marriage and trade, the new religion was accepted, not because of force, but for love. Likewise, when Islam came to their doorstep with the invasion of Muslim rulers in 641 ACE, for hundreds of years later, they continued to be Christians, and then slowly changed over to Islam and most of the Nubians we met are Muslims now. Although they converted to Islam, in their homes, one can see their roots going back a long way. I saw depiction of triangles in the walls of homes and learnt that it was the Nubian belief that long-gone ancestors came to rest in these triangles. I’m sure I have seen such triangles in homes in South Indian villages too. 

Mango trees, a stone bench structure at the entrance of homes, that which we call ‘Thinnai’ in Tamil, and offering water to drink for thirsty travellers in pots all reminded me of villages I have visited in India. Though I have no ways of explaining how, I intuitively felt the connection with these long-lost cousins in a different continent. After tasting a cooling ‘Doom drink’, made from the fruit of a palmyra variant, and being filled with the rich experience of seeing a different aspect of Egypt, we left to the place where we began, back to Cairo.

A Grand Summary at the Museum of National Civilisation:

On the final day, visited the grand Museum of National Civilisation in Cairo. This museum is a living lesson in what a museum should be. Our entire travel was summarised as a flowing exhibit from prehistoric times to agriculture, the dynastic period of Pharaohs, Greek-Roman period, Coptic Christians, advent of Islam, and modern Egyptian society. It was a mind-blowing experience to witness the transition of a nation through authentic artefacts from each period. 

The last exhibit we visited was described as the ‘golden parade of mummies’. All that remains of these rulers, who commanded an entire nation! Mind-bending to reflect that it’s these blackened, shrivelled bodies, lying before our eyes in glass cases, who built these soaring structures that continues to captivate the world entire. While that’s the thought about their life, when it came to their death, no matter the meticulous detail of preservation, not a single pharaoh has returned to life. This life was truly the end. The sight of these mummies lying helpless, told us that no matter the riches you stock, no matter the empires you conquer, there is nothing you can take along with you. 

And yet, beyond these morose thoughts that echoed from the past, there is much more to life, as we sensed so tangibly before leaving for our flight to Chennai. Tarek, although fasting himself for Ramadan, treated us to some amazing ice cream, which we guiltily ate, as we walked on the streets of fasting Cairo. Just as our tour guide, Mohammed, was clicking a picture, our driver, Ziggy, arrived in the midst of crazy Cairo traffic (crazy to Westerners but not so much to us, Indians) and yelled for us to get into the car. There was much teasing and joking about the picture clicked, on the way to the airport. And so, here was life, glowing with all its delicious joy and laughter making itself present, in that final moment before our farewell to Egypt.

I left Egypt with the feeling of having experienced something immensely rich. A mother of civilisations, one that was fortunate to be preserved for thousands of years. A place where there can be no second thoughts about its ancientness. It also made me think much about the threads interlinking power and religion. That such a throbbing religion, that of Ra, survived for 3000 years, and then could vanish away, without a single adherent, should give us humans the clarity to approach our own religions with humility. Such deep-rooted beliefs of ancient Egyptians seem nothing more than superstitions to us now. Isn’t it possible future generations would say the same about what we believe and practice? So, why fight and wage wars over this? If our religion helps us be better humans, then let’s cherish them. At the same time can’t we try to let go of all the comparisons and a lurking sense of superiority?

I was moved to read about how the people of Cairo, during the recent revolution, formed a human chain around the Egyptian museum, so that the precious, centuries-old artefacts would not be looted by miscreants. As I listened to so many of our tour guides, such devout Muslims, who fasted and prayed, speak of the beliefs of this ancient people in gods, much different from their own, I understood, that like them, what’s needed is an acceptance and celebration of our common human heritage, no matter the present hues of identity we paint our skins with!