Nov. 7-Dec. 1, 2009
Travel Location: Africa,Egypt,Lower-Egypt,Cairo
Sorry all that I haven’t written practically all of November. I would give a ton of excuses but why dwell on my imperfections? Now I can’t even remember the last event I talked about, so I’ll just go over the last 3 weeks. On Friday the 6th a group of us went to Tanis. Tanis was an Ancient Egyptian capital during the 20th Dynasty. Several 21st and 22nd Dynasty pharaohs were buried here in shared tombs. We went into several of them and explored. For the most part Tanis is now in ruins and the excavators for the most part had just strewn objects all over the site. Broken obelisks lay on their side and giant architectural blocks are out of situ, taking up space on the ground. We also gave a fake Indiana Jones themed tour as Tanis was featured in Lost Ark.
On Friday the 13th Deidre (the illustrator) and I went to the Coptic Quarter of Cairo. We saw the Hanging Church, which is basically a huge Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and was built on top of a Roman Water Gate so it has no real foundation. The church is suspended on top of 10 foot stone walls that once comprised the Water Gate. We also went to St. George’s church, and the Coptic Museum. The Coptic Museum was really wonderful. It’s probably one of the few museums in Cairo where everything was properly tagged and the objects were in good housing. Unfortunately, I have no pictures as none were allowed but it was really interesting to see how pagan iconography was eventually blended with Christian symbols. We were super cool and took the Metro train there and back. It was actually really nice and comparable to the Subway. They have 2 cars that are strictly for women which I liked a lot. Although, we got into one of the cars that SHOULD have been an all female car, yet it had men on it. I think the men were all married to women occupying the car so it was more like a family car. But the men riding on the strictly female car wasn’t the biggest social faux pas I witnessed. One woman decided to breast feed her baby during the ride without putting a cloth over the baby’s head. So I basically saw a part of this woman’s body I really cared not to, all the way back to Downtown Cairo. I don’t know why people weren’t yelling at her. I mean this country is so conservative about those things that women get their own subway cars. You’d think I wouldn’t have been the only person offended.
The next weekend our osteologist Anne left Egypt for home. It was very big loss as she was a lot of our comic relief when things got tense between people. That week there were also two huge soccer matches between Egypt and Algeria. Egypt won the first match and everyone celebrated as it meant they were getting closer to qualifying for the World Cup in 2010. But unfortunately they lost the second match and are now disqualified from the World Cup. It was also an important match as Algeria is Egypt’s biggest soccer rival. They hadn’t played each other since 1989, so everyone here was excited to see this rematch. The last time they played, the Algerian players harassed the Egyptian players in their hotel so that the Egyptian players got no sleep the night before the match and subsequently lost. The Egyptian Embassy in Algeria was also desecrated after the match. So after losing the second match guess what happened in Cairo? If you guessed massive riots and looting then you are correct! The match was on Wednesday, and when I was in Cairo on Friday shop windows were still broken and the road to the Algerian Embassy was completely blocked off by Riot Police. In fact, there were Riot Police all over the district of Cairo I was in that day. But it wasn’t too serious since the Riot Police were still cat calling my friends and me. People take their jobs real serious here ya know? That night Emily (trench supervisor), Christina (photographer), Tom (New Zealander), and I all went to this huge music festival that happens annually in Cairo. It was so much fun! It was like a proper music festival with 2 stages out in this grassy field. It had t-shirt booths and food stands. The music varied from pretty good to amazingly terrible. Egypt’s “Best Rap Group” performed. They totally stole the background instrumental from that song by Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. I have video of this plagiarism. I have video of a few of the acts, one of which I actually really enjoyed their music. It was some rock band named Bad Apple. The guitarist was actually very talented so I was impressed since I hadn’t expected to like any of the acts.
This past weekend Tash (another New Zealander), Christina, Karina (my tentmate and trench supervisor), Bethany (architecture specialist), Deidre, and I went to Saqqara. I’ve wanted to see the Tomb of the Two Brothers for years but unfortunately it’s closed for renovations. Basically, two men (one a hairdresser, the other a manicurist) were buried together not only in the same overall tomb but their sarcophagi were found side by side. People have put forth various theories on why two men were buried together as this is the only occurrence known about, the main one being that they are family. But nowhere in the tomb does it say they are genetically linked. And really, it’s a manicurist and a hair dresser depicted in several very intimate manners on the tomb walls. I think it’s pretty obvious what their relationship really was. But I guess this trip I won’t get to see the tomb. Ah well. We did get to see the tomb of the butcher and another tomb above the butcher’s tomb. We also went inside Mereruka’s tomb which is a large tomb that has a separate section for his wife. It wasn’t completely usual for someone’s wife to get a big tomb space and her reliefs were beautiful. We went down Teti’s pyramid and saw some of the oldest Pyramid Texts in existence. It was amazing. I’m so used to seeing the Pyramid Texts as a transcription, but I’ve never seen the actual carvings on the walls. We were all giggling excitedly about that while in the pyramid. We also saw Ptah-hotep’s tomb and got yelled at by some obnoxious tour guide leading around a bunch of Germans. But despite this altercation and the temporary closing of the Two Brothers Tomb it was a great trip.
Next week I finally have a vacation, so Deidre and I are trekking down South to Luxor for 4 days. We’re really excited. I was there the last time I was in Egypt but Deidre has never been so I get to show her around I suppose. It’s great because this time I have this magical card that gets me into all the things tourist don’t get to see. The Supreme Council of Antiquities here in Egypt issues these ID cards to foreigners who are doing archaeological work in Egypt. It basically proves that you are seriously studying Ancient Egypt and are allowed to go wherever you want unless it’s like the Two Brother’s tomb where it would interfere with other work to go in. Plus, working here we also know a lot of the people at the Inspectorates around Egypt so we should be given free license to go around the sites in Luxor.
After Luxor I have one more week and then I return home on December 20th. I’m ready to come home as I’m exhausted and miss a lot of varieties of food. But I’ll probably write about Luxor so until then enjoy this update!
Again, here’s the link to my photo page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mchinperez/sets/72157622458884300/
