Month: April 2023

Dear Nile and Colorado rivers, don’t stop giving

Herodotus
Hany Hamroush

Every article or book I have read about Egypt includes this quote from Herodotus (circa 490 — 425 BC): “Egypt is a gift of the Nile.”

So there. I have included it, too.

But I wonder if the Nile River might some day take back that gift or stop giving. Especially as Egypt and the 10 other countries that the Nile runs through “mistreat” the river.

Earliest traces of humans in Egypt go back 250,000 years, but the Nile’s gift started long after that when the climate changed and most of Egypt became a desert. Only place left to live was along the Nile. Today, 99 percent of 109 million Egyptians live on five percent of the land — along the Nile, according to a talk given to our tour group by Hany Hamroush. He has a doctorate in geochemistry from the University of Virginia, and returned to Egypt to teach at Cairo University and the American University in Cairo (AUC). His main research is on the impacts of the Nile River and the environmental changes in Egypt now and in the past.

The Nile gave Egypt river currents that flow south to north to float ships down the river and predominant winds that blow north to south to sail up the river. Trade, communications and finally a nation, a civilization. The Nile in Egypt comes from the White Nile, which starts in Lake Victoria in Uganda, and the Blue Nile, beginning in Ethiopia. Eighty-five percent of the runoff in Egypt comes from the Blue Nile, which brings with it lots of mud. Every year around June, the Nile floods in Egypt, bringing rich soil to plant crops in, water to irrigate them.

Until Jan. 15, 1971, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser opened the High Dam at Aswan.

The High Dam at Aswan with the sculpture commemorating the friendship between Egypt and the Soviet Union, who helped build the dam.
Nasser and Nikita Khrushchev, short, bald guy in the middle, at the opening of the dam.

The dam rises 366 feet above the river, is two and a quarter miles long, a half mile wide at its base with a road on top. No more silt from the Blue Nile, but many more megawatts of hydro power. As Toby Wilkinson puts it in his book “The Nile: A Journey Downriver Through Egypt’s Past and Present”:

“The High Dam has regulated the flow of the Nile, consigning the annual inundation — the natural phenomenon that built Egypt — to the history books.”

I could find no one who thought the High Dam was all good or all bad — and I admit I did very few man-on-the-street interviews while in Arabic-speaking Egypt. But in the reading I have done and the few people I talked to in Egypt, the consensus was “some good and some bad.”

Good because the dam brought about “medium floods,” as Hamroush put it. No more famines with low inundations. No more catastrophic floods like the one in 1927. The flood in 2021 was worse than the one in 1927 but not felt in Egypt because of the High Dam, said Hamroush. The dam produces about half of the electricity used in Egypt. Lake Nasser, the 300-mile-long waterway behind the High Dam, now has a productive fishery. The High Dam opened more land with year-round irrigation for agriculture.

Bad because the rich silt stops behind the High Dam. So chemical fertilizers must be used so that the country’s agriculture can feed the nation.

With the higher dam, more land cultivated, chemical fertilizers and more irrigation (think of the Nile as the only water source in Egypt — no rain, no snow pack inside the country), it sounds like agribusiness in the making. However, I looked for but only saw two tractors while in Egypt. Lots of donkeys, horses and manual labor. If Egypt can grow enough food by hand, more power to them.

Hauling alfalfa.
Grain harvest along the Nile River.

More bad: Hamroush also pointed out that while silt is stuck behind the High Dam, there is less flow in the Nile so that any silt that reaches the Nile Delta doesn’t completely wash into the Mediterranean Sea. So the delta is sinking, and because of climate change, the sea is rising. The natural geological subsidence of the delta is 6.6 millimeters per year; the global sea rise is 3.3 millimeters per year. Doesn’t sound like much, but in 50 years it could affect four to eight million people, says Hamroush.

With more constant irrigation (mostly for sugar cane) there is more water damage to the foundations of ancient structures. Archeologist Kent Weeks discusses that in this video.

As Wilkerson puts it in his book: “The confident assertions of the High Dam’s cheerleaders, back in the late 1950s, now have a hollow ring. As one son of Aswan laconically put it, the High Dam ‘is slowly killing Egypt.’ “

Delivering produce to market.

And that’s not all. The Egyptians may now be paying more attention to how the Nile is treated, especially since someone else is doing the treating. Ethiopia has built and has filled the lake behind the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile. The concrete dam rises 475 feet above the river. The lake behind it covers 724 square miles (about the size of Houston, Texas). It will double Ethiopia’s output of electricity. Sounds good for Ethiopia, bad for Egypt.

For Egyptians, this could lead to ontological security—or the preservation of state identity. As this Carnegie article says: 

“Ontological insecurity may arise when internal and external developments disrupt the continuity of established identities and worldviews. It could be argued, then, that the GERD project threatens the continuity of Egypt’s enacted world that sees the Nile as a living being inseparable from Egypt’s history, culture, and civilizational identity. Thus, developments related to the project could force Egypt to redefine its national identity that is centered on the Nile River.”

(Here’s another good article from the Brookings Institute.)

So the Nile could be caught between two huge dams, the High Dam in Egypt and the GERD in Ethiopia, sort of like the Colorado River in the United States, caught between Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams among others. Recently, the U.S. federal government came out with three options for how to use the water from the dwindling Colorado River, which could mean cutting off water to 10 million Americans or plugging the irrigation canals that support a “$4 billion industry that employs tens of thousands of people and puts vegetables in supermarkets across the country during the winter.”

Maybe the question more germane to the United States should be: What if the Colorado River stopped giving?

1 father, 100 children, how many mothers?

Ramses the Great temple at Abu Simbel during the nightly light show.

Ramses II had more than 100 children, and he probably had more than one wife. Maybe a harem or a concubine or two — or three or more. But he had one favorite wife, named Nefertari, and he built her a temple right beside his. Much smaller than his temple at Abu Simbel but more than the other mothers got.

Abu Simbel is on Lake Nasser, an artificial lake formed after the building of the High Dam at Aswan. Abu Simbel is about 700 miles south of Cairo, Egypt, and we flew and bused to visit. However, we visited other sites before leaving for Aswan and Abu Simbel. At Dahshur, we received a lesson in early pyramid building from a re-engineered pyramid that would collapse on itself if the angle of the sides were not changed, then to a “step” pyramid, think of smaller boxes stacked on top of each other. The Step Pyramid of King Djoser is considered the oldest stone structure on Earth, built more than 4,700 years ago. My favorite part came inside the tomb of Kagemni, a government official for King Teti (circa 2330 BC), where Eman, our guide, gave us our first lesson in hieroglyphics. The bas-relief carvings on the walls of the tomb show scenes from daily life.

But let’s get back to Abu Simbel. Pictured below is the Nefertari structure, at night during the light show and below that on our daytime visit. Known as the Temple of Hathor, a god usually depicted as a cow or woman, goddess of love, pleasure, patron of dancing and music. The six 30-foot statues show Ramses and Nefertari, her dressed as Hathor and the same height as Ramses’ statue. “Instead of knee-height, as most consorts were depicted,” according to Lonely Planet’s Egypt guidebook. Told you she was a fav.

The temple for Nefertari, Ramses II’s favorite wife.
Nefertari’s statues are large but compare them to Ramses’ statues below.
Ramses the Great temple at Abu Simbel on Lake Nasser.

At the upper far left (above) are carvings of baboons, active at sunrise and therefore greeting the sun and the sun god — something good to have on your temple. Ra-Horakhty stands between the broken statue of Ramses (down since ancient times) and the intact one. Nice to have gods on your temple as well. The temple was carved out of the mountain between 1274 and 1244 BC. Supposedly dedicated to gods Ra-Horakhty, Amun and Ptah, but Ramses shows up more than they do. With four statues more than 60 feet tall of himself, Ramses stared out over the Nile as a warning to any troublemaker who thought they would venture into his land.

Ramses the egotist always represents prisoners on his creations.

If it’s Ramses’ temple, there have to be prisoners. Note the tied prisoners (above) who have different hair styles, representing that Ramses had conquests to the south, Nubia, and farther into the east of the Mediterranean Sea.

Inside the hypostyle hall, which means the roof is supported by pillars, typically in several rows, as they are here.
This is the sacred sanctuary, where Ramses, three gods and Kathy are shining in the light.

Let’s talk about those shining in the light. Kathy is always lit, but the rest of those in the sanctuary only light up twice a year, and Ptah, on the far right, never shines except when modern electric lights are on. As Ramses designed and built this structure, the first sunlight on February 21 and October 21 would shine far back in the temple to illuminate Ramses and two of the gods. But the sunlight stopped before falling on Ptah, a god of darkness. The special days were Ramses’ birthday and coronation days.

The structures at Abu Simbel represent two marvels, one in ancient times and another in more modern times. First marvel, that people more than 3,000 years ago with no power tools or bulldozers carved this out of the mountain in a way to make the sun shine where they wanted it to. Second marvel, that it was cut apart and moved more than 200 feet higher on the mountain when the High Dam at Aswan was built. The dam opened in 1971, and by then a venture headed up by UNESCO had lifted 35 temples, moving them above the rising lake waters. And the sun still shines. But now it falls on Ramses and two gods a day later.

If I haven’t yet endorsed Road Scholar, the group we toured with, let me do so now — just for the way they let us see Abu Simbel. A wander around in daylight, with Eman’s full explanation of it, the nighttime light show and then the early morning sail-by (video below) as we started sailing across Lake Nasser. Can’t say enough.

More on the High Dam in later posts.

Ramses II is not the only thing in the museum

Ramses II is an egotistical pharaoh, as our tour guide Eman pointed out, a ruler who might think his statue the most important of the more than 500,000 exhibits in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. But that can’t happen here. We will let Ramses the Great lead us through our continuing Egyptian journey. But ignoring what else is in the museum could be seen as bowing down to Ramses. That’s something we don’t want to do since so many people who did never got back up.

The museum offers much more — more than you can see in a day, week or years. There’s the room set aside for items found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb, discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 (photography prohibited in that room). But Tut’s chair/throne is open for viewing (see below). More statues of other pharaohs and ancient Egyptian gods. Mummies, of course, and my favorite: The 52-foot long papyrus scroll of the Book of the Dead, the instructions a dead person needs to get to his second life. The scroll shows my slavery to the printed page, but the images from the more than 2,000-year-old document are as clear as something that came off my printer seconds ago. I could not get far enough away or have a wide enough lens to take in the whole scroll displayed on a museum wall. But here are photos of illustrations and the hieroglyphics:

The god Ra voyaging in a boat, often buried with Egyptian dead as they will need transport to their next life.
The goddess Taweret, the protective goddess of mother and child during pregnancy and childbirth. She can call on many ways to protect the mother and child as she is made up of hippopotamus, crocodile, lion and human.

Below are King Tut’s throne made of wood covered with gold and silver, ornamented with semi precious stones and colored glass. Lions’ heads protect the seat while the arms take the form of winged serpents wearing the double crown of Egypt (Lower and Upper) and guarding the names of the king. Found in Tut’s tomb in 1922.

The most famous bust of Nefertiti (1370 – c. 1330 BC) has been hauled off to Berlin, but the Cairo museum has several representations of the royal wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, Tut’s father.

This statue of King Khafre (2558 – 2532 BC), below, was found at Giza, where the Great Pyramid sits. The second largest pyramid there was built by Khafre. The falcon god Horus sits behind Khafre’s head, providing protection and uniting earthly king with god.

Below is King Djoser (2667 – 2648 BC) who was buried in Egypt’s first pyramid, the world’s oldest monumental stone building.

The mummy below is that of either Yuya or Thuya, and shame on me for not marking down which one it is. Yuya was husband to Thuya (1390 – 1352 BC). They are the great grandparents of King Tut.

Hatshepsut (1473 – 1458 BC), Egypt’s most famous ancient queen. What about Cleopatra? She brought the Egyptian rule to an end; Hatshepsut kept it alive during her 20-year reign and built several temples. Note the beard. She portrayed herself in statues and paintings with a male body and false beard.

We’re so glad to meet you, Ramses II

We met Ramses II in Cairo at the Egyptian Museum, introduced to us by Eman, who was guiding us around her country.

An imposing figure, Ramses the Great looms over modern day humans as they enter the museum. His muscular arms are straight by his side, his left leg extended in front of him and his hands clasping bars. On the end of those bars, his identifying “cartouches” are stamped. He also has them on his shoulders and one on his belt. They are on the stand below him.

They are there so that when his soul comes to rejoin his body after he is dead, the spirit will be able to identify him.

Ramses ruled for 66 years, long before term limits. He lived to be 90 years old, which is remarkable at a time when the life expectancy was much less. High infant death rates brought down the average life expectancy to 19 years. Even those who survived childhood lived but 30 years for women and 34 years for men. Cleopatra died at age 38. Tutankhamun, who became king when he was 9, died when 19.

The Ramses II standing at the museum door is not the man at the end of his 90-year life. Why would you want your soul to finally show up and unite with a guy wearing Depends?

The Ramses we met is probably about 34 years old, said Eman. What age would you choose?

The museum Ramses II is very much alive. His arms stretch beside his body. If they were crossed in front of his chest, he would be dead. Legs together, same thing. His beard straight? Alive. Beard bent? Dead. Beard missing? It’s the Sphinx, whose facial hair was plucked and hauled off to the British Museum in London.

As was the Rosetta Stone, the piece of rock that deciphered the hieroglyphics used by the ancient Egyptians.

Not that Great Britain is alone in traipsing off with antiquities from Egypt. The famous bust of Nefertiti’s head and face? The one which seems to have an eye missing? (Not so, says Eman. The wife of Akhenaten from 1353 to 1336 BC had an eye disease and the bust is accurate in how she appeared). I’d have a picture of it here except that Nefertiti is now in Berlin.

The missing obelisk from the Luxor Temple, the largest one erected by Ramses II, now stands in Paris. Seventy-five feet tall, weighing 250 tons and carted off in 1829. In return, France sent Egypt a clock that has never worked. If Ramses only knew what has happened to his obelisk, there would be more than a beard whacked off. Ramses was quite vocal, at least in stone, about what he liked to do to those who opposed him.

These thefts-by-agreements between those oppressed and those doing the oppressing are common in history. Twenty-four dollars for the island of Manhattan. Thirty pieces of silver for your Savior. Chances of ever getting the obelisk, Nefertiti or the Rosetta Stone back to Egypt are probably better than returning Manhattan to the Lenape Indians, but not by much.

Desecration was another form of wrecking the ancient structures of Egypt. Ramses II took stones from previous buildings to build his own, and scratching out the hieroglyphics, images and names of previous rulers made it easier to forget them and draw attention to those now in power.

Thievery and destruction didn’t start with the colonial period; grave robbing became a get-rich-quick scheme as soon as the tombs were sealed, pyramids built or temples erected. It was easier to steal limestone that once topped pyramids (see the top of the pyramid to the right of the Sphinx above) than to quarry new stones for the latest structure being built, whether another pyramid, a temple or a foundation for your new mud hut.

Egypt’s ancient treasures are now well guarded, which makes grave robbing difficult. But Egyptians are very good about using what been left behind by Ramses the Great and others to bring in new money. In 2019, 13 million tourists visited Egypt. In 2020, tourists spent $4.87 billion dollars in Egypt — during the COVID pandemic.

Much of that money goes to hotels, Nile cruise ships, food services and tour groups, but the man in the street — make that sand — has a chance to earn some too. At the Giza pyramids, you can buy rings, bracelets, scarves, scarabs, hats, T-shirts. You can rent horses, carriages. You can ride a camel — and we did (even though Kathy says they stink).

I took more than 850 photos and videos in our two weeks in Egypt, and my favorite one was taken by the person who usually holds the camel lead ropes except when he is snapping photos. Thank you, Mr. Camel Man.

(Coming some time: More on Ramses the Great)