Egypt Travelblog


From: Amy Mosher [mailto:amymmosher@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 5:19 PM
Subject: Greetings From Cairo!


I am here for a “Sacred Sites and Sacred Science” tour of the 7 famous structures along the Nile River.  Care to join me a la cyber-space? 


“Masr”, is the actual name of the country we refer to as “Egypt”.  It is a trans-continental nation which borders Libya, Sudan, Israel, the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. 


Egypt has the longest continuous history as a unified state of any current country. Egypt gained full independence from Britain in 1956 and established itself as a republic.  The capital city of Cairo is the largest city on the content of Africa and in the Middle East, and is the permanent home of the Arab League.  Cairo’s population is 28 times that of Seattle.

 

95% of Egypt’s 83 million people live near the banks of the Nile River (on less than 5% of Egypt’s territory).  The median age is 24, the GDP is $4317 per capita and the adult literacy rate is only 58%.  Although Egypt is progressive enough to have the highest number Nobel Prizes Lauretes of any other country in Africa and the Middle East, polygamy is still practiced (outlawed in 1978, and re-legalized in 1985) and despite U.N.I.C.E.F.’s activism 97% of Egyptian women and girls over age 10 have been castrated.


In 2005 the Freedom House rated the political rights in Egypt as a “6” (1 being the most free and 7 the least), civil liberties as a “5” and gave it the freedom rating of “Not Free”.  Denying the basic right of religious/spiritual belief, the high court of Egypt has outlawed all religions and beliefs except the 3 main Abrahamian religions: Islam (76M followers, 90% Sunni), Christianity (7M), and Judaism (0.0002M followers).  1 of these 3 faiths must be noted on one’s Identity Card. 


The Coptic (a word which translates to “Christian Egyptian”) language (which is based upon ancient Egyptian and Greek) was the main language from the 2nd – 17th centuries however with the introduction of Arabic in the 12th century Coptic gradually faded from use and Arabic (the language of the invading Arabians and the Turkish Ottomans) took over.  English and French are also widely spoken (so if you want off that camel what you’ll be shouting is likely to be understood).


Are you ready for another over-seas adventure?  If so, grab your sandles, some bottled water and let the journey begin! 


Wishing all good, to all of you, all of the time,

Amy


From: Amy Mosher [mailto:amymmosher@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 6:39 PM
Subject: Egypt Travelogue 2


Welcome back e-companions: slather on some sun screen, toss on a sun hat, and read on.


I flew in a few days early and have some time to explore (Alexandria on the Mediterranean Coast, etc...) on my own before the group tour begins (with a flight down to Aswan which is toward Sudan), and then after it ends I will be staying a day longer to further explore the sites of Cairo and elsewhere by myself. 


I very much enjoy exploring on my own.  I feel euphoric when landing alone in a city with a guide book in hand and set off experiencing the ambiance and aspects of a place very different than our part of the world.  Benefits of being with an organized tour will include having the “King’s Chamber” of the Great Pyramid reserved for just us for an hour, the entire site of the Luxor Temple reserved for just us for a group dinner, etc… 


The Nile is the longest river on earth (4180 miles which is 25% longer than the distance between Seattle and New York).  Unlike other rivers it flows from south to north.  It begins in a rainforest in Rwanda and empties into the Mediterranean Sea. 


Nag Hammadi (a town created by a wealthy member of a large Egyptian family for the indigenous people who were forced to leave their home town by the British) is best known for being the site where the “Lost Gospels” were found.  In 1945 12 leather-bound papyrus codices, along with pages torn from a 13th book, were found in a buried sealed jar by 2 local peasants.  They took them home and their mother used them for starting a fire for dinner, however some of them survived.  These writings (in Coptic, likely translated from Greek) date back to the 2nd century A.D.  They contain 52 mostly gnostic treatises believed to have been a library hidden by the aprx 10,000 monks and nuns who had lived in the nearby early Christian monasteries when the possession of these writings were banned by the Nicean Council in the 4th century.  I picked up a copy of 1 of them “The Gospel of Thomas” to read while we meander via a river boat along the Nile. 


Enough orienting, let’s go exploring!  I’m glad to be traveling with you.


With fondness,

Amy



From: Amy Mosher [mailto:amymmosher@comcast.net]
Sent: May 1, 2007 6:24 PM
Subject: Sphinx


The site I am most excited to see it is the Sphinx. It is the largest sculpture on our planet, is carved from limestone, was at one time painted (only a patch of its ear has any remnants of paint left), and there are many questions, theories, and mysteries about it.


The Sphinx was believed to be arpx 5000 years old but further studies indicate that while the head (which is proportionately much smaller than the body, possibly due to later pharaohs wanting their own likeness on the face and sculpting down the original head to resemble their own) may have been last sculpted 5000 years ago, the body may be at least 12,000 years old. This assessment is drawn from the water markings (Egypt gets less than an inch of rainfall per year, so perhaps from a great flood?) on the Sphinx. (It was buried up to its neck in sand when Napoleon arrived in 1798 and eventually, after many attempts by many organizations, it was fully unburied by the French Antiquities Service in 1936.) 
 

In 1977 the U.S. National Science Foundation and in 1987 the Waseda University of Japan tried to detect what (if anything) is under the Sphinx using sonar and other technologies and could only conclude that there are uneven patterns below it, indicating that it is not a solid underground. Some believe there are passageways to the pyramids below it and below is a sketch of 1 theory.


(Wish I knew who to credit the above sketch to, I found it on line with no artist nor author referenced.)



Unfortunately the remainder of my emails sent from Egypt were lost due to a hard drive crash before I could save them. I hope you filled in the remaining 2 weeks of the journey with your imagination and if you haven't already been to Egypt I am hoping you get there for what is a mind-blowing experience!