Category: Egypt

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Egypt Jordan Mauritania Morocco Oman Syria United Arab Emirates

The Arab World

Morocco was the last Arab country on our itinerary, and so I thought it fitting to do a brief recap of the Arab world, as visited by us. (Note: The Arab world should not be confused with the Muslim world, which includes non-Arab Muslim places.) As “Arab” is, at its most basic level, an ethnic designator, my survey will focus on demographics and cultural identity within these states.

Our entry into the Arab world on this trip began with a stopover in the Gulf, in the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Not only by its membership in the Arab League and the (Arab) Gulf Cooperation Council, but also through its name, the UAE reminds us that it is Arab. And, given its location in the Arabian Peninsula, one could hardly disagree, on many levels. However, as most who have visited the UAE know, the UAE is a country that may be owned and operated for the benefit of the local Arabs–called Emiratis–but is primarily inhabited by outsiders (80% of the population), some of whom are Arabs from other parts of the Arab world, but most of whom (perhaps a majority of the population) are from the Indian Subcontinent. One proud Indian resident told us that Dubai is the most modern Indian city–and in some ways it is hard to dispute the description of Dubai as an Indian city. Could South Asians at some point overwhelm the locals and take over the country? Have they already? Oman, though also solidly “Arab,” and populated far more by “natives” than overseas workers, has a distinct cultural identity owing to its former colonial empire, and dark skinned Omanis of clearly African descent but Arab identity seem to fit in quite seamlessly into Omani society–a multicultural vision of what it means to be Arab.

From there we traveled to Syria and Jordan. There is a dost-protest-too-much quality to Syria’s official name, the Syrian Arab Republic. As I described in my posts of 2008.04.16 and 2008.04.25, Syria may be squarely in the center of Arab history, as the base of the Umayyad Caliphate responsible for most of the expansion of Arab identity and Islam, but the actual ethnic makeup of Syria, in some genetic sense, is incredibly diverse and clearly not the same as the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula. Basic awareness of history points out that the population must be not only of Arabian descent but of Phoenician, Greek, Persian, Turk and Roman (and perhaps even some Crusader and Mongol). Jordan is somewhat more Arabian, its royalty claiming descent from Mohammed, but the many Palestinians living in Jordan no doubt share the same genetic background as the Syrians.

After some more stops in the Gulf and a hiatus from the Arab world in the Turkic world (see post of 2008.11.05) and Iran-e Bozorg, or Greater Iran, by which I mean all of the areas in the Near East where Iranian languages are spoken, such as Afghanistan and Tajikistan (see posts of 2008.05.12 and 2008.06.12), as well as Muslim East Asia, we returned to the Arab world in Cairo.

Is the official name of Egypt–the Arab Republic of Egypt–as misleading as Syria’s? I would argue yes. Egypt, as the most populous country in the Arab League (more than twice as much as the next most populous country), may have a good claim to represent modern Arab identity today, but a comparison of the reliefs and paintings of Ancient Egypt–created hundreds and thousands of years before “Arab” existed as a significant cultural designator–with the faces of modern Egyptians shows that the population of the Nile seems to have remained largely constant. Egyptians may consider themselves Arabs, but they really are Egyptians first.

Again after leaving the Arab world, we returned in Mauritania, one of the newest members of the Arab League (see post of 2008.12.12), and one that somewhat straddles Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. This was followed by Morocco, a country that is increasingly recognizing its Berber identity as well as its Arab (see post of 2009.01.21).

***

Is there such a thing as the Arab world? A common sense of identity that the countries of the Arab League truly share? Yes, of course, but it is one of significant diversity–diversity of ancestry (with people of many different ancestries now claiming Arab ethnic and cultural identity), as well as diversity of religion (in particular the Christian populations of Egypt and the Levant, see posts of 2008.10.01 and 2008.04.16) and many minority groups (from the South Asians of the Gulf, see posts of 2008.04.03 and 2008.04.04, and the Kurds and Armenians of Syria, see post of 2008.04.16, to the black Africans of Mauritania, see post of 2008.12.12).

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Walled Cities of the Muslim World

Walls of Taroudannt, Morocco

Encircling walls have been, historically, a common feature of cities around the world. Beijing’s and Paris’s old walls may have been replaced by ring roads quaintly maintaining references to the old gates, and few big cities have maintained their walls (Istanbul comes to mind), but most of the cities of the world were at all point surrounded by walls protecting the urbane and civilized from the relative lawlessness of the hinterlands as well as foreign invaders. Walls distinguished what was inside, the developed density of organized city life, and what was out.

I don’t want to get into causes–an interesting discussion, no doubt–but many of the greatest walled cities that survive into the present day seem to be in the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East. Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem are some of the most fabled, while smaller but still notable examples include Khiva in Uzbekistan, Lefkosa/Nicosia in Cyprus and Meknes in Morocco. Even among the Muslim cities that have lost their walls, many such as Old Delhi and Kashgar have retained much of that old walled atmosphere.

Walls of Cairo

Walls of Lefkosa/Nicosia

Walls of Khiva

That old walled city atmosphere–what is it? It has a lot to do with density–when walls constrain the growth of a city, urban life is forced to develop inward and upward, and life of every sort fills the alleys. Commerce and markets–the souqs so characteristic of Muslim cities–consume much of the urban core. Families are seen strolling from home to workshop to restaurant to hammam. And just as safety was one of the main reasons for building walls, to be able to maintain the order of civilized life inside, safety still reigns in these cities. Children run in the side streets, and scale and proximity somehow prevents the anonymity of city life from developing, every neighbor a constant presence.

We thought that we had a pretty thorough experience of Muslim walled cities by the time we got to Morocco, but we were pleasantly surprised. Of all the walled cities that we have visited, none equals the atmosphere of Fez–probably the most genuine, authentic and atmospheric walled city in our travels. More than any place else, one feels a continuity in Fez–a sense that the same people have occupied the same homes and narrow alleys for hundreds of years, living their lives in very much the same ways. Below, some images of Fez.

Fez is actually two different walled cities in one, with a substantial royal enclosure to boot. Here, the walls of Fez al-Jadid, or “New” Fez.

Markets fill many of the main arteries of traditional walled cities. Sometimes, covered.


Commerce is not limited to the “traditional”–here, a Credit Agricole branch.

Complementing the markets are warehouses or inns, called funduqs or khans, for merchants and merchandise.

Greeting neighbors, perhaps on the way to the mosque beyond

Fresh water and proper sewage facilities are of course essential to the functioning of a city–perhaps the single civil engineering technology most important to life in density. The street of Fez are still filled with fountains, public restrooms and hammams.



And room for industry as well. The famous tanneries of Fez are still in full production, not only for the local market but for import abroad.


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Egypt Italy Jordan photo Slovenia Syria United States of America

Persistence of Iconography

It’s amazing how some images persist through the centuries and are reused again and again, sometimes in entirely different contexts and with totally changed meanings. In this post, I thought I would show you some symbols we have run into on this trip, repeatedly and unexpectedly.

Caduceus of Hermes

The caduceus (or wand) of Hermes is a symbol of somewhat uncertain origin of the Greek god, and it is still used as the astronomical symbol for the planet Mercury (and sometimes mistakenly in place of the rod of Asclepius as a symbol for medicine). We saw this image in two odd places on our trip.

The first, the Roman-era catacombs in Alexandria. Alexandria, founded centuries earlier by Alexander the Great, remained a great center of Greek culture for many centuries. This tomb complex is believed to have been built by the resident Greeks; however, it was built largely in Egyptian style, showing that local Greeks had to some extent adopted Egyptian art and forms. Here, the caduceus is shown (on left) with a snake wearing the pharaonic crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.

The second, Mount Nebo, Jordan. Mount Nebo is an important pilgrimage site for Christians (and presumably Jews, although we did not see any Jewish pilgrims), who believe that it was the spot from which Moses saw the Promised Land (and passed away). On this spectacular vantage point are located ruins of Byzantine churches and an active Franciscan complex of worship. Why a caduceus? No clue.

Four Evangelists

It is believed by some that the popular depiction of the four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, John and Luke) as four “animals” (bird, bull, bear and human, respectively) is derived from ancient Egyptian funerary tradition, in which bodily organs were placed in four canopic jars of which the lids depicted four Egyptian gods (Imsety, Hapi, Duamutef and Qebehsenuef) in four animal forms (human, baboon, jackal and falcon, respectively). If so, Egyptian Coptic depictions of the four Evangelists in animal form–here they even look like canopic jars–must be some of the earliest.

Chapel, Monastery of St. Paul, on the Red Sea, Egypt

An illustration of the animal forms of the four Evangelists from the medieval Irish Book of Kells

All-seeing Eye

The “all-seeing eye” or “eye of providence,” the cyclopean eye at the apex of a truncated pyramid, is one of the best known of icons and features prominently in some of the most persistent conspiracy theories. Here is the all-seeing eye on the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation in Ljubljana, Slovenia and the U.S. one dollar bill.


Pyramid

Part of the all-seeing eye is of course the pyramid. The pyramid form has been used as tombs from the 26th c. BC on, as other examples from the 4th c. AD and 19th c. AD below show.

Red Pyramid of Dahshur, the first true Egyptian pyramid

Pyramidal Byzantine Christine tomb at al Bara, one of the Dead Cities of Syria

Tomb of sculptor Antonio Canova inside the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, Italy

Why are these images and forms used again and again? In part, I think it’s becuase they’re what artists know how to draw and are used to drawing (or, in the case of the pyramid, a shape of simplicity of stability to which architects may be attracted). But mainly I think it’s because the new tradition (whether the Franciscan priests in Jordan or the Catholic Church in Slovenia looking to ornament their place of worship or the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing brainstorming designs) wants to latch on to the talismanic power that such icons have derived over centuries of use, to base their images on ones that are accepted or believed to be powerful, the grafting of a new idea on an older tree, the same reason that religious sites are so often re-used (see post of 11.10) and ancient stories (from Isis to Mary and the flood of Gilgamesh to the flood of Noah) are incorporated into newer faiths.

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Egypt faces photo religion

Faces of Egypt

Egypt is an Arab country, and indeed the Arab conquest came quickly to Egypt given its geographical proximity to the Arabian Peninsula. Nonetheless, Egypt represents a far more ancient culture, and Egyptian Arab identity, to me, seems a particularly distinct one compared to the Arab cultures of the Gulf or even the Levant, both areas in which the modern nation states do not seem to represent a distinct/discrete ethnic identity or culture.

Other than the Nubians originally from southern Egypt and perhaps the Bedouin in the Sinai, we did not encounter significant ethnic minorities, although perhaps it could be said that the Copts represent an Egyptian line with less Arab genetic input. Some pictures:

Vendor, Alexandria. In Alexandria we noticed that many Egyptians seem to have green eyes; it seemed less common in other parts of Egypt.

Scholar, Al Azhar Mosque. This man, to me, seemed somewhat “un-Egyptian” in appearance–he said that his family was from the Delta region.

Perhaps part of this is due to Ramadan, but Egypt feels far more religious than most of the other Islamic countries we have traveled to. The calls to prayer seem louder and more urgent and public worship far more common and conspicuous. Most shockingly (though perhaps that is too strong a word), there is an astonishing number of men who walk around with zebibas (“raisins”), which are forehead prayer bumps from repeated prostration during prayer. While some Egyptian men seem to wear these marks proudly as a testament to how devout they are, it is generally believed that they are intentionally inflicted (perhaps by scraping one’s head on the carpet in an exaggerated manner while praying), rather than a necessary consequence of frequent prayer–little else could explain the absence of such marks on the foreheads of the devout in other Islamic countries.

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Foreign Powers in Egypt

One of the things that I find surprising about Egypt is that, despite its development centuries ahead of other civilizations and its great material and cultural heights, it never really expanded too far outside the boundaries of the modern state of Egypt–never was there a real expansionary period, a great and lasting Egyptian empire. True, aspects of Egyptian culture spread far around the Mediterranean (perhaps most famously the cult of Isis, which finds echoes in the worship of the Virgin Mary), but Egypt was far more often part of a foreign political entity than the center of an empire. Perhaps this was because Egypt’s most glorious years came well before the age of great empires, but the last 2500 years or so have seen numerous foreign powers in control. The Persians came in with Darius, the Greeks with Alexander the Great, the Romans with Marc Antony and Caesar; the early Arab conquest from Arabia was followed by the Fatimids from the Maghrib, Saladin from Syria and Turkic rule through the Mamelukes and the Ottomans; and most recently there were periods of quasi-colonial rule by the French and British.

It could be said that in general Egyptian culture was less affected by the outsiders than the outsiders were by Egyptian culture, especially before the Arab conquest–Egyptian forms of religion and art persisted stubbornly throughout the Persian, Greek and Roman periods, and even Christianity developed into a local church, the Coptic Orthodox (see post of 10.1). Outsiders who ruled Egypt, such as the Greek Ptolemies and the Turkic Mamelukes, eventually became essentially domestic dynasties, even if they were by blood foreign. Ancient Egyptian culture and history have an appeal that has persisted even in modern America: “Walk Like an Egyptian” (incidentally, a pose we did not see in ancient Egyptian art), Art Deco (see post of 9.15), countless movies, the list goes on. But, as I began, Egypt has for a very long time seen many foreign powers come and go, and in this post I wanted to share some photographs showing their relics–Egypt is not all pharaohs and mosques.

Greek

“Philosopher’s Circle” of Greek thinkers (from Homer to Plato), at the pharaonic Saqqara funerary complex. The Saqqara complex originally dates from Djoser (2667-2648 BC)–these Greek sculptures were added much later during the Ptolemaic era.

Caduceus of Hermes at the Catacombs in Alexandria. The tombs are believed to date from the first to fourth centuries AD, and although there is a mix of Pharaonic and Greek imagery, it is believed that they were for the local Greek population, which had adopted some Egyptian iconography and styles.

The Greek presence in Egypt continued right through into the twentieth century, especially in the city of Alexandria, where a number of Greek coffeeshops remain as witnesses to the city’s Greek past. Early twentieth century Egypt was a far more multicultural place than it is today; since then, most Greeks have moved elsewhere.

Greek Orthodox Church, Old Cairo. The Greek Orthodox Church also maintains the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai (see post of 10.1).

Greek Inscription, Elephantine Island, Aswan

Roman

Roman fortress of Babylon, now called Old Cairo. The Romans/Byzantines were decisively evicted from Egypt by the seventh century Arab conquest, but their Christian faith still persists today in a significant minority of the population.

Roman fresco, Luxor Temple

Latin inscription, Luxor Temple

“Pompey’s Pillar” in Alexandria was actually hoisted by Diocletian, following his quelling of a revolt in Alexandria around 300 AD.

Some of Egypt’s finest remaining temples date from the Greco-Roman era, including the Temple of Horus at Edfu and Temple of Isis at Philae, pictured below. The foreign powers continued Egypt’s ancient religious traditions, placing themselves in the place of the pharaohs on the sculpted reliefs on the walls of the temples.


Jewish

Ruins of Abu on Elephantine Island. There is evidence of Jewish settlements on Elephantine, which is near present-day Aswan deep in Upper Egypt. According to Graham Hancock, the Ark of the Covenant was temporarily stored here in a Jewish Temple, before its journey to its current alleged resting place in Ethiopia.

Jewish synagogue, Alexandria. Most Jews have left Egypt, just as they have left most other Middle Eastern Arab countries.

Colonial

Napoleon arrived in Egypt near the end of the eighteenth century, and is responsible not only for subduing Ottoman control, but also for the first scientific survey of Egypt’s archeological treasures. This inscription in the Temple of Isis at Philae records the French military expedition in Egypt.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Egypt was run essentially as a colony of the British Empire. During this time, a Belgian entrepreneur by the name of Edouard Louis Joseph (Baron Empain) developed the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, building for himself this mansion (now known as the Baron’s Palace) in the form of a Hindu temple.

Old Winter Palace Hotel, Luxor, built in 1886 during Egypt’s colonial period

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Christian Egypt

Chapel, Monastery of St. Paul, on the Red Sea (the animal depictions of the four Evangelists are said by some to resemble the Egyptian funerary gods depicted on canopic jars)

Egypt is a predominantly Muslim country, yes, but like many Muslim countries (see posts of 4.16, 5.17 and 8.16) it has an important and numerous Christian minority. As in the Levant, the Christians of Egypt go back to Biblical times and well predate the advent of Islam, and are the remnants of what used to be the dominant religious group, in this case the local Orthodox sect known as the Coptic Orthodox Church. The Copts still form around 10% of the Egyptian population, are economically quite powerful and take a great deal of pride in their cultural identity. Among other things, the Copts believe themselves to represent the continuation of the Egyptian line from Pharaonic Egypt through Greco-Roman Egypt to the present, holding the Muslim Egyptians as relatively newcomers who came with the seventh century Arab conquest (southern Egypt or Nubia remained largely Christian until as late as the 14th century).

The Copts have suffered more persecution in Egypt than other Christian groups have in other Muslim countries, but the Copts have responded to their recent persecution and the rise of Islamic conservatives in Egypt by banding together strongly and making significant investments in their community, including the ancient Christian establishments of Egypt that are some of the highlights of a visit to the country.

The greatest assemblage of Christian buildings in Egypt is Old Cairo, or Coptic Cairo. Old Cairo is called Old Cairo because it was there before there even was a Cairo, itself a relatively modern city that was founded by the Arabs and then the Fatimids in the seventh and tenth centuries, respectively. Old Cairo is the modern name for the Roman fortification of Babylon, which in Byzantine times grew into an important Christian religious center with a high concentration of churches. Even today the holiest churches of Cairo are in Old Cairo, representing not only the Coptic Orthodox Church but also the Greek Orthodox Church. There’s even a Jewish synagogue.


More important to me than Coptic Cairo, however, was a visit to the monasteries of the Red Sea. These were the first Christian monasteries in the world–yes, the Egyptian desert is the birthplace of the Christian monastic movement–and so are arguably some of the most important Christian sites in the world for their impact on the development of the faith. Christian monasticism began with a desert hermit named St. Paul, who lived out his life alone in a cave in the desert, and was followed by St. Anthony, who in trying to follow the solitary life of a hermit actually ended up founding the world’s first monastery (and quite a large one at that, with up to 2,000 monks) not too far from St. Paul’s cave. St. Anthony’s hagiography was later written by Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, whose influence helped establish St. Anthony’s fame and the rise of the monastic movement throughout Christendom.

St. Paul and St. Anthony

Seeing the monasteries of St. Paul and St. Anthony was very meaningful to me, because I wrote my college senior paper on the Life of St. Anthony by Athanasius (one of my majors was Ancient Studies). I’ve also always thought that I would have made a good monk in another life. The desert monasteries, however, gave me a slightly different impression of the lives of St. Paul and St. Anthony than I had imagined. When I read about Anthony’s experiences in the desert, I imagined a very harsh existence full of heat and sun and thirst. I pictured a world of blinding light, where sheer deprivation and exposure led to visions of demons and God.

But of course such harsh conditions–total exposure in the desert–are not endurable; people cannot survive. The reality is that the monasteries are quite close to the Red Sea, which even if not the highway of international commerce that it is today would still have provided a transportation route to the hermits, as did the tracks to the Nile. And, even in the Egyptian desert, temperatures are quite bearable in the shade, whether that of a cave or of a thick-walled monastery or church. Both monasteries also benefit from springs (of course essential to the maintenance of life), and the water from the springs have been channelled to create little oases in the monastic grounds. In the case of St. Paul’s the spring is a very small one indeed–a drip–but the spring of St. Anthony sustains a small population, and the water properly used supports a beautiful garden with food plants and palm trees. The hermits lived in the desert wilderness, yes, but created for themselves areas of surprising beauty, life and tranquility, protected from the raw elements.

Monastery of St. Paul, on the Red Sea, founded after the death of St. Paul

Monastery of St. Anthony, on the Red Sea

Finally, the most famous Christian site in Egypt: the Monastery of St. Catherine’s in the Sinai. This site is important not only because it’s been the site of a Christian monastery (in this case Greek Orthodox, and not Coptic) since the fourth century, but because the location is believed to be of Biblical importance: where Moses spoke to the burning bush and received the Ten Commandments from God. The bush was silent during our visit.

Exodus Chapter 3: Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. . . .”

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Terrorism and Tourism

We are in south Sinai, the locus of some of the deadliest terrorist attacks on tourists in the last few years, and we were told by a co-guest at our hotel that locals had told them that a major attack of some sort was expected at or shortly after end of Ramadan, which is today. The end of Ramadan, or the Eid al-Fitr, is not especially known for being a time for terrorist activity, but I suppose any holiday may pose a tempting/meaningful date for an attacker. Are we afraid? Not really–but certain senses, honed in 2001, seem to be kicking back in, second thoughts about the kinds of luggage loaded onto our bus, a lowered bar for what constitutes “strange behavior” in others and what is the safest mode of transport. As I previously discussed in my post of 4.29, traveling does bring about somewhat greater risks of all kinds, and with it more paranoia about what might happen. All in all, a good time for some thoughts on terrorism and tourism.

From a traveler’s perspective, I think that there are three categories of terrorism, each of which carries different risks. The first is “domestic” terrorism, the best example of which is probably the many recent attacks in India, or the recent Damascus bombing. As a Korean traveler told me in northern Pakistan, Korean tourists aren’t worried about bombs in Pakistan because they’re aimed at other Pakistanis (say, ones of a different religious sect, or ones affiliated with a certain political movement) and not at tourists. While of course a traveler can still be caught in the crossfire (believe it or not, we ran into two separate tourists who said that they were very close to blasts in Lahore), at least some of these bombs are likely to go off in places where a foreign traveler is not particularly likely to venture. We are not the intended target.

The second category is terrorism directed at outside interests. The most prominent target in this category is perhaps an embassy, or a foreign military installation. This type of terrorism is perhaps most akin to a sort of informal war–the attackers mean not only to terrorize but to make a statement and inflict damage. Examples of this are of course many, including U.S. embassy bombings in any number of countries, the attack on the USS Cole, the bombing in Beirut.

The third category is, for travelers, the scariest: terrorism directed specifically at tourists, most likely in an effort to hurt tourism and decrease foreign influence in the country. The deadliest recent example of this is probably the Bali bomb of 2002, which killed 202 people from 21 (!) different countries. More recently, four people were targeted and killed in Yemen at a major tourist attraction. Hotel bombings fall somewhere between categories two and three, perhaps depending on the kind of hotel that is chosen (some hotels may be chosen for their international “brand,” sort of like an embassy, rather than the explicit desire to discourage foreign travelers).

The “prize” for this third, scariest category of terrorism goes to Egypt, not only for the number of incidents but the heinousness of the targets and methods. In 1997, in an incident known as the Luxor Massacre, a group of six attackers armed with guns and knives trapped and slaughtered 63 people, mostly tourists, in one of the main tourist attractions of Luxor, the Temple of Hatshepsut. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, terrorists killed 34, 88 and 23 people, respectively, in bombings in three different resort areas in the Sinai: Taba, Sharm el Sheikh and Dahab. Also in 2005, there were bombings or shootings near three of the most popular tourist sites in Cairo, the Khan al Khalili market, the Egyptian Museum and Saladdin’s Citadel.

Temple of Hatshepsut, Luxor, site of one of the grisliest terror attacks in recent history

Due to the layout of the ruin, tourists were “trapped” for slaughter.

Three separate suicide bombs were set off in Dahab on April 24, 2006.

A truck with explosives drove into the lobby of the Taba Hilton on October 7, 2004, one of three bombings that evening.

Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Yes, the odds of me or you happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time are still fairly slim, but the probability increases dramatically when the attackers are choosing their targets specifically to target groups of tourists, places where tourists spend their time. We are their target. Maybe we shouldn’t “let the terrorists win” by avoiding places such as Egypt altogether, but as the lesson of September 11 taught, terrorists do like to hit the same targets over and over again (perhaps because they are simply the best targets), and Egypt as a country has a uniquely dangerous history in this respect, something visitors should be aware of. While there are countless police and military stationed all across Egypt, one wonders whether armed men begging for tips or sleeping in the backs of vehicles can really stop an attack, or whether such a presence would deter terrorists who are willing to die for their cause.

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Fellow Tourists

When you pick a travel destination, you may think of how far it is, how easy it is to get there, what there is to see, what there is to eat, where there is to stay, how much things cost, and how safe it is. It may not occur to you to gauge who will be there with you–what kinds of people your fellow tourists will be. But the more you think about it, the more you realize that who else will be there should be a key consideration in choosing a travel destination.

Perhaps the “best” fellow travelers, for us, are independent budget travelers. Most typical is the late 20s/early 30s backpacker, usually from Western Europe or East Asia, traveling after graduating college or post-graduate education, or between jobs. As a whole, Central Asia attracts a well-educated, well-traveled lot, with ample linguistic abilities, travel skills, cultural sensitivity, and so forth. Almost without a doubt, a fellow traveler in Central Asia will have something interesting to show for themselves, a good story or two from the region or elsewhere on their travels. The types of fellow travelers, I find, broadens the “easier” the destination is, but broader does not necessarily mean worse. For example, in Southeast Asia, you may find a younger or less-worldy crowd, but for the most part you are still dealing with independent travelers, people with some sense of adventure and desire to immerse themselves in local cultures.

This issue occurred to me because Egypt is perhaps the worst place in the world that we’ve experienced, in terms of fellow travelers. Egypt is overrun with package tourists. Now, there’s nothing wrong, fundamentally, with going on a package tour. Travel planning can be a daunting and demanding effort (however much I love it), and going on a tour does maximize the amount of things you can see and learn in a limited amount of time. A knowledgeable guide could even afford you cultural insight that would be hard to access for an independent traveler. And, of course, tours can be quite cost-efficient.

But far more often, tours have serious deficiencies. Traveling in a guided group insulates you from interactions with locals (however appealing that sometimes sounds in Egypt). Traveling in a group means that you never have sights to yourself, paced according to your own interests. Explanations are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Many tour groups stay at mediocre hotels and eat mediocre food. That is why many (though by no means all) tours attract people who are intimidated by traveling by themselves, people who are less interested in cultural immersion, people who are satisfied with a quick and superficial understanding of history and people with relatively low standards for food and hotels (at least as far as value, authenticity and atmosphere are concerned–no doubt almost all tours stay and eat at fancier and more hygenic places than we do). (One might even go so far as to suggest that tour group tourists don’t really enjoy travel for travel itself. Let’s face it, spending long periods of time immersed in places where people speak little or no English and may have little else in common with you can be lonely, no matter how close you are to your travel companion(s). It should come as no surprise then that people turn to groups and in the end derive as much or more pleasure from internal group interactions as from external stimulus–that’s certainly been the case in the groups we’ve had the pleasure of joining.)

Egypt is full of such mediocre tours. Perhaps people are intimidated by traveling in an Islamic country, or maybe they have very little travel experience and are fulfilling some childhood dream of seeing the Pyramids. But this lack of standards, on the part of the tourists, results in a country whose travel infrastructure is, considering the volume of tourism, largely unspectacular. Package tourists, for the most part, stay in mediocre three-star type hotels that are absurdly overpriced when not booked on a tour, and so Egypt does not have the wonderful range of budget accommodations that one finds in, say, Southeast Asia. Food is similarly uninspiring, with many restaurants offering bland adaptations of local food (I suppose we can thank the abundant British tourists for that). Worst of all, having undiscriminating, relatively free-spending package tourists with apparently little interest in learning about local culture or spending time with locals constantly breezing in and out of cities promotes the worst kind of behavior in local merchants: aggressive salesmanship, overcharging, poor service.

Heaven forbid you have to walk a little to see the Pyramids!

There are other fellow tourist considerations in addition to the prevalence of tour groups at a given destination. In some places, there are large numbers of domestic tourists. The most extreme example of this, I believe, is China, where foreign tourists are almost always dramatically outnumbered by domestic tourists. This can be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Hawaii and Tahiti attract a lot of honeymooning couples, and so a single traveler may feel awkward and lonely. There are cultural issues, too. If you speak French, and only French, you would have more opportunities to meet fellow French speakers in a destination that attracts relatively more French, such as Cambodia or Madagascar.

One small story, showing that hotels understand that travelers care who their co-travelers are: Somewhat shockingly, the Hyatt in Sharm El Sheikh enforces a dress code banning Islamic dress (euphemistically called “ethnic dress”) at the pool and on the beach, even while allowing topless bathing on the beach–no doubt their research showed that their “international” clientele felt more comfortable without a burqa in sight.

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Suez Canal

Like my posts of 5.3, 9.2 and 9.24, a picture from a place you’ve heard so much about, but perhaps never seen a picture of, or tried to imagine.

The Suez Canal, like the Straits of Malacca (see post of 9.2), is a great “bottleneck” of global trade, and through it passes approximately 7.5% of the world’s shipped cargo and much of Europe’s oil requirements. The Suez Canal is bigger (in depth and width) than the Panama Canal, and so the latter acts more to set the maximum size for ships–“Panamax.”

Egypt made some $4.1 billion from the Suez Canal tolls in 2007, its third largest source of hard currency after tourism and remittances. Geography matters!

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Egypt photo

Cataracts of the Nile

One reads about the “cataracts of the Nile” in history books (always with ordinals, like “the first cataract,” “the second cataract” and so forth), but until I saw the first cataract just south of Aswan it was hard for me to picture them–I thought of something like a series of little Niagaras, walls of water blocking passage north. Now, the first cataract currently lies just on the other side of dams (the old Aswan Dam and the High Dam), and so the sort of rapids or rush of water is no longer there, but seeing the rocks in the water at least helped me visualized what these cataracts are–places that, due to topography, are unnavigable.

One of the wonders, to me, of Egyptian civilization is now much it stayed put along the Nile. There were of course times when Egypt controlled south toward Nubia, west toward Libya and east toward the Levant, but despite its incredible wealth and advancement it was never an expansive empire, instead being controlled by the Persians, the Greeks (or Macedonians), the Romans, the Arabs and the Ottomans. One basic reason for this, I suppose, is that Egyptian civilization was centered on the Nile, and perhaps they saw no reason to stray far from what they saw as the source of all life. In periods of ascendancy Egypt did control regions further south, into Nubia, but the cataracts–areas where the Nile was not navigable–presented a barrier. Were it not for the cataracts, perhaps Egyptian civilization would have traveled all the way to Lakes Tana and Victoria, deep into sub-Saharan Africa.