Sunday 4th September: Abus Simbel and a Nubian Demonstration

We were woken by a 3:15 am early morning call, to have a quick tea or coffee with cake before collecting our breakfast hampers and getting on the 4am coach to Abu Simbel.

Before leaving Aswan, we picked up an armed police escort, then set off, crossing the Aswan dam and passing the High Dam. The road soon turned into a gray ribbon in the desert. The occasional gentle curve in the road was marked with reflective signs as drivers must have been hypnotised into just driving straight on. Occasionally there was a police check point, that slowed the traffic down as it wound around road barriers.

I was relatively awake and therefore noticed how the desert changed. The sandstone mountains on either side of the Nile valley disappeared and gave way to an almost flat greyish sandy plain with slight bumps of black rock debris. This in turn gradually gave way to a more yellow sandy desert until just beyond halfway, when increasingly large pyramidal mounds of fractured black rock and sandstone with rough small debris scattered in the sand, eventually reaching up to 50 metres or so in height.

As we came off the shallow hills, the plain was interspersed with regimented developments at random, ten or more kilometre intervals. At one point there was a lush plantation of palms over a square kilometer or so hinting at an oasis. Scrub plants grew sparsely in lower parts of the plain. The road's constant companions were the electric pylons, reaching all the way to the city of Abu Simbel.

We arrived at the bus park before the site at around the same time as a number of other excursions. Lake Nasser was visible in the background as we walked around the large hill until we had our first sight of the main temple at Abu Simbel. The four images of the Pharaoh Ramesses II stared out over the lake as the Lilliputian visitors clustered in groups as the tour guides gave their explanations or what to see.

As everyone headed for the major temple, we walked across the sand in the blistering morning sun to the temple dedicated to Nefertari. This was smaller than that of Ramesses. The outside was decorated with giant statues of Ramesses II and Nefertari, unusual in that a queen is represented at the same size a the king. We entered into a marginally cooler environment. Inside, the decorations showed Nefertari first being anointed by the goddesses Isis and Hathor and then being almost elevated to equal status. Husband and king Ramesses was of course also present.

Wandering over to the now emptying Ramesses II temple, we found a similar eulogising of the king and his ascension into deity, which culminated in him being seated amongst three other gods, (Ra-Horakhty, Amun-Ra and Seth).

The original temple carved into the mountain was aligned such that on 22nd October and 20th February a ray of sunlight would enter at sunrise and illuminate the statue of Ramesses, seated amongst the gods in the inner sanctum. When the temple was moved to higher ground, this event was delayed by one day.

Our guide Osama explained that political forces were at work here. Ramesses II was originally trained as an architect as a boy until his Grandfather was married by the deceased Tutankhamen’s wife. Looking to build a great monument carved into a mountain, it turned out that the nearest suitable site was in the neighbouring kingdom of Nubia. Ramesses consequently waged a war against the Nubians but without actually achieving a decisive victory. The situation was resolved by marrying the Nubian princess Nefertari and receiving permission from the Nubian king to build his monument. During his reign, Ramesses II had been busy replacing his predecessors names on temples and monuments with his own. Obviously, the same could happen to him when he passed away, especially if he constructed a monument in his name in Nubia, a separate kingdom. Several failsafes were therefore built in, such as his seating of himself with three gods on a bench, a tableau which incidentally also pronounced his name Ra Me Ses . The other main backup was the temple dedicated to the Nubian princess, now wife and raised to godhood, in which his statues stood in equal size next to hers and the texts inside did the same. The strategy appeared to work!

Moving the temple itself was a technological challenge, after all, the temple had been carved into a mountain. Some of the solutions were: not to transfer the entire mountain, rather, to transfer the outer skin and the inner temple walls; and to fill the temple chambers with sand to support the temple ceilings and walls during dismantling. At the new location, most of the recreated mountain was a hollow chamber into which the temples intruded and which was covered with the external stone elements of the temples.

After a couple of hours in the increasing morning heat, it was back into the air conditioned coach at around 10am for the four hour drive back the way we came.

 We arrived back in Aswan shortly before 2pm but, just minutes away from the boat, we found ourselves on a tortured, twisted tour around the back streets of the city. This turned out to be a real eye opener as we saw a different city to the more sanitised hotels, banks and Nile cruiser docks. We saw a city in construction and transition where mudbrick construction was still used to some degree, followed by mudbrick within frames of concrete, followed by brick within concrete frames. After another turn, we were following a canal with scenes of ramshackle housing and rubbish flowing into the polluted water that were very third world. Donkey powered carts and staked donkeys were abundant as locals wandered unperturbed in the slum just a mile or so from the centre.

Suddenly we were back in familiar territory, near the tourist market, when our bus was brought to an abrupt halt by a blocked road just 50 yards from our quay. A procession of white robed demonstrators was marching directly between us and our goal. There was nothing for it, we had to get out, clutching our bags and, slightly ridiculously, our pillows. All eyes turned to us as we marched towards the protester's column. Like the Red Sea for Moses, the protesters parted.They began clapping and shouting “Welcome!”

The Nubian protest march was about wanting recompense for their land lost when the High Dam flooded their fertile villages. With many Nubians active in the tourist trade and on the popular felucas (sailing boats), they did not want to upset an important element of the local economy by their actions.

On the quay we met cheers and cat-calls from our fellow passengers who had seen our arrival. Fortunately, there was still a welcome lunch available for us as the Commodore set sail for Luxor.

I rested for an hour and then went upstairs to rest on deck, taking a dip in the pool a bit later before being called up for my appointment with Oscar. Oscar was the ship's masseur and, in anticipation of stiffness after eight hours in a bus, I had booked a back, neck and head massage. Forty five minutes later, I emerged smelling sweetly of scented oils and feeling like a new man!

The evening's entertainment was a quiz, with questions on ancient Egypt and general knowledge. Our team of eight was called “Goggle Types”, an anagram of Egyptologist, and we scored a respectable 32 out of 40, which put us in the middle of the pack. Having missed going through the Nile lock on the way upstream, I stayed up till we passed through them around one am in the morning. This time there were no hawkers on parade, just a rowing boat of youths who darted about like a minnow around our pike of a boat.