“Hi Judy,” called out some Egyptian guy standing in line this morning to enter the Egyptian Museum. “What . . . . ?” Ah yes. He read the cartouche on Judy’s new T-shirt, which spells out “Judy” in hieroglyphics, easy for any self-respecting tour guide to read.

The Egyptian Museum is nothing but a huge warehouse for items found from ancient times. The exhibits are old and dusty looking. Some of the display cases are empty. But the stuff that’s there? Unbelievably fascinating. Works of art, especially the sculptures from the First Kingdom period were exquisite in artistic execution. King Tut? Of course, all his stuff that isn’t touring America right now. Mummies? At least a couple dozen, many with the shrouds removed so you can see the facial features, teeth, hair, toenails. Rosetta stone? Well, sorta. Napoleon B’s savants (wise guys along on his military expedition) found it during his abortive invasion of Egypt, the British took it as booty when they defeated the French and so it’s sitting in the British Museum with a replica on display here (it was a Frenchman who eventually decoded it from a replica). The Namer Palette? Yes, in all its glory. It is a stone tablet dating from the 31^st century BCE that is thought to describe how Pharaoh Namer unified South and North Egypt into a single entity. Namer is recognized as the first pharaoh. Anything else? An untold number of artifacts from antiquity.

The new Egyptian Museum is supposed to ready for visitors by the end of this year. I’m not taking odds on that happening but the building is there and so it will happen in the not to distant future.

I wish I had time to label the pictures I took there and describe their significance. Judy recorded most of Hatem’s talk (three hours’ worth) so maybe someday we can consolidate her work and mine. Don’t hold your breath.

Lunch was at a restaurant on a hill overlooking Cairo. Mixed grill with rice, as usual. But the bread . . . three dipping sauces, which I wish I could decipher gastronomically. The bread in Egypt is fantastic. I’m hitting Amazon as soon as we get home and order up an Egyptian cookbook.

Next a complex that comprises a huge fort and a temple, both with historical significance.

The fortification was built by Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, Syria, parts of Mesopotamia and I don’t know where else. His big claim to historical claim is that he’s the one who drove back the Christian Crusaders in the 12^th Century CE. The fortification in Cairo was part of that effort. The Crusaders never made it to Cairo, getting only as far as an area east of Egypt’s Delta region. The Citadel, as it’s called, is today the Military Museum and a Police Museum, housed in the Citadel’s prison. Previously, it served as the seat of Egyptian government from the 13^th century into the 19^th century.

Also located at the Citadel is the Mosque of Muhamad Ali, built in the mid 1800s. And no, not the boxer, but the man who served as the governor of Egypt and Sudan from the early 1800s. An Albanian, he served under the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The throne of Egypt was passed down his blood line to King Farouk, who was deposed in 1965. Without getting deep in the weeds about Muhamad Ali’s life, suffice it to say he is considered the father of modern Egypt. He was greatly impressed with France’s military might during Napoleon’s invasion. He decided to modernize and westernize Egypt by adopting European ways. He was so enthralled with France that he sent one of the obliques from the Luxor Temple to France. Today it sits at the Place de la Concode in Paris. The French, in return, sent him a clock for his bell tower. The clock never worked.

Hatem took us into the mosque, had us sit on the floor where prayers are said on Friday, and told us about his religious beliefs as a Muslim. He believes in all the profits, from Abraham through Moses, Jesus and Muhamad. Muhamad is the last and final profit. The Koran is the ultimate word.

Finally, a stop at a tourist market, much like we’ve seen almost everywhere in Egypt. Nearing the end of our stay in Egypt, Judy and I felt a need for some grandkid presents to round out our collection so far. Of course, bargaining is the name of the game. “How much?” I asked. “!00 Egyptian Pounds.” “Would you take 50?” The salesclerk and the store owner looked at each other in total disbelief. “No way,” they said to each other in obvious Arabic. “Stop, stop,” I said. “You’re bringing tears to my eyes,” said I, wiping an imaginary tear from my eye. We all had a good laugh. “Let’s split the difference,” he said. “80 Egyptian Pounds.” “65,” says i. “70.” “Done.” I probably left a few Pounds on the table but it was worth it.

Judy, Doug, Judith and I just returned from dinner at a Lebanese restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. Great food, but we sat next to a table with two couples. The two thirty-something ladies, ordered up and puffed away on a shisha, exhaling huge clouds of flavored smoke over our table.

But hey, that’s the foreign experience. We’re fed, ready for bed and ready for our final outing in Egypt.

A slow day today – nothing planned until 11:30 AM and even that was an optional trip to a cotton goods store (cotton is a big crop in Egypt) and a jewelry store. We did cotton but not jewelry.

Then a pleasant lunch with Doug and Judith by the swimming hole (this is a pretty fancy resort kind of hotel with at least six restaurants). Bags out at 2:00 and on the bus at 2:30.

I’m going to save you from a description of the Luxor temple except to say it’s big, fairly well preserved and made by, you guessed it, Ramses II. Actually, Amenhotep III built about half of it but after 30 years on the throne Ramses II had all mention of his predecessor chiseled off of all of Amenhotep’s statues and inscriptions in the temple. It’s all Ramses II, all the time.

Another interesting note: The Romans modified it some; so, as usual, did the Christians. The Muslims, not realizing that there was an Egyptian temple buried under all that sand, built a mosque on top of the temple. Somehow, they’ve straightened out the mess. Today there are two mosques, the original and a new one close by, and Ramses II’s temple.

So now we’re sitting in the airport waiting lounge. It’s a little more than an hour from here to Cairo and we’ll get there around 8 PM.

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, right? The ancient Egyptians used that fact to establish the location of their cities: Cairo, Luxor and others. Life is the process of moving from one house (our temporal life on earth) to the life in the house of eternity. We don’t die, we simply move houses. And it therefore makes sense for the main city of Luxor to be on the East Bank of the Nile to the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank.

Today we visited the West Bank where we saw not only the Valley of the Kings but also the Valley of the Queens and burial chambers for other nobles and even artisans and workers. 

Luxor (or Thebes as the Greeks called it) was the capitol city during the New Kingdom from 1550 to 1070 BCE, almost 500 years. It’s the period that includes Ramses II and Tutankhamen among many others. Ironically, Ramses II, the pharaoh who built the biggest and best and most temples gets virtually no visitors at all in the Valley of the Kings. Both his mortuary temple and his tomb have been so badly damaged that they are not open to the public. 

As soon as a pharaoh was crowned as such, he and his administration began burrowing into the side of the Valley to establish his burial chamber. The longer he lived, the more expansive his chamber. Only upon his death would the final chamber be formed. The walls and ceilings of the tomb complex were elaborately carved and painted. Typically, an elaborate sarcophagus with a matching lid held the mummified body. Gold, silver and other valuable items were left in the chamber to help the deceased pharaoh reach and enjoy the next world.

Naturally, royal tombs were a sore temptation for grave robbers. Elaborate, long passageways were dug to make it difficult for grave robbers to find and take the loot. It didn’t work too well. Tombs were plundered in late Roman times and before; Christians used tombs as places of worship and to live. The location of tomb entrances were poorly kept secrets. The result: most were plundered early on and what we see is what remains.

Sixty-three tombs have been identified in the Valley of Kings. Our balloon pilot yesterday said perhaps 10% of all tombs have been found so far. The government is attempting to move those mud-brick houses that stand on suspected burial chambers to new housing away from the Valley of the Kings.

We visited the tombs of Ramses III, Ramses IV, Ramses VI and two others. All featured wall and ceiling carvings and paintings, many in very good condition. The designs are similar to what we found in the temples we’ve been visiting.

Next we visited the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt from 1479 – 1458 BCE. She came by her position through lineage. But to keep peace in the family her younger brother acted as her assistant pharaoh for all of those years. She built a very impressive mortuary temple near the Valley of the Kings and Queens. Her plan was to dig a passageway from her temple through the mountain and come out the other side in the Valley of the Kings. The rock proved to be unstable and that plan was abandoned.

Her brother wasn’t too happy playing second fiddle to his sister. As soon as she was gone, he destroyed every statue in her temple that bore her likeness. Talk about sibling rivalry!

We were getting a bit peckish by then, so Hatem called and audible and took us to lunch before completing our grave tour. Lunch turned out to be at a West Bank farmhouse. Achmed, our host, served a lunch prepared by his mother and his family. He said that 85% of what we ate was grown on his 4-hectare farm. (One hectare equals about 2.5 acres.) They grow all sorts of vegetables and have a water buffalo, horse, donkey, chickens and I don’t know what all else.

The farm basically feeds the family with whatever is left over being sold in the market. But what a family it is. Achmed comes from a family of nine kids: five brothers and four sisters. All but one lives in the farmhouse. Each of those is married and has either 3 or 4 kids. I count upwards of 50 people living under one roof. Each family has a private room. All help in the fields. 

Achmed’s assistant was his son (or was it his nephew; I didn’t get it quite straight). This ninth-grader is top of his class and spoke to us in very good English. He told me he wanted to go to America and learn to be a doctor so he could help the poor in Egypt. His father/uncle isn’t so sure but of course we encouraged him to do so. Actually, his father/uncle is very proud of him. He was second in his class through grade school but only because his friend, the number one student, was the son of a teacher at the primary school they attended. As soon as they moved on to middle school the boy attained the number one position.

Then it was on to the Valley of the Queens where we saw two tombs. Same idea. Some of those buried here are actually second-level nobility. Ramses II has a burial chamber large enough to handle all of his sons: 52 in total. He had four wives and countless concubines. Busy guy.

From there we bussed to the Steigenberger Nile Palace Hotel. Our room with a spacious patio overlooks the Nile and is centrally located. We’ll be here for one night; we leave for Cairo tomorrow evening.

Having had a big lunch, we didn’t need dinner. Instead, Hatem arranged for carriage rides that took us from the hotel through central Luxor to a small café over a hookah shop. It’s called a shisha here – a pipe that burns charcoal at the top; the smoke is sucked through a long pipe that causes it to pass through a flavoring chamber and though a vial of water. 

At the café we had drinks – Judy had cinnamon and milk and I had a hot ginger drink – and sandwiches that turned out to be ground lamb in a pita-ish pocket. 

After the snack, four of us guys went off to explore the nearby tourist market. It was similar to the vendor kiosks at most tourist stops in Egypt. “Hey mister, one dollar. Tee shirts. Come take a look Where you from? America? I love America! My sister lives in America.” The guys in this market (they were all guys) weren’t quite as pushy. I had an interaction with a jolly old spice salesman. 

The last time I ran up against a fast talking spice salesmen. Benny ran a curry shop in Durban, South Africa. We’re still using curry from that trip. I was much more restrained this time. I only bought a small bag of Nubian curry and a bag of locally grown cumin. And another bag of curry he talked me into; Bedouin curry, whatever that is. All for only 80 Egyptian pounds; about $5 US.

The morning is “on our own” until around 11:30 for a tour of a local cotton facility and then at 2:30 we’ll leave for the airport by way of the Luxor temple.

The last time Judy and I went for a balloon ride we were in Myanmar. It was early morning with a slight, hazy mist. The views as we passed silently over fields dotted with Hindu shrines was breathtaking. Today, here in Luxor, we equaled and maybe surpassed that experience.

The alarm rang at 4:15, then on the bus to the ferry shuttle, across the Nile and on another bus to the field by 5:30 AM. Ours was one of the last to inflate but that was OK because we got a ride that surpassed what most of the others did.

Our pilot has been flying balloons for 17 years but has studied Egyptology for 45 years. He says many balloon operators like to take off at precisely 6 AM, the first allowable time, make a 30-minute journey and then return for a second run before the 8 AM ending time. He prefers a single, longer run and that’s what we got. And rather than shooting straight up into the air like the other balloons he stayed low – maybe 500 feet maximum, so we could drift across both the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.

As the names imply, this is where pharaohs and their wives and consorts reside after death. The valleys were used for about 500 years during the New Kingdom. The theory was that by digging shafts into the side of the hill it would be easier to hide the tombs from grave robbers than is possible by building a pyramid that says, “Here I am, come and get it!” The cave system didn’t work very well. Most tombs were raided over the centuries, including Ramses II whose grave was seriously damaged. King Tut is the one notable exception; his grave was discovered intact. For a kid king who didn’t accomplish much and died young he gets more press coverage than all the other pharaohs combined.

We’ll go see the valley from the ground tomorrow.

The other stop for the day was the Karnak Temple, a monstrous complex that has been added to and modified by every New Kingdom pharaoh who came along. It goes on and on. Like most temples the Romans had their way with it and Christians used it for worship back in the day.

One interesting story involved a pair of gigantic obelisks commissioned by Hatshepsut, one of the few women pharaohs. They are almost 100 feet tall and are of granite taken from Aswan and floated down the river and then erected by a clever system of earthen and sand ramps. Concerned that the pharaohs who would follow her would take down her monuments, Hatshepsut dedicated the obelisks to Amon, the chief god of the time. That left the next guy in a bind. Did he want to invoke the wrath of Amon by tearing down his obelisks? Not a good idea. Instead he erected walls around the obelisks so they were hidden from view. The walls have partially fallen down so the obelisks can be seen.

Many of Egypt’s obelisks have been removed to other countries including Paris, London, Washington D.C. and a number to Rome and elsewhere in Italy. Only five remain in Egypt.

We also made a stop at a papyrus factory for a demonstration on how papyrus is made. And of course there was a shopping opportunity. Come see outs sometime.

Hatem held forth on the sun deck again this afternoon. He was asked about women’s rights in Egypt. He said that traditionally women are subservient to men. Every woman must have a man who oversees and protects her: her father, uncle, grandfather, husband. He is responsible for her financially and for her proper behavior. Education to teach women to read and write is about the limit. A woman’s job is to manage the household and raise the kids. If a man and his sister have a father who dies, the man inherits two-thirds, the sister one third.

This attitude prevails in the country (generally the south of Egypt) while western norms are taking hold in cities. He says we should imagine conditions to be as they were in our country when we were kids.

Today in Egypt there are two sets of laws: civil laws that dictate how the country should be run and religious laws that are determined by each faith. For instance, a man may divorce his wife by making the declaration three times. Then it’s a done deal. A woman wants a divorce she must ask her husband who can say yes or no. If they disagree, the case is adjudicated by the family court, which is run according to Islamic laws. He is a strong advocate of separation of civic and religious legal systems. Things get murky if the two are merged.

The Muslim Brotherhood in 2011 seized the opportunity that arose from the Arab Spring. Mubarak, the strong man dictator was ejected and popular elections were held according to a new democracy-based constitution. The only party with a strong base of supporters was the Brotherhood. They won but proved to be inexperienced and ineffective administrators and who seemed willing to blur the lines between civil and religious matters. When 30 million Egyptians took to the streets in protest the Army, led by General al Sisi had the choice of firing on the 30 million demonstrators or forcing Morsi from office. They did the latter and Sisi, a hero who saved Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood won the next election by a landslide. Now the question is, as we talked about yesterday, if he can pull Egypt up and improve life for Egyptians.

Tomorrow we leave the ship and check into a hotel and have a day in Luxor. Then off to Cairo.

Sorry, tonight’s pictures are in reverse order. The morning ballooning is at the end. I’m too lazy/tired to fix it!

The ship cruised after dinner and we awoke at Kom Ombo. We were off the boat at 7 AM so as to beat the crowds at this popular temple. Another clear, sunny day if a bit brisk that early in the morning.

Kom Ombo is a large temple compared to what we saw in Nubia. Actually, it’s two temples in one. One half is dedicated to the falcon god, Haroeris, a benevolent god that can bring good. The other half is dedicated to Sobok, the crocodile god. Sobok, and crocodiles in general, are not exactly benevolent so the hope was that by worshiping Sobok he would return the favor by not eating the town’s fishermen. They mummified crocs and there’s even a crocodile museum.

The temple displays a calendar, carved in the side of a temple wall, that gives the date and the religious rites that are to be performed each day. Hatem explained that ancient Egyptians divided the year into 12 months, each with 30 days with five days tacked on to make it come out even. A sixth day was added every four years. The 12 months were divided into three seasons corresponding to flood, planting and harvesting dates. Egyptians of this era also observed the Roman calendar and the Coptic Christian calendar in use at that time.

There is on display a wall section that depicts medical instruments used at that time (Ptolemaic era – 100 BCE or so). Many – forceps, tweezers, scalpels, even instruments used for brain surgery – are in common use today.

There is also a nilometer – a pit used by priests to measure the height of the annual flood. This measurement helped the Pharaoh’s administrators plan for feast or famine depending on the amount of water the Nile would deliver each year.

We’re back on the ship by 8:15 but we didn’t depart until close to 9. No matter, we cruised down the Nile (heading north) until we reached Edfu around 1 PM. I’ll let you see the pictures, but we’ve traveled through mostly rural areas. The one surprise for me was that the distance between the Nile and the desert is typically only a few hundred yards, not fractions of a mile. Periodically there were pumping stations sucking river water up to irrigate crops.

We traveled by horse-drawn buggy to the Edfu temple. Buses, taxis and uber are banned in the city to promote local transport.

The Edfu temple took 180 years to complete – from 237 to 57 BCE – and was used as an Egyptian temple for only 27 years. At that point the Romans had taken over and had no interest in the temple; nor did the Christians nor did the Islamite. It sat unused and became covered under 40 feet of sand – inside and out. The result was that this is the best-preserved temple in Egypt. Excavation started in 1860.

One interesting series of wall panels carves out the history of Osiris, his wife Isis, his son Horus the Younger and his brother Seth. Seth the bad guy tricks his brother into trying out a casket that fits Osiris and no one else; which Seth throws the casket with Osiris inside into the river. Isis finds the casket on shore in Lebanon (magical powers at work) and takes it home but Seth then hacks the body into 14 pieces. A battle ensues. When the dust settles, Horus has killed Osiris and goes down in Egyptian god lore as the one who conquered evil. The full story can be found at https://www.ancient.eu/Horus/

We went up on the sun deck to watch the sun set (5:45 PM hereabouts) but joined an informal discussion with Hatem and a half-dozen of our fellow travelers. Hatem held forth on the state of the Egyptian economy, touched on political matters and Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. and other countries. Egypt’s economy is struggling to say the least. But as Hatem points out the published unemployment rate has average 10% or so over the last 25 years but is at 7% now but the real unemployment rate is lower due to the “black” economy – street vendors, pony cart drivers, Uber drivers, etc. The future depends on strong-man al-Sisi’s ability to bring Egypt up by its bootstraps. He devalued the Egyptian Pound from 5 to the US dollar to 18; it stands at about 15 now. That may be good in the long run, but most Egyptians suffer in the near term from higher prices without a commensurate increase in income.

Support from Gulf states has been reduced as their economies stumble. The U.S. has provided little aid since the Arab Spring failure. Egypt has procured weapons (it has the strongest army in the Middle East) from France, Russia and China since.

Tomorrow’s another busy day: On the bus at 4:50 AM for a balloon ride over the temple complexes near Luxor, a tour of the Karnak temple, visit to a papyrus farm and another temple in the late afternoon.