Egypt

On the road to Alexandria

~ Ashley Atkins ~ Leave a comment

We just flew from Luxor to Cairo and are on a motorcoach for the 3 and a half hour trip to Alexandria, the Bride of the Mediterranean, founded 332 BC by Alexander the Great, the capital during the Greco-Roman period, and today the 2nd largest city in Egypt, where I expect to be able to tap into some wi-fi.

We spent 4 nights cruising down the Nile – remember, it flows south to north – from Aswan to Luxor. It was so beautiful! So amazing! To be on the river, looking at palm trees and banana trees and sugar cane and cows and donkeys and sheep and fishermen and cities and THE SAHARA all at once is such a surreal experience. Continue reading →

In Assouan!

~ Ashley Atkins ~ Leave a comment

In Aswan. We’ve been traveling in a lovely wooden ship on Lake Nasser, which is a HUGE freshwater lake created by the Aswan Dam. Our program director, Nora, told us the dam is so heavily protected because, were it to be destroyed in, say, a terrorist attack, Egypt would be flooded and destroyed within 9 hours.

On yesterday’s excursion we went to see some amazing Nubian temples. These temples were built so far away from the capital at the time that it was presumed the king would never see them and so they were created in a more slapdash manner and lacked the precision of others we have seen. One of the temples from Greco Roman times showed Ptolemy (sp?) making offerings to the god Horus the Child, son of the goddess Isis, whom the Nubians worshipped as late as the 1600s AD. Continue reading →