Alexandria
Jun. 6th, 2007 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deirdreAlexandria
We didn't do the overnight tour to Cairo for a good reason: that would mean that we wouldn't be able to do a second-day tour to Alexandria, and we definitely wanted to do that. All the shortcomings of Cairo? Alexandria more than made up for them. I only wish we'd been able to do the tours in the reverse order for a good first impression.
Once again, we set off early with a police escort, this time for the Alexandria museum, opened last year. Despite the much smaller quantity of items, it was a museum done right: the walls were dark grey, and each item was explained and highlighted. The place was not only air conditioned, it had working elevators. For this reason, I give it an A+. We got nearly as much time in this museum as we did in the Cairo museum, but its vastly smaller size and better display meant that even I was able to see nearly 2/3 of the museum in the time we had. Had my feet hurt a bit less (and I hadn't had shooting pains up my back), I probably could have seen the whole thing.
I saw the middle and new kingdom part of the ancient Egyptian works, plus most of the Islamic period, including some really beautiful calligraphy and fabric. I took a few pictures, but some of the pieces weren't readily photographable.
After that, we went to the catacombs, re-discovered in 1860 when a donkey stepped in the well. It's a freakin' lot of stairs down (though it is not, rumors to the contrary, 99), but I managed to get not only down, but also back up (I did start back up a tad before everyone else, because I knew I'd be slow). This catacomb dates from the Ptolemaic period, where there was a fusion of religions: some followed the ancient Egyptian religion, some were Christians, and some followed the Greek gods, so the catacombs accommodated all of the above in a happy mélange.
It reminded me very much of a talk Rick and I went to at Pantheacon this year on Greco-Egyptian magic (which was fabulous, btw) and talking about Alexandria in exactly this period with exactly this happy co-existence of several religions. Very cool. I only wish the catacombs themselves weren't so freakin' hot.
When I got up to the top, I saw a woman we'd been sitting with walking back toward the catacombs -- it turns out she'd seen a cat, and gone to fetch milk for it. The staff thought this was a lovely idea, guided her to a store, and when the store wouldn't take credit cards or the money she did have (US Dollars and Euros), the staff paid for the milk and refused reimbursement. Amazing. She then fed the kitty the milk, and I'm told he was very happy.
When we finally went for lunch, the place we went (Santa Lucia, which is a hotel) was fabulous. It was ten times better than the food the day before. We got a free wine, beer, or soda, so I ordered a cola, and voila, I got a Pepsi. I even bought two more to take with me. For that moment in time, they were my favorite place in the whole world. I can't even describe the appetizer we had, except that one was a pastry cheese ball, sort of sweet, with some kind of stronger cheese sauce, much more savory. Fabulous contrast of flavors.
One of the places I didn't really care about was King Faroukh's palace, but I'm glad we made that trip if only for the lecture on the way. Our tour guide talked about some of the problems of women in Egypt, and how women were much more likely to wear veils than forty years ago, and, in part, this was due to fears about being eligible wives. Our tour guide was somewhat disgusted with the practice, because many of the women now donning veils don't even say their prayers five times a day. Our guide said, "symbols mean nothing here." I've always been one who's been more into works than symbols, which is one reason I traditionally haven't worn a lot of religious symbols. So, I get her point.
As we were driving past a public beach, she pointed out that there were almost never women in the water, which was true. This was the Mediterranean, and the women sat, fully clothed and veiled, under umbrellas, watching the men. If women do go out in the water on a public beach, they do it fully clothed, complete with veil. The more "modern women" who prefer bathing suits and/or don't wear veils will go to a private beach rather than be hassled by other women. (Which again reinforced my long-held belief that men alone oppressing women doesn't work without the co-operation of women.)
The palace is a knock-out, but it's off limits. However, the grounds are not, and one can get spectacular photos of the place.
Our final stop was the (modern) library of Alexandria, which is spectacular. They're not entirely sure, but they think they missed the site of the ancient library by 100-200 meters. That's pretty good. They also think they may have found enough of the old lighthouse (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) that they may be able to re-create it on the grounds of the library.
They have a project online to digitize many of the old books, including the survey Napoleon's scientists did in the 1800s. You can see the images (and scan and zoom and so forth) at bibalex.org. Very impressive and highly recommended, especially if you want to see some great illustrations of things not commonly seen.
We didn't do the overnight tour to Cairo for a good reason: that would mean that we wouldn't be able to do a second-day tour to Alexandria, and we definitely wanted to do that. All the shortcomings of Cairo? Alexandria more than made up for them. I only wish we'd been able to do the tours in the reverse order for a good first impression.
Once again, we set off early with a police escort, this time for the Alexandria museum, opened last year. Despite the much smaller quantity of items, it was a museum done right: the walls were dark grey, and each item was explained and highlighted. The place was not only air conditioned, it had working elevators. For this reason, I give it an A+. We got nearly as much time in this museum as we did in the Cairo museum, but its vastly smaller size and better display meant that even I was able to see nearly 2/3 of the museum in the time we had. Had my feet hurt a bit less (and I hadn't had shooting pains up my back), I probably could have seen the whole thing.
I saw the middle and new kingdom part of the ancient Egyptian works, plus most of the Islamic period, including some really beautiful calligraphy and fabric. I took a few pictures, but some of the pieces weren't readily photographable.
After that, we went to the catacombs, re-discovered in 1860 when a donkey stepped in the well. It's a freakin' lot of stairs down (though it is not, rumors to the contrary, 99), but I managed to get not only down, but also back up (I did start back up a tad before everyone else, because I knew I'd be slow). This catacomb dates from the Ptolemaic period, where there was a fusion of religions: some followed the ancient Egyptian religion, some were Christians, and some followed the Greek gods, so the catacombs accommodated all of the above in a happy mélange.
It reminded me very much of a talk Rick and I went to at Pantheacon this year on Greco-Egyptian magic (which was fabulous, btw) and talking about Alexandria in exactly this period with exactly this happy co-existence of several religions. Very cool. I only wish the catacombs themselves weren't so freakin' hot.
When I got up to the top, I saw a woman we'd been sitting with walking back toward the catacombs -- it turns out she'd seen a cat, and gone to fetch milk for it. The staff thought this was a lovely idea, guided her to a store, and when the store wouldn't take credit cards or the money she did have (US Dollars and Euros), the staff paid for the milk and refused reimbursement. Amazing. She then fed the kitty the milk, and I'm told he was very happy.
When we finally went for lunch, the place we went (Santa Lucia, which is a hotel) was fabulous. It was ten times better than the food the day before. We got a free wine, beer, or soda, so I ordered a cola, and voila, I got a Pepsi. I even bought two more to take with me. For that moment in time, they were my favorite place in the whole world. I can't even describe the appetizer we had, except that one was a pastry cheese ball, sort of sweet, with some kind of stronger cheese sauce, much more savory. Fabulous contrast of flavors.
One of the places I didn't really care about was King Faroukh's palace, but I'm glad we made that trip if only for the lecture on the way. Our tour guide talked about some of the problems of women in Egypt, and how women were much more likely to wear veils than forty years ago, and, in part, this was due to fears about being eligible wives. Our tour guide was somewhat disgusted with the practice, because many of the women now donning veils don't even say their prayers five times a day. Our guide said, "symbols mean nothing here." I've always been one who's been more into works than symbols, which is one reason I traditionally haven't worn a lot of religious symbols. So, I get her point.
As we were driving past a public beach, she pointed out that there were almost never women in the water, which was true. This was the Mediterranean, and the women sat, fully clothed and veiled, under umbrellas, watching the men. If women do go out in the water on a public beach, they do it fully clothed, complete with veil. The more "modern women" who prefer bathing suits and/or don't wear veils will go to a private beach rather than be hassled by other women. (Which again reinforced my long-held belief that men alone oppressing women doesn't work without the co-operation of women.)
The palace is a knock-out, but it's off limits. However, the grounds are not, and one can get spectacular photos of the place.
Our final stop was the (modern) library of Alexandria, which is spectacular. They're not entirely sure, but they think they missed the site of the ancient library by 100-200 meters. That's pretty good. They also think they may have found enough of the old lighthouse (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) that they may be able to re-create it on the grounds of the library.
They have a project online to digitize many of the old books, including the survey Napoleon's scientists did in the 1800s. You can see the images (and scan and zoom and so forth) at bibalex.org. Very impressive and highly recommended, especially if you want to see some great illustrations of things not commonly seen.