My mudbrick home in Dakhleh. The tower is a pidgeon loft.

Desert flowers.

Where I'll be going

Since it's been taking me so long to catch up with all that has happened in the last coule of months, I thought I might start interspacing what I'm doing NOW in here on occasion. Here's where I'll be going:

25 Feb (Mon) Travel Dakhla-Aswan; Orientation; night in Aswan.

26 Feb (Tue) Philae, Kalabsha, Coptic Cathedral; night in Aswan.

27 Feb (Wed) Nubia Museum, Elephantine, St. Simeon; night in Aswan.

28 Feb (Thu) To Luxor; Kom Ombo, Edfu; In Luxor: Luxor Museum; night in

Luxor.

29 Feb (Fri) Luxor Temple; afternoon for options; night in Luxor.

1 Mar (Sat) Medinet Habu, Deir el-Medina, Colossi, VOK; night in Luxor.

2 Mar (Sun) To Abydos; Dendera, Abydos; night in Sohag.

3 Mar (Mon) To Asyut; White & Red Monasteries, Athribis; night in Asyut.

4 Mar (Tue) To Minya; Hermopolis, Tuna el-Gebel, Bani Hasan; night in Minya.

5 Mar (Wed) To Cairo; Tenis/Akoris, Gabal al-Tayr; night in Cairo.

7 Mar (Fri) Saqqara and Giza

8 Mar (Sat) Old Cairo: Babylon, Coptic churches, Mosque of ‘Amr

9 Mar (Sun) Islamic Cairo 1: Gayer-Anderson, Ibn Tulun, Sultan Hasan, Citadel

11 Mar (Tue) Islamic Cairo 2: Bayn al-Qasrayn, Bab Zuwayla, etc.

14 Mar (Fri) Field trip: Fayyum: Tebtunis, Narmouthis

16 Mar (Sun) Field trip: Monastery of St. Antony

18 Mar (Tue) Study day; seminar on Alexandria

19 Mar (Wed) To Alexandria; Kom el-Shugafa, Serapeum, Qayt Bay fort

20 Mar (Thu) Kom el-Dikka (with Grzegorz Majcherek), National Museum

21 Mar (Fri) Marina el-Alamein, Taposiris

22 Mar (Sat) Abu Mina, Marea

23 Mar (Sun) Library Museum, Mustafa Pasha & Chatby tombs; to Cairo

Living in the Oasis

Accommodations here are different than any of us has experienced in the past. Mudbrick architecture makes a lot of sense out here, but it has its ups and downs. Essentially it is built by making bricks out of mud and straw, letting them dry, and then stacking them by the thousands. The walls are nice and thick, which both insulates and gives a lot of privacy to the rooms. The ceilings are supported by rough-hewn beams (I believe of palm in most places) with a layer of thin palm strips bundled together to form a platform over them. This is then covered with more mud to make a solid roof, and coated with a more sandy med plaster for appearance. Not all of the rooms have hard floors, though most of the dirt floors are covered by reed mats or camel-hair rugs. The dirt floors led to some adjustment, especially for the one room that lacked carpeting (the showers and bathrooms stalls are all tiled to prevent us inhabitants from destroying the house when we bathe). This is all a fairly easy adjustment , though learning to take 3 minute showers every day is a bit rough (water is scarce in the Oasis, and wells are being driven deeper and deeper to tap water sources that once sprang out on the surface) especially when you’re covered in dirt from a sandstorm. One has to be careful with the mudbrick benches built into the building, as we learned after breaking off chunks of them. The secret is to cover it with a rug before sitting, or keep your weight well away from the edge. Fortunately, repairing the house is simple-slop more mud on it and let it dry. I was leery about setting up my dart board in the common room, but I was assured that the craters left by missed darts (and I do mean craters, the wall is now a moonscape) will simply be covered over once we all leave.

This all works great, keeping the house cool during the day, warm at night, and making a startlingly quiet and comfortable home. Unless it rains. (more on that later)

The nearest town is Mut, the somewhat capital of the Oasis. It’s about a 20 minute bike ride to get to the main drag, but the bikes they bought for the program started falling apart on our first trip. This was our first experience with Egyptian quality-assurance, which is noticeable by its absence. By the end of our first 2-hour visit our 3 bikes had:

1 loose handlebar (my bad)

3 broken pedals (1 by me)

3 broken seats

1 broken handlebar (which the staff tried to tie together with string

Mut is quite a town, more on it soon.

The author at rest, waiting for that good Egyptian tea.

Twin-turbo.

More puppies, just because.

Iron-rich rocks.

Country roads...

At the first rest stop on the road to the Oasis.

Closest glimpse I've had of the pyramids.

The first mosque I visited.

Khanel-Khalili, shadier side.

Converted factory, now a market.

Cairo skyline. Can't escape Coca-Cola.

The niche where they stick foreigners.

Cairo street corner. The impression that the traffic is all going in incompatible directions is accurate.

Cairo To Dakhleh

I’ve been really remiss with this blog, so forgive me if my memory is a bit hazy as I try to fill in over a month of craziness.

Summing up Cairo: Smoggy, sandy, bright but faded colors everywhere. We ascended into a labyrinthine building to fill out visa extension request, and then had the rest of the day to explore while our handlers worked with the creaking Egyptian bureaucracy for us. We tried to get to the Cairo museum, but the crowds outside made us put it off. Instead we dodged some traffic and walked across the Nile somewhat aimlessly. We noted numerous statues of men in fezzes striking benevolent poses, and turned down somewhere close to 50 offers of boat rides. The view of the Nile was less than spectacular thanks to the obscuring haze of smog from the insane amount of Cairo drivers, so we had to rely on the wow factor of standing over such a famous river to sustain the tourist magic. On our way back over the bridge we got the classic tourist ambush.

As we stepped onto the bridge a man just happened to appear walking the same direction, asking for the time. Supposedly he had studied art in Montana and wanted to practice his English. We let him lead us to his “sister’s art show” which turned out to be a store selling typical tourist merchandise. We were treated to our first real Egyptian tea (with the tea unbagged in the bottom of the glass) while he showed us papyrus paintings he had done himself (the sister never materialized) as well as various other arts and crafts that he was apparently a master of. When he realized that we weren’t buying, the lights of the store were shut off and we were told that we were free to “stay and finish our tea”, while he held open the door. We took the hint. Apparently another group of my friends got caught in the same scam, but were given more of a hard sell by the guy who supposedly had done all the artwork (which explains the desire to clear us out of the store so quickly). Big family.

We went to the shell of an old factory that was now a market, which was the most intense working of the olfactory gland that I’ve had on this trip. What sticks out in my mind most about the market was the cats wandering the stalls. Half of the were pregnant; I think that may be the first time I’ve ever seen a pregnant cat wandering around in my entire life. Just one of those little things about living in a first-world nation that you normally don’t even think of.

Adam, a fellow student distinguished by his uncanny resemblance to every mummy portrait painted in the Valley of the Golden Mummies, went with me on a shopping expedition to Khanel-Khalili, the major shopping district of Cairo. We were completely unsuccessful in our object (to find cheap Indiana Jones-style leather satchels), but had quite a tour. We were approached in the standard manner, this time by a “law student” who then had to “study” and passed us off to his dad. His dad then took us through a labyrinth of streets to just about everywhere BUT a shop that sold leather bags. Of course he took us to friends who would probably give him a cut of any sales, but he seemed to know everyone in the city. We saw everything: camel-hair rugs you could pass a pen through without leaving a hole, camel-bone chess sets (which Adam bought out of guilt), imitation western clothes and shoes, pots, goats, donkeys, paintings, were offered self-portraits, papyrus scrolls, lamps, etc. But the closest we came to leather goods was a purse shop. I felt we came out well in the deal, however, as we had a friendly and cheerful tour guide through the area who asked for nothing more than a 10 pound “donation” to a mosque we stopped into. For another “donation” we were taken to the roof of another mosque and watched an incredible sunset over the skyline of Cairo. Well worth the investment. On our way home, we also discovered that there was another section of the market on the other side of the main street that was the true tourist trap. We had been in the seedier part of the market all along.

We then had an early rise, and a 14+ hour drive to the Oasis we would call home for the next two months. The trip went by quickly, with frequent stops at points of interest on the highway ; arches of rock cut by the wind or mounds of blackened rocks so rich in iron that they were fragmented like stacks of knives and throwing-stars. Before too long, we were at our field house. It was massive two story fortress, with a heavy wooden door. It was built out of mud.

Cairo

We arrived in Cairo bundled for New York weather, and soon discovered that we needed to shed our coats. Winter in Cairo is a relative term, a long-sleeved tee was more than enough warmth, if you stayed in the sun. The weather was as you’d expect for Egypt, bright clear skies and dust everywhere. Our whole entry process was pretty painless, the visa only costing 15 dollars and the checkpoints quick.

I was introduced upon landing to Andrea, a student from last year who had returned to work as a ceramicist, who had just barely made it on the plane. When we arrived at the airport around 4 our instructor Ellen Morris had called to check on her, only to find that Andrea thought we were leaving on Jan. 2^nd! She managed to make it on the plane by the skin of her teeth, but is feeling the effects of the 5 minutes she had to pack.

In a ragtag mass, we collected our luggage, exchanged our dollars for Egyptian Pounds (about 5 pounds to the dollar, and .5 pounds can get you a loaf of bread!) and headed out. We loaded our bus (through the window) and set out into the crazy traffic of Cairo.

Cairo traffic is easier to visualize if you think of the cars as a stream of people walking through the sidewalks near Time Square. There’s order to it, but you’re likely to see people bump into each other, or cut against the flow at any interval. Imagine a major U.S. highway if there were people lined on either side ready to run across Frogger-style if they see an opening. It’s surprisingly fun once you get into it; running a little, letting a bus wiz by so close it whips your shirt-tails, and running past to the sidewalk. The drivers ARE looking for pedestrians, so I feel safer crossing a street in Cairo than in Houston.

Cairo has a unique feel. More than any other major city I’ve been too, it has its own vibe to it. Dov and I discussed how you could take a few blocks, cover them in English street signs and advertisements (not that there aren’t plenty of English ads everywhere you go, alas yon halcyon days of traveling past) and still know that you’re in Cairo. In some areas I would look over the rooftops we drove past and easily see thieves or djinns skirting along the rooftops of a city from Arabian Nights, if I ignored the thick carpeting of satellite dishes.

We drops our luggage off at our hotel, Happy City (sounds like it should be in China doesn’t it?) and explored the surrounding blocks for a bit. We wanted to find a snack and a hookah bar, but our little group set out in a random direction that happened to be the worst possible route for what we were looking for. We didn’t mind though, as it meant a little more exploration of the city. Cell phone stores were ubiquitous, but there were many unique shops. Locksmiths worked out of shops set a foot into the wall next door to shoe stores where men were crafting the leather shoes on the sidewalk. Fish fried in the open air next to clothes shops whose displays spilled into the street. Everything in Cairo, no matter the beauty or the bright paint, looks a little worn. The dust and smog that coat the city make it impossible to keep clean, but this peccadillo adds to the feel of the city, rather than detracting or confusing it. Which is not to say that Cairo is only dirty in the way of sand; there are more scents to assail your nose than any city in America (even L.A., which is a dirty, dirty, city) and I am pretty sure that I have never seen a pregnant cat before I went to a market near the American University (a market built into the shell of an old warehouse).

We managed to find a hookah bar, and were quickly ushered upstairs to a niche overlooking the street. I say niche, because 9 of us were crowded into an area about 6 feet wide and 2 feet tall. They didn’t have bottled water there, so they sent a waiter to a local store to get us some. Soon, we were smoking contentedly at 2 hookahs, blowing smoke rings and trying to have a conversation with the waiter using an Arabic phrasebook (not terribly successfully).

We returned by a slightly different route to the hotel, only to pass by dozens of restaurants and hookah bars right by the hotel. We dined on the roof of the hotel, brightly lit with colored bulbs on wires crisscrossing the roof. Although it is set in Spain, I feel that Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” described the feel of the place that I got. It was eerily close to the image in my head as I read the story (I have never been to Spain, so my picture is probably a world away from H’s).

Sleep was difficult that night, punctuated by constant noises of traffic, conversations, and even singing from the street below. I was already awake at 5 when the call to prayer sounded, but things soon quieted and I was able to get a couple more fitful hours of sleep before my next day started.

Getting Here

Welcome! This is my blog about my trip to Egypt to study archaeology with a Columbia University program. If all goes well, I will be here 3 months. I'll be on the Dakleh Oasis for 2 months, taking classes and participating in the excavation of Roman-era ruins at Amheida. In March I'll be traveling around Egypt looking at important historical sites, though we'll be based out of Cairo.I left New York the evening of January 1st:

The days before my flight to Egypt were some of the craziest of my life. I won't go into detail in this blog, but let's just say I was relieved to get out of the country. That relief was tempered, as I learned that my Uncle Bear died the morning of my trip. It's a hell of a thing to miss a funeral ( or party in Bear's case), and this makes three that I've missed while overseas. The actual trip was pretty uneventful, discounting the HUGE line for security (we checked in 2 and a half hours early and still had to be rushed through the line). It's amazing how anticlimactic air travel makes going half-way around the world. Sit in a chair for a while and BAM you're in Egypt. We stayed in Cairo for a couple of days; I'll talk about it in my next entry.