Reflections on Egypt
Only from the tranquility of our hotel room overlooking the sea at the Port of Aiguadolç in Sitges, Spain — just south of Barcelona — can we begin to process the last couple weeks traveling through Egypt. So many ‘wows!’ and ‘whats?’. So many!
To us, it felt like the “other” holy land.
We traversed the entire country from north to south, from the Library of Alexandria [where Paul uncontrollably wept for no apparent reason] and the Mediterranean Sea to the Abu Simbel temples not far from Egypt’s southern border with Sudan. In addition to adding a new country destination to our list, we traveled on a first-ever-for-us organized tour with 30-ish other like-minded, vibrant souls, from five continents, being led by Boston University’s Dr. Robert Schoch, Professor of Geology, a well-known proponent espousing a date for the age of the Great Sphinx of Giza to many thousands of years older than conventional Egyptologists’ dating. His wife Catherine Ulissey was our co-host and together they co-wrote their most recent book, the 2nd edition of Forgotten Civilizations: New Discoveries on the Solar-Induced Dark Age. The book is riveting.
Additionally, our expert Egyptologist leading the way each day was Dr. Mohamed AbdelLatif, an engaging expert storyteller and serious scholar with nearly 20 years experience having worked with Zahi Hawass, Former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs of Egypt.
We were so fortunate to be guided by open-minded top-notch experts. It was fun, fast-moving and basically — our heads exploded!
We weren’t starting from scratch. We’d read Dr. Robert and Katie’s book twice and also a chunk of Department of Archaeology, University of York Professor Joann Fletcher’s book, The Story of Egypt, The Civilization That Shaped the World before coming on the trip.
We stopped in several seldom-visited destinations on typical tourist itineraries in Middle Egypt such as Beni Hasan, Tuna el-Gebel and Tell el-Amarna. We sailed the Upper Nile for several nights. We seriously shopped buying jewelry and more art. We made lots of new friends. We stayed in a couple really good hotels including the “must-stays” Marriott Mena House in Cairo and the Steigenberger Nile Palace in Luxor.
We had fun for sure. And had some other unusual experiences, like the one in the Library of Alexandria. And in the Great Pyramid we climbed to the King’s Chamber where when Rich touched his newly acquired pendant of the Goddess Sekhmet, the vengeful manifestation of the sun god Ra, to the wall of the Chamber it exploded off his neck and all the accompanying tiny necklace beads spilled onto the floor. And under the Great Pyramid where we descended into the seldom-open, rather creepy, super-deep subterranean shaft. And we touched and talked to the Great Sphinx of Giza up close. And at Karnak in the off-the-beaten-track temple of Ptah, Sekhmet and Nefertom, Rich had an unusual, hard-to-explain highly-emotional encounter that left him visibly shaken and grasping for meaning.
And so, like we mentioned already, our head’s exploded searching for context, meaning and understanding. It will be months, and possibly years, for us to unpack this experience.
Scroll down for our hotel choices and other select images from our epic adventure. And also visit our more detailed Egypt Grand Tour Highlights.
