DAY 23 - NOBLE OR NOT
SYNOPSIS: I spent the last day with Spirit Man visiting more sites at the west bank of Luxor and made some unpleasant discoveries.
Where to draw the line? It was baffling for me to hear that the Egyptian government wants to clear the entire three kilometer sphinx alley between Luxor Temple and Karnak. But I was not prepared for what we saw at the Noble Tombs.
SHADY MANDU
Mountain Man had left in the morning after an argument with Mandu over the price and the amount of some substances he had provided. Mountain Man was simply deducting the difference from the hotel bill. Mandu, as we hear is addicted to these things likely more than Mountain Man and once again cheated on price and quantity presumably to stack up his own supply. Mountain Man was not about to be fleeced. It got heated between the two of them. I escaped.
Spirit Man was going to leave via train in the evening, so the two of us embarked on one last adventure together. We visited the Noble Tombs. Tourists usually come via tour bus, private taxi, donkey, or at least by motor bike. The locals looked at us quite funny when we arrived everywhere on foot. But between 7:30 AM and 4 PM we managed. We only had to leave out a couple of tombs that were a bit far for one day. To get tickets, you have to go to a central tourist office where they sell dozens of individual tickets without a map or any direction. To figure out what you want is quite a task. Lonely Planet is helpful but spellings and tomb names don’t always match… To see all the sites in this area costs a good $100. That’s more than most people around here earn in a month!
I had spiced up my bottle of water with orange-flavored, orange-colored electrolytes to keep me hydrated. Everywhere I pulled out that bottle to take a swig I was questioned on what I was drinking: Stella (beer), wine, whiskey?! Just imagine drinking any of these as you walk kilometer after kilometer in the burning heat. But it goes to show the reputation we have acquired around here as perpetually drinking and debouching savages. I explained what I was drinking but I doubt I got much credence.
Medinat Habu, a temple by Ramses III which is notoriously skipped by all the tour buses – as long as there are any – blew us away. Finally, there were some hieroglyphics and relief scenes that could be photographed as they were cut deep enough and still colorful enough. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to see day after day, washed out, dusty, dark and shallow reliefs that look like empty walls when photographed. Void of visitors, as usual, there was at least one diligent German Egyptologist at work who had mapped out the entire temple on diagrams down to every scene on every column. She had a field day. An assistant held up mirrors to illuminate some of the motifs. All Egyptologists should have gotten an emergency sabbatical when the demonstrations in Egypt started. They will never be able to work like this again.
The tombs cannot be photographed. I sneaked a few horrible short videos, but the guards were like hawks walking around me and my big dangling camera… I hope my son can do some editing and rescue a few good shots. But all the tombs are illustrated in books and I am sure on line. They are breath-taking! These are the burials of the workers who worked in the service of the queens and kings valley's nearby. They had their town known as Deir El Medina, their temple, their cemetery. The wealthy of them built small but exquisite tombs for themselves which they painted (rather than carved). The state of preservation is simply amazing to a fault. You are tempted to dismiss some of them as modern restorations; that’s how vivid and detailed they are! It was exciting to be in the places where some of the images are in situ which I have been using to teach for decades. There are scenes of daily life, metallurgy, agriculture, funerary processions, plant and animal life, and more. One of the most charming features are the tomb ceilings which are not star- or vulture-filled as they are in the royal tombs, but they are made up of strips or squares of colorful patterns reminiscent of textiles and carpets. One ceiling featured a vineyard. Sitting in it made you feel like you are in a lush garden.
The requests for baksheesh were unnerving. After a while we had exhausted our coins and small bill supply. We tried to explain that we were walking for a reason: We are not filthy rich tourists and we are not a group where each can give one pound and make the guides happy with a large sum. We are alone. The guides are not guides anyhow. They are the gate keepers of the tombs and have the keys. Often they do little more than rattle off names of the dead and gods. They can’t speak English, nor answer a single slightly more sophisticated question. After paying the hefty entrance fees, we were not in the mood of dishing out much more in any case, especially since our one pound tips were frowned upon…
But from 15 years ago, I had an image in my mind of the Noble Tomb area. There were colorfully painted Nubian houses. We walked through a village and were shown various tombs by the locals. All of that had vanished. The government decided to bulldoze the village and to relocate the locals in the new town where our hotel is. They were given houses and apartments and we heard that many of them were quite pleased with the change. But it strips the entire site of its charm. As manicured and sterile as the Valley of the Kings already is, soon the Tombs of the Nobles will look the same: Concrete walks with divided staircases for the flow of tourists coming and going next to an enormous parking lot. Toilet facilities do not amount to more than a dirty trailer lacking running water – that is made up by plastic bottles filled with tap water…
A few lone mud-brick walls, a few heaps of ceramic tiles, and a few big holes in the ground remain. No doubt, soon all of this will be smoothed over as well. No trace of local residents, except perhaps, two. The residents of two dwellings were still there – waiting for their alternative housing. A young Egyptian told us that now, under the “New Egypt”, he might be able to stay and to convert his stables into a coffee shop for visitors. That should make him a wealthy man. I wish him luck! He also tried to sell us supposed antiquities which he and his brother looted from a nearby tomb; or they faked them. Who knows? Either way, I stay away from these things. It’s not worth it. But I had to ask myself where do sensible accommodations for tourists start and a healthy side by side with local culture stop? I have no answer but something seems to go astray in Luxor.
EX-PAT JOANNA
Back at our rooftop hotel we watched the sun set. Joanna, the ex-pat entertained us with a few more stories from her previous three marriages. She seems more like a friend than a hotel worker. With the two of us (and now soon only me), Joanna seems to look for company. We gave Spirit Man good tongue-and-cheek advice on how to choose a wife. He was rather contemplative as his time in Egypt comes to a very fast end. And I realized that my time in Egypt has dwindled to a shocking five days! But the good news of the day was that the museums in Egypt have opened again! It looks like I will get a chance at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo after all. But first, I will stop at the Luxor Museum and make a day trip to Abydos.
Good night.