The Trip That Keeps Growing

Day 3 9 October 2021 Cairo and Our Ancient Egypt and the Nile River Trip

Cairo is currently the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world. It has over 22,000,000 citizens. It is located on the eastern shore of the Nile River, about 500 miles from the southern border of Egypt and is considered the gateway to the Nile Delta where the Nile separates into the Rosetta and Damietta branches on its way to the Mediterranean Sea. The Pyramids of Giza are located on its southwestern border.

Known as the ‘City of a Thousand Minarets,” Cairo was officially founded in 969 AD by the Fatimid dynasty. The Fatimid dynasty, named after the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, was an important religious and political dynasty in North Africa from 909 to 1171 AD. But the city can trace its roots back to the Egyptian capital of Memphis, founded during the 4^th century BCE and located about 13 miles south of present-day Cairo.

While the rest of our tour arrived yesterday, this was the first time that we got to meet them. This morning our Trip Leader gave us an introduction to our trip and then we spent the first day learning about Ancient Egypt. There are 23 travelers in our group – 9 from Colorado. Our Trip Leader for this trip is Muhammad Metwally. He is married with four daughters. He lives in the Nile Delta region near Alexandria.

Most of our group spent the afternoon at the Egyptian Museum, but Bill and I had already been there on our last trip to Cairo. We took this time to catch up on the pictures and blogs and to rearrange our suitcases after living out of them for the last 7 days.

At 6 PM we all gathered together in the Ambassadors Club, which will be our nightly meeting place while we are in Cairo. There were hors d-oeuvres and plenty of wine as we got to meet the rest of our group. This was followed by our Welcome Dinner at one of the hotel’s restaurants. I have found in Egypt that dinners mainly consist of sea bass, chicken, mashed beef (hamburger), or a combination thereof. The dinner and wine were both very good. The group seems very friendly and almost all of traveled extensively so I think that we should all have a very good time. We also found out that our ship, the Nefertiti, can accommodate 75 passengers, but we will be the only group on board. It should be a very lively time!

Since we really did not go anywhere today to take pictures, I thought I would include so photos of the traffic, modes of transportations used in Egypt, and other pictures of everyday life.

Horse drawn cart in Cairo

Aquaduct built by Sultan Saladin in 1176 AD

Crossing the Nile

Waiting for the school bus/van

Even tuk-tuks get flat tires

One of the private international schools
outside of Cairo

Children on their way to school

One of the nicer homes outside of Cairo

Double-decker tuk-tuk - notice the fully
loaded truck in the background

And I have no idea what they are building!

Grove of Date Palm Trees-Egypt is the
number one producer of dates

Another nice home along the highway

Small stores in the little villages on the road

Donkey-drawn cart selling roasted
sweet potatoes

Horse-drawn cart - You see these everywhere
even on 6 lane highways

Bakery in a small village

Small fruit stand along the highway

Laundry Day

Gardening in the outskirts of Cairo

Small grocery store - notice the women in
there native dress

Scene along the Nile River

A heavily-loaded trash truck

Track carrying ceramic toilets packed in straw

Pigeon Houses - many homes have these to raise
pigeons - it is a delicacy here

Giza Pyramid from the highway - it is right next
to the highway and town of Giza

Truck loaded with sticks

Desert area that surrounds Cairo

New resort building in El Alamein-not our
police escort and our security guard in
the bottom left of photo-in the suit

Mediterranean Sea beach

Two lane highway-at least 3 lanes of traffic

Camels at the pyramids - you find camels in a
lot of places in Egypt, pulling carts, but there
are plenty at the pyramids for tourists to waster
their money

Busy bazaar-notice women in her dress

Bazaar

Traffic at Tahir Square at 10 PM - horns keep
blaring until about midnight

8 Oct Pre-tour Citadel and the Cave Church

This morning we had hoped to visit the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) located near the Giza Pyramids. Unfortunately, because of Covid, it has not yet opened, which is a shame as most of the artifacts from the old Egyptian Museum have already been moved to their new home. This includes all of the artifacts found in King Tut’s tomb. It also houses King Khufu’s Solar Boat of Cheops, a large cedar-wood boat, measuring 142 feet long. This boat was discovered near the Great Pyramid of Giza and had remained there in a small museum until it was moved to the GEM. Also contained with this ruin are many of the implements used to build the boat. While no one knows the real purpose of the boat, two credible possibilities have been theorized. From examining the boat’s structure, archaeologists know that it did not contain a mast for sailing, and the oars that were built with the boat would not have been powerful enough to propel it through the river. The first theory is that Khufu built the boat to take him on his journey to the afterlife. The second is that the boat was only used once – to take Khufu’s body from the east side of the Nile where he was living to the west side where his pyramid awaited his body. Fortunately for us, we had seen King Tut’s treasures and the other artifacts on a previous trip to the Egyptian Museum in 2009.

So instead, we toured the Citadel, a massive medieval fortification initially built in 1176 AD during the rule of Saladin, the first Sultan of Egypt. Built on the top of Mokattam Hill, it was used as a defense against the Christian Crusaders from Europe. It continued to serve as a military fortress and the royal palace to Egypt’s rulers for 700 years (12^th century to the mid-19^th century). Subsequent rulers, including the Ottomans, further expanded it and added a new main gate, the Bab Al Azab. The Citadel has 3 mosques (Muhammed Ali Mosque, Al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque, and the Sulayman Pasha Mosque, which we did not visit as it is across the highway from the Citadel), several palaces, harems, and a few terraces with a commanding view of Cairo and on a clear day, the Pyramids of Giza. The Muhammed Ali Mossque is the largest and grandest of the three. And you can recognize the Al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque, which was built by the Mamluks and is now used by soldiers, but the helmet top on the minarets. several palaces, harems, and a few terraces with a commanding view of Cairo and on a clear day, the Pyramids of Giza. Napoleon, who overthrew the Ottomans in Egypt in 1798, declared these buildings some of the finest Islamic monuments in Cairo. Napoleon’s reign over Egypt was short-lived and Egypt was soon returned to Ottoman control. The mosque that today dominates Cairo’s skyline was the work of the Mohammed Ali, an Albanian mercenary whose forces defeated the Ottoman and Mamluks in 1805. who came to power after the French were expelled. He also built one of the palaces, the Jewel Palace, in honor of his last wife. Mohammed Ali is buried in the white marble cenotaph inside the Mosque. As a testament to the Citadel’s design, Cairo has never been subjected to a siege in its history.

The Citadel became a military garrison after Mohammed Ali’s grandson Ismail moved his residence to the Abdeen Palace. During WWII, the Jewel Palace became the headquarters of the British army stationed in Egypt, and today, although most of the Citadel has been turned into a tourist attraction, the Egyptian Army still maintains a small presence there.

From the top of the Citadel you get a beautiful commanding view of Cairo. Although it appeared to be very smoggy by our standards, Dahlia said that we were lucky as we were able to see both the Giza Pyramids and the pyramids that we had seen at Dahshur. My camera was able to pick up the Giza pyramids, but unfortunately, the other pyramids were too light to capture.

Leaving the Citadel, we passed a very crowded Friday market. Here the locals come to buy whatever they need -- including pets and birds. We saw a lot of people carrying bird cages. We then drove to the other side of Mokattam Mountain to visit the Cave Church of the Zabbaleen, also called St. Simon Monastery, which was built into a cave on the side of this mountain. The area where the church is located is inhabited by a large group of garbage collectors (or Zabbaleen in Egyptian) who are descendants of farmers who migrated from the Upper Egypt area south of Aswan to this area in the Mokattam Mountain in southeastern Cairo in the 1940s. In order to reach the Cave Church, you have to drive on a narrow street through the Garbage City. What an experience! The buildings lining the street are filled with sorted bags of garbage. After collecting the garbage in trucks heavily loaded with trash (they look like there are so top heavy they should fall over), the Zabbaleens sort the trash and then sell the recyclables for money – China is their largest buyer of plastic. Many of the women also turn the trash into crafts that they sell to people walking by. The road is only wide enough for one van, but, hey, this is Egypt, so of course there is two-way traffic. You need to be a master driver to get through the area without any scratches!

The history of the Zabbaleens is interesting. When they first fled to Cairo from the Aswan region, they kept their traditions of raising animals. But it did not take them long to realize that it was far more profitable to sort the waste of the people living in Cairo (perhaps Cairo needs more Zabbaleens today!). They would keep the organic waste to feed their animals and salvage and sell any items of value that they found. As news of their success reached their family and friends still in their old villages in Upper Egypt, more and more people came to Cairo. As their numbers increased, the Cairo governor decided he needed to do something to control this new influx of people. In 1969, he moved all the garbage collectors to the area around Mokattam Mountain where today they number about 30,000. And today they still collect and recycle all of Cairo’s garbage and are one of Egypt’s largest Christian communities.

As you emerge from the Garbage City, you find yourself in the Monastery of St. Simon (also referred to as the Cave Church). There are seven cave churches or chapels that make up the Monastery, in addition to an educational center, a kindergarten school, and a school for the deaf.

You might ask why a mountain was chosen as the site for a church. As the story goes, Pope Abraham, the head of the Coptic Christian church in the late 900s AD, was asked by the reigning caliph, al-Muizz, to prove a scripture in the Bible that spoke about the faith of a mustard seed moving a mountain. In reply, Abraham asked for three days to prepare and went to the Hanging Church (located in Coptic Cairo which we will visit toward the end of this tour) and prayed to the Virgin Mary through an icon at the church. Appearing before him, the Virgin Mary told Abraham to find Simon the Tanner who could provide Abraham with the directions for moving the mountain. Using the words Simon the Tanner provided him, Abraham was able to move the mountain and satisfy al-Muizz.

While Mokattam Mountain is likely the mountain referenced in the story and Simon the Tanner is the same St. Simon for whom the monastery is named, the church itself was not built until 1976. The huge cave where the church is located was discovered in 1974, but had been filled with tons of stones which had to be removed before the church could be built. While other churches have since been carved into Mokattam, the Cave Church is the largest, and, with seats for 20,000 congregants, it is the largest church in the middle east.

As for the church itself, it is amazing. The sides of the cliffs and the inside of the church contain large carved reliefs and statues depicting scenes from the Bible and the life of Jesus. The height inside the church is 55’ from floor to ceiling and the seating is in a large amphitheater. At the entrance to the church is a dome that is decorated by three pieces made of small colored mosaics. All the other churches built into the cave are-interconnected.

After our visit we drove to Cairo’s largest park, Al Azhar, for lunch. Driving to the park we traveled through a large cemetery that Dahlia called the “City of the Dead,” which stretches about 4 miles on either side of the highway. While corpses are buried beneath the buildings in this cemetery, many of Cairo’s poor and/or homeless people make their homes in the buildings. Unfortunately, they do not have running water or electricity, but there are water spigots at the end of each street for the people to get fresh water.

At the park we ate outside at the Studio Misr restaurant, that had a beautiful view of the park with the Citadel in the background. It was fun to watch the children playing in the park and rolling down the hill on their last day before school started.

After the park, Dahlia took us to the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. This is a very large, crowded area filled with vendors selling everything from jewelry to clothing to spices and food to souvenirs. And at the front of each stall/store, the owners would be out hawking their wares. They all offer the “best and cheapest” prices, but as you are expected to barter when buying something, they have over inflated all their prices, so you are not really getting a good deal.

At the end of the day, we were dropped off at the Intercontinental Hotel and we had to say goodbye to Dahlia. She is an outstanding guide, and we really enjoyed the four days we spent with her, seeing unimaginably beautiful sights and learning more about the Ancient Egyptians. It was a wonderful prelude to our OAT trip which starts tomorrow.