A land of magnificent World Heritage Sites and a thousand tourist clichés, Egypt was enticing visitors millennia before Thomas Cook sailed his steamers up the Nile. It was here that the Holy Family sheltered, Alexander conquered and Mark Antony flirted. Napoleon stopped long enough to pilfer a few obelisks, the Ottomans paused to prop up the great and barbarous pasha Mohammed Ali, and the British stayed around to get the train system running and furnish every spare nook of the British Museum. And all this was long after Menes united the two states of Upper and Lower Egypt, and set the stage for the greatest civilisation the world has ever known.
Lingering over coffee in one of Alexandria’s cosmopolitan cafés or sipping a calming glass of shai (tea) after a frenzied shopping episode in Cairo’s Khan al-Khalili are activities as popular today as they were back when 19th-century tourists started to arrive en masse. Magnificent monuments are everywhere – the pointed perfection of the pyramids, soaring minarets of Cairo’s skyline, and majestic tombs and temples of Luxor are just a few of the wonders that generations of visitors have admired during their city sojourns, jaunts up and down the Nile and expeditions through spectacularly stark desert landscapes.
Beyond the graceful symmetry and calculated order of the country’s ancient pyramid and temple complexes, Egypt is bursting at the seams. Half a century on from the great Nasser-led revolution, and 25 years since Hosni Mubarak and his wife Suzanne first set up house in the presidential palace, Egypt is in a pretty bad state. Unemployment is rife, the economy is of the basket-case variety and terrorist attacks are starting to occur with worrying regularity. Once home to the all-powerful pharaohs, the country has largely been reduced to being a dependent state of the USA, reliant on more than US$2 billion a year in military aid and economic assistance.
The list of woes continues. Egyptian police regularly torture and ill-treat prisoners in detention; child labour is common within the lucrative national cotton industry; scores of members of Islamist opposition groups are regularly imprisoned without charge or trial; women face systematic discrimination under personal-status laws; rampant inflation has lead to food shortages within the poorest communities; and the environment is under constant threat, with polluted waterways, gross overpopulation, unregulated emissions and soil salinity being of serious concern.
Today, Egypt is weathering a storm of internal strife and struggling to define its identity as a moderate Islamic country. On one hand, Egypt was a member of US President George W Bush’s ill-fated ‘Coalition of the Willing’, and the sultry belly-dancing of underground pop sensation Dina is questioning the nation’s traditional views of sexuality. On the other, the vast majority of Egyptians are foaming at the mouth over the USA’s dogged support of Israel, and the increasing popularity of televangelist Amr Khaled is credited with convincing young girls to start wearing the headscarf.
Of course, one of the many reasons why Egypt remains such a fascinating tourist destination is that it is very much a country in flux. Egypt may be famous the world over for the Pyramids of Giza and the Valley of the Kings, but these ancient monuments are just part of the equation. From the suffocating density of Cairo’s city streets to the harsh elements of the open desert, the Egyptians are an incredibly resilient people who find humour and optimism in the most unlikely of circumstances. Your travels in Egypt won’t always be easy-going and hassle-free, but they’ll certainly be eye-opening.
Last updated: Nov 5, 2008
