Sights in Egypt
-
A
Al-Azhar Park
Islamic Cairo’s eastern horizon changed substantially when Al-Azhar Park opened in 2005. With funds from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, what had been a mountain of centuries’ worth of collected garbage was transformed into a beautifully landscaped swath of green, the city’s first (and only) park of significant size. It’s hard to convey just how dramatically different the park is from any other public space in Cairo: a profusion of gardens, emerald grass, even a lake (part of a larger public water-supply system) cover the grounds, while ambient Arabic music drifts softly from speakers and fountains bubble in front of sleek modern Islamic architecture. In addition to a…
reviewed
-
B
Animalia
This small but charming museum has a collection of stuffed animals found in Nubia, samples of sedimentary rocks, great pictures of Nubia before it was flooded by Lake Nasser, a small shop selling Nubian crafts at fixed prices and a lovely roof terrace where drinks are served overlooking the gardens.
reviewed
-
Karnak
More than a temple, Karnak is an extraordinary complex of sanctuaries, kiosks, pylons and obelisks dedicated to the Theban gods and the greater glory of pharaohs. Everything is on a gigantic scale: the site covers over 2 sq km, large enough to contain about 10 cathedrals, while its main structure, the Temple of Amun, is the largest religious building ever built. This was where the god lived on earth, surrounded by the houses of his wife Mut, and their son Khonsu, two other huge temple complexes on this site. Built, added to, dismantled, restored, enlarged and decorated over nearly 1500 years, Karnak was the most important place of worship in Egypt during the New Kingdom.…
reviewed
-
C
Valley of the Kings
Once called the Great Necropolis of Millions of Years of Pharaoh, or the Place of Truth, the Valley of the Kings has 63 magnificent royal tombs from the New Kingdom period (1550–1069 BC), all very different from each other. The West Bank had been the site of royal burials from the First Intermediate Period (2160–2025 BC) onwards. At least three 11th-dynasty rulers built their tombs near the modern village of Taref, northeast of the Valley of the Kings. The 18th-dynasty pharaohs, however, chose the isolated valley dominated by the pyramid-shaped mountain peak of Al-Qurn (The Horn). The secluded site enclosed by steep cliffs was easy to guard and, when seen from the Theban…
reviewed
-
D
Egyptian Museum
Don’t hope to see everything in the Egyptian Museum in one go. It simply cannot be done. Instead, plan on making at least two visits, maybe tackling one floor at a time, or decide on the things you absolutely must see and head straight for them. In peak season (much of winter and all public holidays), there’s no best time to visit as the museum heaves with visitors throughout the day; lunchtime and late afternoons can be a little quieter.
reviewed
-
E
Temple of Hatshepsut
The eyes first focus on the dramatic rugged limestone cliffs that rise nearly 300m above the desert plain, a monument made by nature, only to realize that at the foot of all this immense beauty lies a man-made monument even more extraordinary, the dazzling Temple of Hatshepsut. The almost modern-looking temple blends in beautifully with the cliffs from which it is partly cut, a marriage made in heaven.
reviewed
-
F
Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa (Kom ash-Shuqqafa)
About five minutes' walk south of Pompey's Pillar are the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa (Kom ash-Shuqqafa). Discovered accidentally in 1900 when a donkey disappeared through the ground, these catacombs are the largest known Roman burial site in Egypt. This impressive feat of engineering was one of the last major works of construction dedicated to the religion of ancient Egypt.
Demonstrating Alexandria's hallmark fusion of Pharaonic and Greek styles, the architects used a Graeco-Roman approach in their construction efforts. The catacombs consist of three tiers of tombs and chambers cut into bedrock to a depth of 35m. The bottom level, some 20m below street level, is…
reviewed
-
Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx
The sole survivor of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Pyramids of Giza live up to more than 4000 years of hype. Their extraordinary geometry and age render them alien constructions rising out of the desert. The Sphinx sits nearby, a 50m-long feline character carved from a single block of stone.
There are swarms of visitors to the site, attended by swarms of camel and horse touts, but they fail to destroy the wonder. If you want a peaceful view of the pyramids, it's best to take a horse ride in the area at around 17:00 - you won't see them close up, but it can be a lot more atmospheric than battling around close to the monuments.
The Pyramids at Giza are the planet's…
reviewed
-
Monastery of St Paul
St Paul's monastery dates to the 4th century, when it began as a grouping of hermitages in the cliffs of Gebel al-Galala al-Qibliya around the site where St Paul had his hermitage.
Paul, who was born into a wealthy family in Alexandria in the mid-3rd century, originally fled to the Eastern Desert to escape Roman persecution. He lived alone in a cave here for over 90 years, finding bodily sustenance in a nearby spring and palm tree. According to tradition, in AD 343 the then 90-year-old St Anthony had of vision of Paul. After making a difficult trek through the mountains to visit him, Paul died, and was buried by Anthony's hands.
The heart of the monastery complex is the…
reviewed
-
G
Temple of Serapeum
The Temple of Serapeum is a magnificent structure that stood here in ancient times. It had 100 steps leading past the living quarters of the priests to the great temple of Serapis, the man-made god of Alexandria . Also here was the 'daughter library', the second great library of Alexandria, which was said to have contained copies and overflow of texts held in the Great Library of Alexandria, the Mouseion library.
Unlike at the Great Library, these rolls could be consulted by anyone using the temple, making it one of the most important intellectual and religious centres in the Mediterranean. In AD 391 Christians launched a final assault on pagan intellectuals and destroyed…
reviewed
Advertisement
-
H
Mosque of Ibn Tulun
Another 250m west on Sharia as-Salbiyya, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun is easily identified by its high walls topped with neat crenulations that resemble a string of paper dolls. Built between AD 876 and 879 by Ibn Tulun, who was sent to rule the outpost of Al-Fustat in the 9th century by the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, it is the city’s oldest intact, functioning Islamic monument. It’s also one of its most beautiful, despite a rather ham-fisted restoration using cement on the mud-brick-and-timber structure. Ibn Tulun drew inspiration from his homeland, particularly the ancient Mosque of Samarra (Iraq), on which the spiral minaret is modelled. He also added some innovations of…
reviewed
-
Bent Pyramid
Experimenting with ways to create a true, smooth-sided pyramid, Sneferu's architects began with the same steep angle and inward-leaning courses of stone they used to create step pyramids. When this began to show signs of stress and instability around halfway up its eventual 105m height, they had little choice but to reduce the angle from 54 degrees to 43 degrees and begin to lay the stones in horizontal layers. This explains why the structure has the unusual shape that gives it its name.
Most of its outer casing is still intact, and inside (closed to visitors) are two burial chambers, the highest of which retains its original ancient scaffolding of great cedar beams to…
reviewed
-
Red Pyramid
The world's oldest true pyramid is the North Pyramid, which is better known as the Red Pyramid. It derives its name either from the red tones of its weathered limestone, after the better-quality white limestone casing was removed, or perhaps from the red graffiti and construction marks scribbled on its masonry in ancient times.
Having learnt from their experiences building the Bent Pyramid, the same architects carried on where they had left off, building the Red Pyramid at the same 43-degree angle as the Bent Pyramid's more gently inclining upper section. The entrance - via 125 extremely steep stone steps and a 63m-long passage - takes you down to two antechambers with…
reviewed
-
I
Alexandria National Museum
The excellent Alexandria National Museum sets new benchmarks for summing up Alexandria’s past. With a small, thoughtfully selected and well-labelled collection singled out from Alexandria’s other museums, it does a sterling job of relating the city’s history from antiquity until the modern period. Housed in a beautifully restored Italianate villa, it stocks several thousand years of Alexandrian history, arranged chronologically over three cryogenically air-conditioned floors.
reviewed
-
J
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Opened in 2002, this impressive piece of modern architecture is a deliberate attempt to rekindle the brilliance of the original centre of learning and culture. The complex has become one of Egypt’s major cultural venues and a stage for numerous international performers.
reviewed
-
K
Luxor Museum
This wonderful museum has a beautifully displayed collection, from the end of the Old Kingdom right through to the Mamluk period, mostly gathered from the Theban temples and necropolis.
reviewed
-
Amun Temple Enclosure - Main Axis
The most important place of worship at Karnak was the massive Amun Temple Enclosure (Precinct of Amun), dominated by the great Temple of Amun-Ra, which contains the famous hypostyle hall, a spectacular forest of giant papyrus-shaped columns. On its southern side is the Mut Temple Enclosure, once linked to the main temple by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes. To the north is the Montu Temple Enclosure, which honoured the local Theban war god.
The 3km-long paved avenue of human-headed sphinxes that once linked the great Temple of Amun at Karnak with Luxor Temple, is now again being cleared.
The Quay of Amun was the dock where the large boats carrying the statues of the gods…
reviewed
-
Monastery of St Anthony
This historic monastery traces its origins to the 4th century AD when monks began to settle at the foot of Gebel al-Galala al-Qibliya, where their spiritual leader, Anthony, lived. Over the next few centuries, the community moved from being a loosely organised grouping of hermits to a somewhat more communal existence in which the monks continued to live anchoritic lives, but in cells grouped together inside a walled compound.
In the 8th and 9th centuries, the monastery suffered Bedouin raids, followed in the 11th century by attacks from irate Muslims, and in the 15th century, a revolt by bloodthirsty servants that resulted in the massacre of the monks. The small mud-brick…
reviewed
-
L
Abu Ruins
A path through the garden behind the Aswan Museum leads to the evocative ruins of ancient Abu. Swiss and German teams, excavating here since the early 20th century, have made the site into an outdoor museum. Numbered plaques and reconstructed buildings mark the island's long history from around 3000 BC to the 14th century AD.
The largest structure in the site is the partially reconstructed Temple of Khnum (plaque Nos 6, 12 and 13). Built in honour of the God of Inundation during the Old Kingdom, it was added to and used for over 1500 years before being extensively rebuilt in Ptolemaic times. Other highlights include a small 4th-dynasty step pyramid, thought to have been…
reviewed
-
M
Colossi of Memnon
The two faceless Colossi of Memnon that rise majestically about 18m from the plain are the first monuments tourists see when they visit the West Bank. The enthroned figures have kept a lonely vigil on the changing landscape, and few visitors have any idea that these giants were only a tiny element of the largest temple ever built in Egypt, Amenhotep III's memorial temple, believed to have covered an area larger than Karnak.
The pharaoh's memorial temple has now all but disappeared. It was built largely of mud brick on the flood plain of the Nile, where it was flooded every year. The walls simply dissolved after it was abandoned and no longer maintained, and later pharaohs…
reviewed
Advertisement
-
N
Northern Cemetery
The Northern Cemetery is the more interesting half of a vast necropolis known popularly as the City of the Dead. The titillating name refers to the fact that the cemeteries are not only resting places for Cairo's dead, but for the living too. Visitors expecting morbid squalor may be disappointed; the area, complete with power lines, a post office and multistorey buildings, is more 'town' than 'shanty'.
Some estimates put the number of living Cairenes here at 50,000; others, at 10 times this number. As Max Rodenbeck notes in Cairo: The City Victorious, some of the tomb dwellers, especially the paid guardians and their families, have lived here for generations. Others have…
reviewed
-
Temple of Seti I
The first structure you'll see at Abydos is the striking Cenotaph or Great Temple of Seti I, which, after a certain amount of restoration work, is one of the most complete temples in Egypt. This great limestone structure, unusually L-shaped rather than rectangular, was dedicated to the six major gods - Osiris, Isis and Horus, Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhty and Ptah - and also to Seti I (1294-1279 BC) himself.
In the aftermath of the Amarna Period, it is a clear statement of a return to the old ways. As you roam through Seti's dark halls and sanctuaries an air of mystery surrounds you.
The temple is entered through a largely destroyed pylon and two courtyards, built by Seti I's son…
reviewed
-
Amun Temple Enclosure - Southern Axis
The secondary axis of the Amun Temple Enclosure, running south from the third and fourth pylons, is a walled processional way from the seventh to the tenth pylon, leading to the Mut Temple Enclosure. The courtyard between the Hypostyle Hall and the seventh pylon, built by Tuthmosis III, is known as the cachette court, as thousands of stone and bronze statues were discovered here in 1903.
The priests had the old statues and temple furniture they no longer needed buried around 300 BC. Most statues were sent to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but some remained, standing in front of the seventh pylon, including four of Tuthmosis III on the left.
The well-preserved eighth pylon,…
reviewed
-
Zoser's Funerary Complex
The hypostyle hall leads into the Great South Court, a huge open area flanking the south side of the pyramid, with a section of wall featuring a frieze of cobras. The cobra, or uraeus, represented the goddess Wadjet, a fire-spitting agent of destruction and protector of the pharaoh. It was a symbol of Egyptian royalty, and a rearing cobra always appeared on the brow of a pharaoh's headdress or crown.
Near the base of the pyramid is an altar, and in the centre of the court are two stone B-shaped boundary markers, which delineated the ritual race the pharaoh had to run, a literal demonstration of his fitness to rule. The race was part of the Jubilee Festival, or Heb-Sed,…
reviewed
-
Pyramid of Unas
What appears to be another big mound of rubble to the southwest of Zoser's funerary complex, is actually the 2375-2345 BC Pyramid of Unas, the last pharaoh of the 5th dynasty. Built only 300 years after the inspired creation of the Step Pyramid, this unassuming pile of loose blocks and debris once stood 43m high.
From the outside, the Pyramid of Unas is not much to look at, though the interior marked the beginning of a significant development in funerary practices. For the first time, the royal burial chamber was decorated, its ceiling adorned with stars and its white alabaster-lined walls inscribed with beautiful blue hieroglyphs.
The aforementioned hieroglyphs are the…
reviewed