Mummies and Melodrama

"Reality" TV strikes again in creating a dreadful television series

I've been captivated by things Egyptian since I visited Egypt last year as part of a Society American Travel Writers Freelance Council meeting that included an audience with Dr. Zahi Hawass, the media-savvy, imperious and very gifted secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Dr. Hawass is an aggressive advocate for the protection of ancient Egyptian treasures. He has developed an ego the size of the Great Pyramid at Giza and has a high profile, personally escorting VIPs around the sites, personally announcing every significant discovery, whether or not he made it and appearing on numerous legitimate documentaries.

Against this background, I was looking forward to the History Channel's "Chasing Mummies" series that debuted last night. I have never written a television review-type post, but this misguided show merits a two thumbs down.

The plot was that a television crew was following Dr. Hawass and his team, including a comely intern, during the excavation of an early pyramid at Saqqara near Cairo. Comely intern Zoe, who unexpectedly showed up in place of intern Clare/Claire, but her papers were in order, so she was permitted to stay, often getting in the way. But Zoe is cute so she was invited to take her first look inside the pyramid. After a disjointed exploration, Zoe was improbably permitted, by one of Dr. Hawass's team, to stay in the labyrinthian corridors by herself "for five minutes" to take pictures, which she did with her little point-and-shoot while the chamber was brilliantly lit by television cameras.

Zoe's foot got jammed. Someone turned off the lights and locked the gates, and Zoe became reality TV's equivalent of the silent-film heroine tied to the railroad tracks. If this program were to be believed, only Dr. Hawass, who had to be called from Cairo where he was doing a book signing, had the ability to unlock the gate and turn on the lights. It was contrived, lame and added nothing to the body of knowledge about ancient Egypt.

And then, in the second part, Dr. Hawass and his team traveled to "an oasis near Cairo" to demolish villagers' homes that were built over ancient graves that contained mummies. Curious children watched homes being knocked down, and suddenly, the earth was pocked with holes that presumably led to underground burial chambers. An articulated loader, which was referred to as a bulldozer, broke through the surface of the ground, got stuck and then got unstuck.

Speaking of stuck, I stuck it out through the first episode, but I won't waste my time on another. New York Times television critic Neil Genzlinger didn't think any more of the program than I did. In his review, he called it "an annoying new show." The History Channel's website calls this a "documentary series." They sure have a wry sense of humor! In fact, this entire program was a joke.

Thoughts About Travel Safety

Well-traveled American septuagenarian traveled to Iraq without incident

When I was heading for Egypt a few months ago, a number of people asked whether I was "afraid" or "nervous" about visiting the Middle East. My response was, "No." After I returned, people were happy that I had a "safe" trip. Several weeks later, when an explosion in Cairo rocked a popular tourist area, the questions and expressions of relief that my trip was uneventful continued. Click here for my post after I heard about the blast.

I would still return to Egypt in a heartbeat, and I am encouraged when other people aren't scared into staying home. Therefore, I was cheered to read "Travelers, Your Tour Bus for Basra is Boarding" in today's New York Times. Reporter Campbell Robertson wrote about 79-year-old Mary Rawlins Gilbert from Menlo Park California, who joined a 17-day group tour of Iraq by "mostly middle-aged and older, that has the honor of being on the first officially sanctioned tour of Westerners in Iraq since 2003 (outside of the much safer enclave of Kurdistan). The guide is Geoff Hann, 70, the owner of Hinterland Travel, a 'specialist adventure travel company' based in England." Hann is also the co-author of a guidebook called Iraq Then and Now and is presumably very knowledgeable and realistic about travel to this country. (Ignore that "Click to Look Inside," which came with the upload from amazon.com. You'll have to find the book there to preview it online.)

Robertson's report continued, "The trip has not been nearly as perilous as most expected. On Friday night — six years after the American invasion began — a white-haired British man and woman bought big bottles of cold Heineken in central Baghdad, walking home in the dark. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, which helped arrange the tour, had provided armed guards for the trip, but Mr. Hann said they were too restrictive. So the group had driven around, in a minibus, with little or no security."

It seems as if Iraq might be taking a page from Egypt's tourism playbook by linking tourism and antiquities under one jurisdiction. Egypt's Tourism and Antiquities Police also guard the ancient sites and assigned an armed security officer to accompany every tourist bus. At many destinations, they were joined by a uniformed local police officer or two (right), and plainclothes security personnel seem to be everywhere too. I don't know whether this show of force is meant as reassurance to nervous travelers, as a deterrent or both, but I never felt a pang about being there.

Meanwhile, US and European shopping malls, convenience stores and even schools and universities have been the sites of all too many random, murderous rampages. Drug cartel violence has hit Mexican border towns hard, but Mexicans and not visitors have suffered, and the problems have not spread to popular tourist destinations or states to the south. Yet many people tend to be more fearful of violence in other countries, especially in the Middle East and now Mexico, than of our own shores.

A Blast in the Present

Cairo explosion was no blast from the past but a current menace that I recently avoided

Just three weeks ago, while visiting Egypt during a Society of American Travel Writers Freelance Council meeting, I along with other SATWers and tourists, plunged into the tiny "streets "of Cairo's Khan el-Khalili bazaar (below). Tourist-oriented as it has become, classic Middle Eastern market is endlessly fascinating. And endless streams of visitors flood into the labyrinth.

The narrow streets -- lanes, really -- provide abundant sights, sounds and energy, as merchants hustle to attract buyers (mainly tourists) to their tiny shops. "Hello!" "Where you from?" "Come visit my shop." "No hassle." "I make you a good price." My sense was of energy and enterprise, but not of any kind of threat.

My colleagues and I entered the bazaar from a narrow street that runs alongside the beautiful 12th-century Al Hussein Mosque (below). Like everyplace in Egypt that tourists are likely to visit or where expats live, security presence was obvious -- and there are, of course, plainclothes personnel all around too. A uniformed police officer stood at one street corner across from the mosque at one entrance into the labyrinthian market. (As you look at this photo, Khan el-Khalili is directly to the left of the mosque). I peered inside an open door to the mosque, brillitantly lit with fluorescent lights even during daylight. I would have liked to go in, but I didn't think that non-Moslems, especially a foreign woman, would be welcome there.

On another side of the mosque is the large open area with a rare square of actual green grass and towering palm trees that seem nearly as high as the imposing minarets. It is fenced off, so that no one actually walks on the grass. During the day, tour buses unload on an adjacent paved square (just behind where I stood to take this photo. In the evening, vehicles are not permitted there and traffic is kept at a distance, turning this greenspace and the blocked-off square into a kind of buffer for the mosque.

The mobility-challenged vendor below was selling some modest goods from a folding table alongside the mosque, just across from the entrance to the Khan el-Khalili market that I went into and out of.

Facing the grassy square, and therefore just steps from the mosque, a row of busy cafes (below) attracts many visitors and also Egyptians as well. On the evening of February 4 at around 7:00 p.m. (after dark), another woman and I left the bazaar, passed the mosque and the greenspace, and crossed the area where vehicles are prohibited to grab a taxi that would take us back to our hotel.

After I returned, friends who asked me about my trip and my impressions as often as not also asked whether I was nervous or afraid, and I always replied that I wasn't. I reminded them that people who go about their business at home or abroad without incident do not make headlines.

Given my recent visit, today's CNN headline, "Tourist killed, 23 others wounded in Egypt blast," and msnbc's "Explosion in Cairo Bazaar Kills 1 Injures 21," were not abstract to me, even if the news services weren't in agreement over how many people were injured. According to the report, "The explosion occurred during the height of the evening rush at 6:30 p.m. in an area of coffee shops located near the Al Hussein Mosque, one of Cairo's largest, Interior Ministry press officer Hany Abdelatif said. The bomb was left under a stone chair, a ministry statement said. An undetonated bomb was found near the mosque, which sits close to an entrance of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, a huge market and a tourist attraction, Abdelatif said."

I am not sure exactly where the bomb went off, but I certainly had a powerful picture of the lay of the land. When I heard the news, I was sad about the tourists and locals who were victims of the blast, relieved I wasn't there to witness it and sorry that this incident might negatively impact visitation to the country that has so much worth seeing. I also immediately remembered the vendor, heavily seated next to her wheelchair, and hoped that she was unhurt.

P.S. Please see this story from the New York Times.

Images of Egypt: On the Streets of Alexandria

Scenes of everyday Alexandria and its people

Alexandria's streets come across as collage of cultures, architectural styles and creatures and their conveyances (humans, cars, buses, trucks, taxis, streetcars, carriages, horses, donkeys and cats). There is, at once, an old worldliness and a developing worldliness that imbues the city with a rich cultural texture. The city is long and skinny (a bit like Manhattan Island), stretching for 12 east-west miles along the Mediterranean cost and measures just a couple of north-south miles.

The most elegant section is near the Eastern Harbor, with a vibrant commercial district, residential areas and lovely old villas. Despite its seawall and crumbling sidewalks, the Corniche remains an elegant arc along the waterfront. The Western Harbor is the commercial port and more industrial area. A peninsula that sticks up into the Mediterranean separates the Eastern and Western Harbors is punctuated by an old fortress. The city's relief valves is its long coast, where the Mediterranean presents a limitless horizon and a blue-domed sky. Here are some random images of the city's streetscape.

Images of Egypt: Alexandria's Antiquities

Egypt's second city is captivating and gives off a somewhat cosmopolitan air

While Cairo is a river city shaped by the Nile, Alexandria is a coastal city impacted by the Mediterreanean. It is often called Egypt's "most European" city. No wonder. Instead of a pharonic past that stretches back thousands of years, this "new" city was founded in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great. Egypt's second-larged city has experienced periods of prosperity and decline. Later it was the capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt, the setting for l'affaire d'Antony and Cleopatra and a key port on Africa's northern coast.

After the Roman Empire, it was part of the Ottoman Empire, and still later, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was under the French and English control -- or at least strong influence. Many downtown buildings and villas reflect a distinct European influence, with Greeks, Italians and Jews also woven into the Alexandrian fabric. Even though most foreigners left in the nationalistic 1950s and most local women now seem to choose to cover their heads, Alexandria still presents a cosmopolitan face -- perhaps because of its architectural legacy.

The Pharos Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, once stood guard on a harbor island, now connected to the mainland. The lighthouse itself was destroyed by the 14th century by a sries of earthquakes. Archeological divers have discovered pieces of it in the water, and an underwater museum is planned. The remarkable Alexandria Library (Biblioteca Alexandrina) is a wonder of the modern information age, a contemporary architectural landmark and an important cultural institution is a surprising attraction in ancient Egypt.

Today, many visitors are day-trippers from cruise ships that dock in the Eastern Harbor -- with never enough time even to touch on the city's many museums A(lexandria National Museum, Graeco-Roman Museum, Cafavy Museum, Fine Arts Museum, Mahmoud Said Museum and Royal Jewellry Museum), let alone stroll along the Corniche or languish at a cafe and watch the Alexandrian world go by.

Midan Saad Laghloul
Statue of of nationalist leader for whom the waterfront square was named

Memorial to the Soldiers (and/or Sailors)
Located at the Eastern Harbor

"Pompey's Pillar"

Misnamed remnant of the 3rd-century B.C. Temple of Serapis

Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa
Three-level tomb complex dug to about 115 feet

Roman Amphitheater (Dom al-Dikka)

Second century, discovered in 1965 under a Napoleonic fort

Alexandria National Museum
Opened in 2003 within an Italianate villa that was built in 1929

Fort Qaitby
15th century, built on the site of the Pharos Lighthouse

Alexandria Library

Opened in 2002 with resources from fragile ancient manuscripts to fast computers

Head of Alexander the Great

Sillhouetted against a sunset sky; located in plaza of the namesake Alexandria Library

Egypt's Factory Stores: Rip-Off or Real?

The cynical visitor eyes souvenirs in Egypt

I have no delusions that the acres of small reproduction pyramids, sphinxes, Nefertiti heads, cats, lions and assorted other examples of Egyptiana peddled aggressively at every tourist attraction in the country actually were made in Egypt -- and I suspect that all but the most naive tourist knows that this souvenir schlock is made elsewhere. "Elsewhere" is most likely China.

The "factories" and "demonstrations" that end virtually every motorcoach tour day are presented as if all fine handicrafts are made right there. Because tour guides get a commission on sales whenever they deliver a busload of tourists, we were forced to visit the papyrus demonstration in a modern shopping center in Alexandria, a carpet school in Saqqara and an alabaster factory near the Valley of the Kings. Mercifully, we dodged the perfume-factory bullet.

The carpet weaving school is billed as a place where young girls are taught weaving. We saw men sitting at a handful of looms in the basement of the carpet factory in Saqqara without a girl or woman in sight. Upstairs was a room filled with carpets. It was not the only carpet factory in Saqqara either. In the so-called alabaster factory near Luxor, three barefoot men sat outdoors on mats and chipped away at alabaster, demonstrating various stages in the process of crafting something out of the raw stone. Inside was a large sales room whose walls were lined with objets d'alabastre. I saw chess sets shamlessly labeled "Made in Pakistan." I bought a little alabaster cat anyway, just as a souvenir of the day.

Souvenir Stand Near the Pyramids and Sphinx (Giza)

Stall in the Khan al-Khalili Market (Cairo)

Souvenir Stand at The Citadel (Alexandria)

Papyrus Making (Alexandria)

Owner or manager stopped me from taking any more photos

Carpet Weaving School (Saqqara)

Alabaster Factory Near the Valley of Kings (Luxor)

Another Ancient Egyptian Tomb Discovered

Saqqara yields another treasure from antiquity

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a post connecting an upcoming King Tut exhibit at the Denver Art Museum with the discovery of the tomb of an official called Archae Amun-em-Opet near Luxor, far up the Nile, that dates back to 1372-1355 B.C. Now comes word of another significant discovery, the tomb of a royal scribe named Ptahmes in the reign of pharaohs Seti I and Ramses II (1203-1186 B.C.). This recently discovery was made at Saqqara south of Cairo, whose pyramids predate the famous ones at Giza. In fact, Egypt's first pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Djoser (2667 to 2648 B.C) is located there, as are earlier tombs, low bench-like edifices called mastabas. When I visited Egypt last year, Saqqara was on the itinerary -- and archaeological excavations were clearly going on. The top four images are mine; the bottom one is courtesy of Egypt's Supreme Council or Antiquities.

There's an interesting backstory to this new discovery, which is actually a rediscovery. Nineteenth century artifact hunters found the tomb, took the greatest treasures and moved on. It didn't take all that long for desert sands to cover the tomb. Archaeologists from the University of Cairo found it and been excavating it. Archaeologists have discovered long hallways and chapels in the tomb and are anticipating finding the main chamber and hopefully a sarcophagus containing a mummy that the original discoverers reported seeing but didn't take. Click here for more information about the tomb.

For visitors, Saqqara is refreshing. Fewer visitors, fewer buses, fewer hawkers at the entrance to the site.