Mt. Sinai

Saturday, September 29
Most everyone, Bob included, got up at 1:00 AM this morning to hike up to Mt. Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments (I didn’t go). It was an arduous climb, arriving at the top in time for the sunrise. The classes had short programs there before coming back down. Bob was so tired by then, and while coming down he fell on one of the steep, uneven steps. Luckily he didn’t hurt himself, but he was exhausted once he reached the bottom. After an awful lunch at the hotel, we boarded the bus for Israel, arriving home at 10:00 PM. The BYU Jerusalem Center never looked so good!!

Muslim Mosque and their beliefs

Saturday, September 29
After breakfast we went to the Cairo Citadel. Inside the Citadel is the Muhammad Ali Mosque built to Saladin. We were asked to take our shoes off before entering, then sat down inside while we listened to the guide explain some of the Muslim beliefs. There are 5 “pillars” of their faith:

1. Saying by heart a phrase which means “there is only 1 God – Muhammad”

2. Praying 5 times daily. During the prayers they touch their forehead to the floor (this is why we took off our shoes so the floor will be clean for them). When they bend over to touch the floor is when they ask Muhammad for the things they need.

3. Ramadan – fasting during the day from sunrise to sundown for a whole month – usually in September. If they cannot fast because of sickness or travel, they are asked to “make it up” later by sacrificing for those in need

4. Alms giving – during the last 4 days of Ramadan they give 2½% “tithing” of their assets

5. Pilgrimmage to Mecca – they try to do this at least once in their lifetime

We boarded the bus for our drive to Mt. Sinai and St. Catherine’s Monastery, arriving there around 9:00 PM. Dinner was followed by Sacrament meeting, then going to sleep around 11:00 PM.

Luxor Temple and Hard Rock Cafe

After visiting the Karnak Temple, we went down the street to the Luxor Temple – also another enormous place.











That night, instead of taking the train ride back, we all flew back to Cairo for a good night's rest.

Friday, September 28
Today began by visiting the Egyptian Museum. The whole 2nd floor has nothing but antiquities found in King Tut’s tomb!! I’m not much of a museum lover, but since we had a guide explaining what we were seeing, it was much more interesting.

Afterwards we ate lunch in the Hard Rock Café in Cairo – 1st time ever for Bob and me. We then were dropped off at the Khan al Khalili Bazaar for an hour of shopping. Actually it was not a fun shopping experience because it consisted of 2 long, main dirt streets jammed with small shops all along both sides and people pushing you to buy their wares – there’s no such thing as just “looking” – as soon as they see your interest in something, they are pushing you to buy! There was garbage everywhere along the dirt streets – you had to try hard to enjoy this shopping experience. Bob bought a typical Egyptian long shirt down to his ankles, I bought a magnet (all I could find worth spending money on).

Karnak Temple (Luxor)

Thursday, September 27
This morning I watched the sun rise in the Egyptian sky – it was a big red-orange ball of fire – very pretty. After breakfast we all got in horse-drawn carriages and were taken to the Karnak Temple. At the entrance there is an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes - a symbol of the god Amon. He protects the pharaoh, shown between his front paws.

The Karnak Temple is one of the two temples found in present day Luxor which contains sphinxes, pharonic statues, obelisks, etc., but the scale of the structures with their immense pillars (4,5,6 feet and more in diameter, 20 feet+ in height) is awesome. An online source states it is the mother of all religious buildings, the largest ever made, covering about 200 acres, and has been a place of pilgrimage for nearly 4,000 years. The progression from public to more and more restricted areas (for the priest only) and from lower to higher elevations is of great interest, as is the surviving relief carvings on both pillars and flat surfaces. Much history and braggadoccio is depicted and a surprising amount of color survives, especially on upper walls and the underside of lintels bridging between columns and/or walls.


The Hypostyle Hall contains a forest of 134 columns covering 54,000 square feet. The columns were built a section at a time, then the hall floor was filled in with sand so they could roll another section on top, etc., repeating this process until the columns reached their full height. They then dug out all the sand, plastered the columns, and then carved their reliefs on all sides of each column telling a story of the people and their history, battles, etc.

Valley of the Kings (tombs) - Luxor

Wednesday, September 26
Today we visited Valley of the Kings (near Luxor) - these tombs, long ago plundered, still contain marvelous base-reliefs of human figures and instructions for the dead to pass by the sentinels guarding the way to eternal life. The scope and scale of the tombs is amazing. This is where King Tut's tomb was discovered some decades ago, still intact. I was struck by all the hieroglyphics covering the walls, and still with some color. The slaves began digging the tomb as soon as the Pharoah became king so that there would be time to finish it before he died! (there was so much work to be done for it to be ready for the mummified body).

Here are some details:
1. Usually there were “gates” inside the tomb (sometimes 12 gates) which the dead person had to pass thru before he reached eternal life

2. There were 2 kinds of responses by the dead person 1) negative response – “I didn’t lie” and 2) positive response – “I killed a man because he was an evil person”

3. The hieroglyphics were actually passages from the Book of the Dead – things the dead person would need to know for the next life

4. Mumification process took 72 days, at which time the tomb was closed and no more work could be done on it – even if it wasn’t finished

5. All Pharoah’s treasures (chariot, tools, chairs, bed, anything he used in life) would be buried with him in the tomb so that he could use them in the next life (that’s why the tombs were soooo big.)

We also visited Medinet Habu (mortuary Temple of Ramses III), then took a faluka ride down the Nile River before bed.

Pyramids and camel ride

Tuesday, September 25
Today we repacked our bags, packing clothes for the next 3 days into our small BYU bags. A short bus ride through a sea of agriculture, jerry-built homes and shops, fetid canals and general squalor is an archeological site displaying treasures from the time of one of the Ramses. The immense statue of the famous Ramses II made of polished limestone is breathtaking. Such beautiful work and flawless execution from artisans working with the most basic of tools inspires great respect and even reverence.


Our next stop was the Pyramids. Desecrated, plundered, defaced (literally!), these monuments to power, ego, and hope for eternity are still stupendous in their majestic size, precision of construction, and longevity. How the Egyptians managed the complex organization of labor and the physical movement of large stone blocks is still debatable. Pyramid construction may have involved ramps being erected around the pyramids, then blocks of stone would have been pulled up on sledges and the ramps dismantled later. It is believed that most of the labor for the construction of the pyramids came from farmers who were available during the season when the Nile River flooded and farmland was under water. It would also have been an ideal time for the transportation by boat of large stone blocks from their quarries to the pyramid sites.

The largest pyramid of all (in Giza, a little southwest of Cairo), contains approximately 2,300,000 blocks of stone, with an average weight of 2.5 tons each, completed around 2,550 BC. Some pyramids were built as burial places for kings, and others for queens. A pyramid also may have represented a stairway for the king to ascend to the heavens. A few thousand years after they were built, Arabs "quarried" the smooth outer stone off the face of the pyramids to make their own palaces and mosques. The pyramids are no longer miles out into the desert as pictures tend to portray them, but right adjacent to Cairo as the city encroaches upon them.

We walked into one of them, bending in half in order to walk down a ramp, then up again before arriving in a room – where there was really nothing to see. After coming back out, we had our first camel ride. Bob and I rode one together – such a bumpy ride – all the time I was sure I was going to slip off.







Afterwards we visited the Sphinx – another huge structure. Apparently it has been used for target practice by soldiers and it’s a shame because the nose, mouth, and other parts have been knocked off.

Next we visited a Papyrus shop, saw how they made paper out of the papyrus plant, and bought a papyrus picture. We visited another shop with more trinkets – I bargained for and bought a camel made from Alabaster (in memory of our real camel ride). That evening we took the night train to Luxor around 8:00 PM, had dinner – or tried to. It didn’t look appetizing at all so I ate our snacks instead. It was a noisy ride for the next 10 hours, but we managed to get some sleep.

On our way to Egypt

Sunday, September 23
Because there are fewer students here this Fall semester, all 4 service couples were invited to go with the students on their 8-day field trip to Egypt! We left early this morning from Jerusalem on 2 buses, headed for the Yotvata Kibbutz, where we took a very interesting tour of the grounds. Our guide, Rebecca, showed us the date palm plantation (see picture to left), mango forests, the cattle yards (the cows were some of the cleanest we've ever seen - after getting a shower, they dry off by standing in front of huge fans), and their neighborhoods. After eating dinner there, some local band musicians led us in a few Israeli songs and most of us joined hands to dance in a big circle around the food tables. We then drove to the kibbutz in Eilot – the southern most tip of Israel, close to the border with Egypt, where we spent the night.

Monday, September 24
After breakfast, we went through the Taba border crossing into Egypt, got on Egyptian buses with a guide and body guard, and drove 6 hours to the Oasis Pyramid Hotel in Giza, where we spent the night. Cairo is a city of 16 million people situated on the Nile River delta. The poor areas of town stretch for miles down the “freeway” on both sides - interspersed with lush (mostly hand-worked) farm land in the craziest jumble of red brick tenement buildings, (pictured here) dusty roads, unimaginable amounts of garbage, poverty, people hustling to make a buck, cars, buses, and donkey carts all driving on the same “freeway” together, and squalid irrigation canals that any sane man would avoid for fear of his life – yet young boys were enjoying a swim! It is one of earth's most polluted cities.