Food for Thought (in Egypt)

I think I beat my record of posting a food blog long after returning home.

Fruit juices - I think my favorite food part while traveling is all the fresh juice stalls.  In order: Melon, Sugar Cane, Tamarind, Sobia - coconut with milk, Hibiscus(Karakadey), and Tangerine.

Coffee - made by boiling ground coffee beans, usually infused with cardamom, and water in a special pot.  Ask for it "mazbuuta" which means just the right amount of sugar.  You could ask for it without sugar or a lot of sugar but then it wouldn't be juuuuuuust right.

Aish Baladi - pitabread, made with 100% wholewheat flour.  We didn't have a single meal that didn't come with the bread of life.

Koshari - all the carbs.  A layering of rice, macaroni, lentils, chickpeas, tomato sauce, and then topped with garlic, vinegar, spices, chili, and fried onions - this is Egypt's favorite street food and national dish.  What it lacks in fanciness, it makes up for in fillingness and exceptionally cheap price.  Who would have thought this originated from an Indian dish?

Ful - pronounced fool.  Doesn't look like much but along with koshari, this fava bean stew captures Egypt's unique heritage and culture.  It's also packed with nutrients and is slow to digest due to its high fiber content.


Shorbet Ads - red lentil soup.  It's warming, filling, and smooth.

Dips - from left to right: baba ganoush, fava beans, hummus

Muyyet Salata - Salad water.  Exactly what it sounds like but better than it sounds!  It's supposed to encourage you to eat more.  I hope this picture encourages you to read more as there's a lot more deliciousness.

Ta’meya - Fava bean falafel.  On the recommendation of our Bellies En-Route guide, I made a tameya pita sandwich and I fell in love.  Where do I find fava beans?!

Hawawshi - I took a bite before remembering to take a picture.  Pitawich with minced meat, parsley, onion, and chili.  Not unlike a hamburger.

Hamam Mashi - some call them rats of the sky and others call them delicious.  Stuffed pigeon is not an uncommon menu item in Egypt. 

Macaroni Bechamel - it’s exactly what the name describes.  Egypt’s version of mac and cheese.  It's a Cairo favorite and comes with a side of tomato sauce.

Molokhia - jute mallow greens.  I've never heard of this before and apparently it's full of health benefits.  It has a rather bitter first bite and slimy as heck as a soup.

Local food - Food tours might be the new thing we do at all the countries we visit from now on.  Bellies En-Route made this decision for us on their exception downtown Cairo food tour.  It was a great way to learn about the city from a local and try some authentic dishes from local places.  This photo depicts a typical meal in Cairo.  Bread, meat, vegetables stewed in a tomato sauce, and rice(sometimes with bonus vermicelli).

Seafood - we took a day trip out to Alexandria where the air is fresher, the temperature cooler, and the food is all about seafood.

Shawarma - not technically "Egyptian" but is definitely a big part of Egyptian cuisine.


Desserts - so many but they're all drenched in butter syrup and ghee.  Very sweet and very sticky.

Cat tax

Cairo, the city victorious

Finally, my last Egypt post: 3,500 years of history down, and only the latest ~1,000 left! 

But first, a quick preview to Priscilla's upcoming food blog post. My favorite activity of our entire trip was the food tour we took with Bellies En-Route! We had a private walking tour in downtown Cairo and ate and drank through nine different stops until we were about to burst. We did so well that our guide took us to the extra bonus dessert stop. Priscilla will be covering the actual food; I only took photos of all my empty plates to prove how much I ate:

Back to history. The Rashidun Caliphate (first post-Muhammad Islamic state), wrested control of Egypt from the Byzantines in 641. Although Egypt was ruled by a succession of Islamic empires, the capital always stayed in the greater Cairo area. Cairo itself was founded in 969 to be the new capital city for the Fatimid Caliphate, which at the time ruled all of North Africa and had just taken Egypt from the Abbasid Caliphate. The city's name, al-Qahirah- "the Conqueror", or "the Victorious", is named after Mars, which was in ascent at the time. They built an imposing hilltop fortress—the Citadel—and the city slowly expanded to encompass the nearby previous capitals. 

Islamic Cairo, or "Old Cairo", is a lively district of narrow streets, shops, and mosques, and is a great place to explore and do all your shopping at the Khan al Khalili market.

We also saw an incredible performance by a troupe of Tanoura Dancers, the local version of the Sufi "whirling dervish" tradition of worship, where dancers pray and spin to reach a state of religious trance. The dancers spun their weighted skirts for 30+ minutes at a time, and it was so mesmerizing that we felt entranced too. Almost as mesmerizing as the antics of the finger-cymbals musician.

Moving ahead to modern times (it pains me to skip so much history- Saladin! the Ottomans! the Mohammad Ali Pasha dynasty! the Suez Canal! French and British occupations! the 1952 revolution! your homework is to please go read up on those, seriously Egypt has so much history), Cairo is enormous now- with a population over 20 million, it's the largest city in the Middle East and the second largest in Africa. It's so sprawling that it's even conquered the nearby Great Pyramids and the Old Kingdom capital of Memphis. It's absolutely packed with people and is seriously polluted. 

Our first(!) day in Cairo we visited the slum known as Garbage City, which was a good way to Overton window our air quality expectations for the rest of the trip. Garbage City is part of the Manshiyat Naser slum, one of Cairo's Coptic Christian areas (cool fact: 10-15% of Egypt's population is Coptic Christian. Egypt had one of the earliest Christian communities, founded in just 42 CE!). Garbage City is home to Cairo's garbage collectors: they collect trash from throughout the city and bring it here to sort and process. There are bales of garbage and recyclables everywhere, and some of the buildings are home to urban livestock (we saw pigs, goats, sheep, and pigeon coops).

Cairo isn't all modern history: the classic Egyptian Museum is located in a huge historic building next to Tahrir Square. The biggest draws are the Royal Mummies, with big-shots such as Rameses II, Seti I, and Hapshepsut, and the treasure from Tutankhamun's tomb, including my favorite, his famous golden mask. No photos allowed in those two halls, but wikipedia has some decent ones of Tut-loot. The Egyptian Museum has a reputation as an overwhelming jumble of poorly labeled and displayed exhibits, but it was much better than I expected. They're almost finished building a new modern museum near the Great Pyramids, so there are a few giant wooden moving crates scattered around the museum, which actually add a surprising amount to the atmosphere. 

We also visited the excellent Islamic Art museum but didn't spring for the photo ticket. Several exhibits are marked with a red sticker to show they were reconstructed after a 2014 car bombing on the police HQ across the street.

That's a good transition to my next modern Egypt topic. So, is Egypt safe? Hard to say. The revolutions and protests from 2011-2014 resulted in replacing a dictator (Mubarak) with a dictator (Morsi), and then replacing that dictator with yet another dictator (Sisi). Egypt is stable now but struggles with domestic terrorism, and the human rights situation is bad: Freedom House rates Egypt as "not free". The security presence is heavy and omnipresent, and the US Department of State advises strongly against travel outside of tourist areas. During our trip there was an attempted bombing in Giza, and the suspected bomber later killed himself and three police officers near Khan al Khalili and the Madrasa where the Tanoura dancers perform.

Now I need a gradual transition back to more hopeful topics. Here's a revolutionary mural near the protest landmark Tahrir Square, showing a starving street kid and his meal of baladi bread. 

Real change is slow and difficult, but what I most enjoyed about Egypt was the people. Resourceful, resilient, incredibly welcoming, and a great sense of humor. Example: it starts raining but our driver's windshield wiper isn't working right. He jumps out in slow traffic and tries to bend it a little by hand, but instead it snaps off. He laughs, moves the wiper back and forth a few times by hand in time with the remaining wiper, and then jumps back in the car. If I was a bad travel blogger, I guess this is where I'd end with something sentimental like "Egypt is never what you expect, instead it's so much more", or "Egypt is the car".

We celebrated the end of our Egypt trip with a private sunset sail on the Nile with our friends. Our felucca (traditional Nile boat) tacked back and forth across our peaceful stretch of the river, and we enjoyed good company until the sun set.

Until our next trip!

-Peter

The Wonders of Alexandria's Ptolemaic Egypt

Let's jump ahead 700 years (I can't stress just how much history Egypt has) to another famous era: Ptolemaic Egypt. Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BCE, and after Alexander's death his close friend Ptolemy eventually consolidated power in Egypt and founded the Ptolemaic Dynasty. That's right, for three centuries Egypt was ruled by a Greek bloodline of pharaohs who adopted the Egyptian religion and customs. The Ptolemaic Dynasty ended in 30 BCE with the suicide of Cleopatra (technically Cleopatra VII), the last ever pharaoh, famous lover of both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. After her death Egypt was under Roman(/Byzantine) rule for almost 700 years. It's strange to think that the popular parts of Egyptian history span such a long time that Cleopatra lived closer in time to us (~2,000 years) than to the construction of the pyramids (~2,500 years).

We took a day trip to Alexandria on a beautiful sunny day, with a cool breeze, picture-perfect clouds, and great air quality! Founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE (his lost tomb is somewhere here too), Alexandria was capital of Egypt until the Muslim conquest in 641 CE. Alexandria was a major center of Greek and Roman civilization: it was a trading port, a cosmopolitan city of many peoples, and briefly the largest city in the world.

1,000 years of Greek and Roman civilization means that there are lots of ruins to see! Unfortunately, several major earthquakes (the old royal palace sank into the ocean!), fires (the library burned!), and wars (four "Siege of Alexandria"s and two "Battle of Alexandria"s!) also mean that there are only ruins to see, all surrounded by the bustling modern city.

All that remains of the old Greek acropolis is a rubble-strewn, catacombed hill with Pompey's Pillar standing proudly and lonely. Once thought it was built to honor general Pompey, it was actually to commemorate Roman emperor Diocletian's victory over an Egyptian rebellion (it says so right on the base, all you had to do was read it guys). It's also not technically a pillar, so a more accurate name would be Diocletian's Column. It was also speculated that Pompey's head was in a jar atop the pillar (not true) so a pretty good example to not believe everything you hear.

The extensively excavated ruins at Kom Al Deka include an excellently preserved amphitheater, a university, baths, and villas.

We also saw the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa (no photos allowed), rediscovered by a donkey-archaeologist in 1900. In my research now I'm learning that it's also considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages? I'm not sure I'd consider it Wonder material, but the tomb carvings are an excellent example of the fusion of Greek and Egyptian cultures.

Speaking of Wonders, Alexandria was once home to the Pharos (lighthouse) of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the original list by Herodotus that's spawned so many additional lists. I'd heard of the Pharos before, but didn't realize how impressive it's 1) size and 2) longevity once were. It's thought to have stood over 100 meters tall: check out the depiction on coins of the era, plus modern archaeologists' interpretations. Ptolemy I commissioned it ~300 BCE and it stood for centuries, progressively damaged by earthquakes in 796, 950, and 1303 until earthquakes in the 1320s finished it off and it toppled into the sea. The remaining stones and foundation of the Pharos were used in 1480 to build the fortress of Qaitbey's Citadel, the airiest and breeziest castle I've ever seen.

My favorite place in Alexandria was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern re-imagining of the Library of Alexandria. The original library was established by Ptolemy II (so, sometime 286-243 BCE) to be a collection of all knowledge. The library contained an estimated 40,000-400,000 scrolls, and every ship entering the harbor had to surrender any scrolls it had to be copied. The library also supported a staff of full-time international scholars, philosophers, poets, and researchers. Famous discoveries here include Archimedes' invention of the Archimedes Screw and Eratosthenes' calculation of the circumference of the Earth. The library had a slow decline after Ptolemy VIII expelled foreign scholars in 140 BCE. It's scholars and collections dispersed to other libraries, it suffered a fire in 48 CE, and was probably finally destroyed by war in 272 or 297 CE.

The new library was finished in 2002 in partnership with UNESCO and is an international center of learning and culture. It has museums, art galleries, a planetarium, conference facilities, a manuscript restoration center, and the first backup of the Internet Archive project. The curved facade is carved with letters from 150 different scripts. Check out the gorgeous photos/diagrams by international architect Snøhetta. Everything is stunningly inspirational and gorgeous, a true modern temple to learning. The library is full of busy young Egyptians, and if I lived in Alexandria this is were you'd find me.

I lived for 10+ years in a different Alexandria, so I relished every opportunity tell the locals that I, too, was from Alexandria. I forgot to bring my library card though.

One final goodbye photo of Alexandria's oceanside corniche:

-Peter

Luxor's New Kingdom tombs and temples

Luxor (originally Waset, known to the Greeks as Thebes) was the capital of New Kingdom Egypt (~1550-1069 BCE) and the main center of worship for chief deity Amun-Ra. On Luxor's east bank of the Nile are the temples of Karnak and Luxor, and off in the desert to the west are hundreds of tombs, most famously the Valley of the Kings.

Luxor's enormous Temple of Karnak was the center of Egypt's religious life for centuries. Karnak was the site of the annual Opet festival, a 27-day festival led by the pharaoh to regenerate Amun and the cosmos. Karnak is one of the largest temple complexes in history, and at it's peak it employed an estimated 80,000 priests. Every pharaoh tried to make their mark and expand the temple: there's evidence of work done by over 30 pharaohs, so there is an overwhelming variety of architectural styles. Most impressive are the massive columns of the Hypostyle Hall. I got carried away taking photos, it's easy to understand why so many movies and video games use it as a setting.

Follow the route of the Opet festival down the 2.7km Avenue of Sphinxes (once lined by an estimated 1350 sphinxes) and you'll arrive at the Temple of Luxor. The temple has been a site of continuous worship since 1400 BCE: Alexander the Great added a chapel here (he allegedly visited), the Romans built a fort, and the Muslims added a mosque. The temple was buried in centuries of Nile mud and debris: the mosque was originally at ground level but is now 10m up! The cartouche of Ramses II is everywhere here: one theory is that he commissioned major restoration work on the temple and took every opportunity to sign his name. Also evident on the tops of some columns are the chiseled-out cartouches of Akhenaten, defaced after the Aten Heresy.

There are numerous other temple complexes, especially on the west bank, but many of the mud-brick temples were destroyed by centuries of Nile flooding.

On to the tombs! By the New Kingdom, pyramids were no longer in fashion: tombs were the new big thing. A new pharaoh's first order of business was starting work on their tomb. Workers would excavate a long hallway and rooms deep in the desert rock, and cover the walls with intricate hieroglyphics of the pharaoh's many accomplishments, plus reminders of all the rituals to complete in the afterlife. When the pharaoh died, they would be interred with great ceremony in an intricately decorated multi-stage sarcophagus, and the tomb would be filled with literal piles of treasure, furniture, food offerings, tiny sculpted figures to work for the pharaoh in the afterlife, etc.

But the best laid plans, right? If a pharaoh died young, the workers would frantically (author's interpretation) rush to finish whatever they could during the 70-day embalming process, or have to take over a tomb intended for someone else. So, short tomb, short reign. Also, the tombs were magnets for grave robbers. Tombs were already being plundered towards the end of the New Kingdom, and subsequent eras finished the job. Look closely and you'll find graffiti from every era- see if you can find "H Duff 1822" in one of my Karnak column pictures. By the modern era, absolutely everything valuable had been looted (with one notable exception), and all that was left were the wall inscriptions.

The best surviving example of wall art is the tomb of Nefertari, the favorite wife of Ramses II. Thanks to recent restoration work, the colors are vivid and striking. You'll have to take my word for it: photos aren't allowed, but there are some photo galleries online, and even a professionally captured VR game version. 

In total, we visited nine tombs in the Valley of the Kings (Ramses IV, Ramses IX, Merenptah, Tutankhamun), the nearby Valley of the Queens (Nefertari, Amen Khopshef, Titi, Khamwaset), and the enormous temple-tomb of Hatshepsut, one of the few female pharaohs. All(most all) empty, all stunning. 

The notable exception I've been alluding to is Tutankhamun's tomb! Undisturbed since 1323 BCE, it's famous rediscovery in 1922 reignited Egypt-mania. Tutankhamun is really only famous because of his tomb: it survived because he was so quickly forgotten and the entrance covered by later tomb excavations. The tomb itself is pretty small (he died early), but it's the only tomb where the original owner's mummy resides! All the good stuff, including his famous golden mask, is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Quick aside- the mummies in many of the other tombs were looted in antiquity, but several dozen were removed for safekeeping and hidden by one of the last New Kingdom rulers, rediscovered in 1881, and are now also in the Egyptian Museum! No photos allowed.

The Egyptian Museum has some competition in Luxor: the Mummification Museum and Luxor Museum. The Luxor Museum is the best labeled, lit, and presented museum in all of Egypt! It has some excellent artifacts from the Aten Heresy, when Tutankamun's father Akhenaten radically reformed the Egyptian religion to worship only the sun disk Aten (these changes were unpopular and reversed after his death).

Luxor was a nice change of pace from urban Cairo: we stayed in a quiet guesthouse on the edge of the desert, and had a great rooftop view of the dawn hot air balloons.

-Peter