Travelogue: Western Desert, March 2008 - Day 3

I hadn't had the chance to visit Luxor since 2002, so waking up to see Luxor Temple an the pale pink and blue hills on the other side of the Nile was a seriously good moment.

At breakfast I met the other tour members - Harry, Rosemary, Kathryn, and Liz. Harry was a most welcome sight, bearing in his hand an envelope containing the second GPS. It is a rather battered entity, held together with sellotape, but I very much needed some of the co-ordinates from the poor little device to add to mine. Poor Harry was given the news that he was the only man on the tour after a last-minute cancellation. He looked stoic. After breakfast bottles of water were purchased for the trip down to Aswan via El Kab.

The departure from the Nile into the desert was due to take place just north of Abu Simbel from the Aswan road, so we still had a way to go before arriving in the general area. We weren’t due to pick up the four-wheel drives and our desert crew until Aswan, so we had a Traveline mini bus and a guide whom Harry knew from a previous tour for the trip to El Kab and the Nubia Museum. He approved of my name because it is short and easy to remember.

We passed through this checkpoint without delay and headed south towards El Kab. I sat next to Harry and it became very clear that although he has been nearly everywhere else in Egypt (and dozens of other places on the planet) he was absolutely dreading the prospect of camping. He hates bottled water when it isn’t cold, particularly hates water from gerrycans, dislikes tinned sardines and cooked fava beans and cannot imagine surviving without diet Pepsi. His own packing included a case full of sweets and snacks to soften the blow of desert travel, but I thought the most telling fact of all was that his wife had sent him to us with an emergency supply of valium! But he wanted to see the rock art of the Egyptian deserts, so there he was.

The visit to El Kab was a very good start. We first went up to visit the tombs carved into the rock. There is a good view from the tombs of the vast late mudbrick walls of the old city of El Kab, ancient Nekheb. Over the water one could almost see Hierakonpolis, ancient Nekhen.

El Kab is near the modern village of El Hilal on the east bank of the Nile, c.85k to the south of Luxor, 32km south of Esna and 120 km north of Aswan. It was in the third Nome of Upper Egypt, and comprises a number of sites over a large area. It was first excavated in the Nineteenth century by Quibell. A concession was granted to a Belgina team in 1937 and has been working there ever since.

The first clear records of occupation at El Kab date to the Epipalaeolithic – c.8500bp. The sites were discovered in 1967, and consist of eight temporary campsites. The economy was based on the exploitation of wild animals (auroch, Dorcas gazelle, wild sheep, soft shell tortoise, hippo, hartebeest, jackal and porcupine) and fishing (tilapia and catfish). It is thought that the groups who occupied the area on a temporary but frequent basis used Nile-side locations during the winter and desert areas in the rainy summer periods. The toolkit was based on microlithic chipped tools and ground sandstone items. There are clear links with sites in other areas including the Eastern and Western Deserts, and the industry as a whole is known as the Elkabian.

The first traces of permanent settlement date to the Late Predynastic, although Hierakonpolis, the well known site opposite, was occupied on a permanent basis much earlier. From the Early Dynastic period there is evidence of a Second Dynasty cemetery found only a few years ago, and a Third Dynasty mastaba cemetery.

In the Pharaonic period El Kab was known as Nekheb, named for the protector deity. The vulture goddess was the counterpart of the cobra goddess Wadjet and together they represented dominion over Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt. Middle Kingdom tombs are located in the area but are not open to the public. There was a lot of activity in the Eighteenth Dynasty, when many of the rock-cut tombs that we saw were constructed. We visited four tombs: Paheri (Mayor of Nekheb and grandson of Ahmose Son of Ibana), Setau (a Priest of Ramesses III), Ahmose Son of Ibana (Captain of Sailors who fought in the siege against the Hyksos for which he was rewarded by the king, and the grandfather of Paheri) and Renni (Mayor of Nekheb and priest of Nekheb). The tomb of Renni is one of the only ones known from the reign of Amenhotep I, and is stylistically rather different from its neighbours. The best reference that I know of for the El Kab tombs are the El Kab pages on OsirisNet.

More photos of El Kab can be found on this blog at:

• Tomb of Paheri (1)
• Tomb of Paheri (2)
• Tomb of Renni (1)
  
• Tomb of Renni (2)
• Tomb of Setau
  
• Tomb of Ahmose, Son of Ibana
  

Two temples were constructed during the New Kingdom – one to the deity Nekhbet and a later one to Thoth (under the reign of Ramesses II). The main visible feature of the town of El Kab is the enclosing wall erected during the Late Period (dating to the 30th Dynasty, 747-332 BC). The walls are 12m thick. The site was then occupied continuously until the end of the Late Period. There is also a Coptic monastery in the vicinity.

The area of Vulture Rock (also known as Locality 64) is the focus of rock art which is both prolific and varied. The rock art on Vulture Rock at El Kab may have dated to the Predynastic periods as well as later times and it obviously remained important for 100s if not 1000s of years. The rock art came to light during the survey of 1979 to 1983. 500 figures are represented in 11 areas and there are 100s of hieroglyphs. Dirk Huyge published an article in 2002 which analyzed 350 of the rock drawings. He detects 7 phases based on superimposition, patination, iconography and archaeo-zoology. He believes that the earliest of the rock art images date to Naqada I c.3800BC and that 53% of the images date to Naqada II to the Early Dynastic, c.3600 – 2700BC. He divides these up into five main horizons defined by key themes.

More photos from Vulture Rock. Sadly I don't have many photographs because I was busy at the time that everyone was visiting the site

• Vulture Rock (1)
  
• Vulture Rock (2)
  

On arrival in Aswan we piled out of the minibus and went directly to the Nubia Museum. The museum is very fine, modern and well thought out, with an outdoor collection in attractive gardens. Inside most of the collection is on display in the basement, but the ground floor galleries have some excellent displays dedicated to the UNESCO rescue missions of Nubian archaeology which followed the decision to build the Aswan High Dam. There is an excellent collection of black and white photographs which show well known sites like Abu Simbel and Wadi Es Sebua in their original locations together with more unusual images including excavation work on A-Group and C-Group burials. The photographs give a very vivid idea of just how much archaeology was present in the area now submerged under Lake Nasser. There is also a new display of rock engravings which were removed from Nubia prior to the flooding. There are some very nice examples.

The basement display is organized chronologically and takes in everything from earliest prehistory to reconstructed Nubian village homes and gardens. Some of the artefacts are first rate and all are accompanied by labelling which is far superior to that in most Egyptian museums.

Unfortunately for me on our arrival at the Hotel Basma I dropped my camera, breaking the lens. Matters could have been worse – the camera body itself, an expensive piece of kit, was in once piece and was still working perfectly. The lens was gaping open part way along its length, and looked very sorry for itself. Worse indignities were to follow.

At the Basma Hotel we were greeted with kakade.

We tried to visit the Old Cataract Hotel, which was built in 1889 and is very much of a landmark. The plan was to take drinks on the lower terrace, and to visit the bookshop in the New Cataract and find out when the bank was open. We were refused access at the New Cataract entrance because we weren’t resident and were turned away at the Old Cataract entrance because they had reached their daily quota of visitors. I now wonder whether it wasn’t half closed for refurbishment, because there had been some discussion on the subject when I stayed there in March 2007.

After a brief discussion, we decided to return to our own hotel for a bite to eat, and wound up on the sunny outside terrace restaurant with a splendid view over the First Cataract, with feluccas and little motor boats pottering about on the river, the island of Elephantine close by, the mausoleum of the Aga Khan on the pink scarp opposite, and the Old Cataract below us. So we didn’t actually feel terribly short-changed by our failure to break into the grounds of the Old Cataract (although the thought of the bookshop existing without my custom did sting somewhat).

The most conspicuous aspect of the Nile’s First Cataract, in which splendid bird life can be seen, are the granite boulders which proved a hazard to navigation throughout historic times, and into which hieroglyphic inscriptions have been inscribed. Since the creation of the Aswan dams the First Cataract has been un-navigable by anything other than small vessels. The area was occupied from the Old Kingdom onwards. The Pharaonic settlement at Aswan, on the frontiers of Egypt and Nubia, was of considerable strategic importance throughout the Pharaonic history of Egypt, and there are some super sites in the area, including the Pharaonic tombs of the nobles, visible from all over Aswan on the west bank at Qubbat al-Hawa under the small tomb of Sidi Ali Bin al-Hawa, for which the hill is named.

After photographs had been taken and drinks had been ordered, we reviewed the options offered by the Basma’s snack menu in order to both deal with short term hunger (or full-on impending starvation in the case of Harry) but leave room for dinner later. In the event, some of the food that arrived was not quite as anticipated The omelettes selected by Rosemary and Liz turned out to be just the sort of thing we had all expected – nicely cooked gap-fillers. Kathryn’s Nicoise salad, however, was distinctly vast and the Croque Monsiers ordered by Harry, Emma and myself were simply enormous – stuffed with cheese and ham and apparently deep-fried in batter, accompanied by French fries. It was impossible to do justice to the Croque Monsieurs, although wise Emma took some of hers back to her room in a serviette. A full group dinner later was rejected.

Kathryn and Emma managed to find time for a dip in the large blue pool which was officially closed for the evening but which they gained permission to use anyway.

I found the shopping area where I bought postcards and stamps, and went back to my room, and sat on its small balcony to write them and review the plans for the following day. Answering a phone call to my room I found Maged on the other end of the line and was simply overjoyed, having travelled with him before, to find that Pan Arab had allocated him to us for the remainder of our journey. Much happiness. He had said to be ready for 7.30 but not to be surprised if he and the drivers didn’t turn up much later because of bureaucratic problems. No bother. Travel in Egypt is all about bureaucratic problems.

I don’t know about Emma, but I woke up feeling as though I had been in Egypt for weeks – Cairo, Luxor, el Kab and Aswan all in the space of a couple of days.

Day 1 and Day 2