Aspects of Cairo - recklessness and epiphanies on the Nile - Nile Delta
In the mid-day haze, and without a clue as to where we were going. This is easily the stupidest yet one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done while travelling. It is how I learned new things about Gods and men ...
Two of us had hired a driver in Heliopolis for a couple of days to visit parts of Old and Coptic Cairo, and the Nile Delta. This arrangement seemed perfectly OK, apart from one instance on top of a tomb on the first day that had 'officials' shaking their fists at us.
When we arrived at the Delta in the northern part of Cairo, the driver introduced us to a friend of his, and his son (we think) who would take us for a boat trip on the Nile around the delta, as far the Mohammed Ali Barrage. At least we assumed he was a friend. After staring at each other for a while in disbelief at this suggestion, the YOLO urge seemed to take hold.
So, for the next couple of hours there we were being boated around by this guy's son, along with a bit of island hopping and dropping in on local farmers, not knowing where were going or what we were doing. And absolutely no-one knew where we were. All this without a word of English to be shared.
We're more or less sure that we witnessed a drug deal on the Nile bank at one point, where we refused to get off the boat out of the probably only imagined fear of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
I am not sure how wise this was even back then. We had no idea at all of to whom we had entrusted ourselves. These days, I wouldn't even think of it. Even tripping around Old Cairo would be out of the question, let alone this bizarre adventure or walking kilometres deep into old Egyptian markets where there were no Europeans ever to be seen and being quizzed at least once about what we were doing there.
But it was fantastic! It's the sort of thing that you will never forget. And, despite our fears about security, the people we did meet were enormously outgoing and friendly.
And, it was here that I observed something that would many days later, way further south along the Nile, turn into an epiphany in terms of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, suddenly disclosing the shattering realisation that Ancient Egyptian art and texts deal with the real world here and now.
The Nile Delta adventure led me to be able to make an immediately physical connection between the symbols denoting Pharaonic governance across a united Egypt and what you see around you all of the time, in the context of the depictions of the King of the North and the King of the South. The exalted and the common are inexorably intertwined and interdependent.
Ancient Egypt still lives and breathes. It is an eternal ever-renewing celebration of life and the living, sustained within nature by the seasonal flow of the waters of the life-source and the sun that illuminates it all. The connection to the afterlife is seamless. It is this life, continued,
I have never quite recovered from this startling realisation, such was its power on the ground right there and right then, sparked by a few honey bees on a seemingly inconsequential island in the middle of the Nile Delta, and the need to wander off the beaten path and cast all reason to the wind in order to discover them. See later post: 'At Karnak - King of the North and King of the South - Luxor'.
It's just that, in order to get there - literally and figuratively - we threw risk management completely out of the window.
Our belief systems and economies set us above nature and make it subordinate to our needs. This will be to our ruin, without question. The message from the thin ribbon of green along the Nile and from all those who have dwelt therein, Gods and man alike, is plain.
Every time I see the honey bee, my eyes light up.
Aspects of Cairo - recklessness and epiphanies on the Nile - Nile Delta
In the mid-day haze, and without a clue as to where we were going. This is easily the stupidest yet one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done while travelling. It is how I learned new things about Gods and men ...
Two of us had hired a driver in Heliopolis for a couple of days to visit parts of Old and Coptic Cairo, and the Nile Delta. This arrangement seemed perfectly OK, apart from one instance on top of a tomb on the first day that had 'officials' shaking their fists at us.
When we arrived at the Delta in the northern part of Cairo, the driver introduced us to a friend of his, and his son (we think) who would take us for a boat trip on the Nile around the delta, as far the Mohammed Ali Barrage. At least we assumed he was a friend. After staring at each other for a while in disbelief at this suggestion, the YOLO urge seemed to take hold.
So, for the next couple of hours there we were being boated around by this guy's son, along with a bit of island hopping and dropping in on local farmers, not knowing where were going or what we were doing. And absolutely no-one knew where we were. All this without a word of English to be shared.
We're more or less sure that we witnessed a drug deal on the Nile bank at one point, where we refused to get off the boat out of the probably only imagined fear of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
I am not sure how wise this was even back then. We had no idea at all of to whom we had entrusted ourselves. These days, I wouldn't even think of it. Even tripping around Old Cairo would be out of the question, let alone this bizarre adventure or walking kilometres deep into old Egyptian markets where there were no Europeans ever to be seen and being quizzed at least once about what we were doing there.
But it was fantastic! It's the sort of thing that you will never forget. And, despite our fears about security, the people we did meet were enormously outgoing and friendly.
And, it was here that I observed something that would many days later, way further south along the Nile, turn into an epiphany in terms of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, suddenly disclosing the shattering realisation that Ancient Egyptian art and texts deal with the real world here and now.
The Nile Delta adventure led me to be able to make an immediately physical connection between the symbols denoting Pharaonic governance across a united Egypt and what you see around you all of the time, in the context of the depictions of the King of the North and the King of the South. The exalted and the common are inexorably intertwined and interdependent.
Ancient Egypt still lives and breathes. It is an eternal ever-renewing celebration of life and the living, sustained within nature by the seasonal flow of the waters of the life-source and the sun that illuminates it all. The connection to the afterlife is seamless. It is this life, continued,
I have never quite recovered from this startling realisation, such was its power on the ground right there and right then, sparked by a few honey bees on a seemingly inconsequential island in the middle of the Nile Delta, and the need to wander off the beaten path and cast all reason to the wind in order to discover them. See later post: 'At Karnak - King of the North and King of the South - Luxor'.
It's just that, in order to get there - literally and figuratively - we threw risk management completely out of the window.
Our belief systems and economies set us above nature and make it subordinate to our needs. This will be to our ruin, without question. The message from the thin ribbon of green along the Nile and from all those who have dwelt therein, Gods and man alike, is plain.
Every time I see the honey bee, my eyes light up.