Sailing the Nile on a Victorian Dahabeeyah

One of the things I enjoy about writing a fiction series is deciding how to keep my characters moving forward across several books. For the first three books in my series following Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt, starting with Carter’s Conundrums, my main character was on a tourist holiday, staying at the Jolie Ville hotel, situated on its own island in the Nile in Luxor.

As the series developed, I needed to find a way for the central British characters to remain in Egypt. They needed to progress from tourist visas to working visas, and find somewhere permanent to live. And so the idea of having them own and run a restored Victorian dahabeeyah was born. In Farouk’s Fancies they are setting up in business offering luxury Nile cruises to discerning travellers.

From the 1850s through into late Victorian times, the dahabeeyah was the standard way to travel up and down the Nile. ‘Dahabeeyah’ means ‘golden boat’ in Arabic. The prototype for the Victorian version can be found on tomb and temple walls in Egypt and has changed little in design since pharaonic times when the royals and nobles painted their boats gold. Amenhotep III had a Nile sail barge called ‘Aten Gleams’.

The dahabeeyah started to lose popularity when Thomas Cook, a pioneer in travel, who single-handedly invented modern tourism in Egypt, introduced the Nile steam boat. The steam boats significantly reduced the journey time along the Nile. Where the dahabeeyah took a traveller on a grand voyage of discovery, the steam boats introduced the idea of a shorter sight-seeing trip. These were popular with late nineteenth century travellers.

As tourism became available to the masses during the twentieth century, the Nile cruise boats adapted to the increased demand, becoming the large floating hotels we are used to today.

But in recent years there has been a resurgence in those seeking out a more traditional way to journey along the Nile. There are those drawn to Egypt by the lure of nostalgia for the pioneering days of archaeology, as well as the antiquity to be found along the Nile. A number of restored dahabeeyahs became available for hire during the early years of this century. It’s into this niche market that my characters have stepped.

Sadly the political situation in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East has put tourists off the Nile as a holiday destination. So my characters must struggle to see if they can get their new business venture afloat. Otherwise I may have to dream up another way of keeping them in Egypt so they can continue their adventures.

Fiona Deal

Author of Carter’s Conundrums, Tutankhamun’s Triumph, Hatshepsut’s Hideaway, Farouk’s Fancies and Akhenaten’s Alibi. Available on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and all other Amazon sites.

Nothing new under the Egyptian Sun

I’ve just published Akhenaten’s Alibi, the fifth book in the series following Meredith Pink on her adventures in Egypt. It’s set against the backdrop of the turbulent events of the summer of 2013, when the people of Egypt took to the streets to protest the ‘undemocratic rule’ of their first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. This resulted in a coup d’etat that ousted him from power.

As I’ve mentioned before, it seems there really is nothing new under the Egyptian sun. Some scholars claim the first coup d’etat took place in Egypt over 3000 years ago. Back then it wasn’t a democratically elected president but a divinely anointed pharaoh who was allegedly forced to abdicate his position.

The pharaoh in question was Akhenaten, arguably the most intriguing of all the pharaohs. He ruled towards the end of the golden age of Egypt’s empire in the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. Some say he catapulted it into decline. He has been called ‘the first individual in history’. It’s not hard to see why. Unlike the traditional statuary and tomb-and-temple carvings that remained largely unchanged over a passage of time spanning upwards of 2000 years, Akhenaten’s is unique. For reasons that remain obscure, he chose to have himself represented artistically with an elongated and distorted body shape and with exaggerated and unflattering facial features.

What we know for sure is that he led a religious revolution, breaking with centuries’-worth of uniformity and consigning the ancient Egyptian pantheon of gods and goddesses to oblivion. Instead he elevated the Aten, the sun disc for sole worship.

The big questions this begs … was Akhenaten the first monotheist in history? Did he pave the way for the great monotheistic religions of the world… Judaism, Islam and Christianity? Was he a contemporary, or perhaps an inspiration for Moses? Opinion is divided. Some claim Akhenaten was an enlightened spiritualist, born before his time. Others that he was an autocratic despot who imposed his thinking on a resistant populace.

So, was Akhenaten ousted from power by a people unwilling to accept his unilateralism, in the way Morsi was? Or did he die a natural death? Were his beliefs kept alive by a small band of his followers, who handed them down perhaps until the Qumran Essenes set them down in the earliest biblical writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls?

We may never know. But these are intriguing questions for a fiction writer. My latest novel seeks to weave a story from these threads and set it against the backdrop of the modern political situation in Egypt. It’s available on all the Amazon sites. I hope you enjoy it. If you’d like to begin with the first book in the series, look out for Carter’s Conundrums, also available on Amazon

Fiona Deal

Howard Carter’s Legacy Lives on…

Howard Carter died seventy-five years ago on 2 March 1939. His death went largely unremarked. This is fairly extraordinary considering Carter was the man responsible for making arguably the most important archaeological discovery ever … the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun, dating from the 14th century BC.

It seems astonishing to me that such a spectacular find should earn no accolade at all for its discoverer. Howard Carter lies buried in an unremarkable grave in a Putney Vale cemetery in London. Only the words on his grave stone give any clue to the love of Egypt, Egyptology and his world-famous discovery…

Howard Carter,

Egyptologist,

Discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun 1922

“May your spirit live, may you spend millions of years, you who love Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, your eyes beholding happiness.”

It’s hardly the most lavish epitaph!

So, why the lack of recognition? All Carter earned during his lifetime was an honorary doctorate from an American university. In his own country; nothing.

Carter had a reputation as an irascible man, pig-headed, stubborn and intractable. He rubbed shoulders with the aristocracy (notably his patron and sponsor the Earl of Carnarvon) yet wasn’t one of them. Perhaps an incident early in his career in Egypt cast a long shadow. It became known as the Saqqara Affair. Carter committed career suicide, refusing to apologise to the authorities over an incident where he forcibly ejected a group of rowdy and drunk young Frenchmen from the site of the famous stepped pyramid. Carter resigned over the incident, halting a hitherto promising career, and entered what have become known as his ‘wilderness years’. He scratched a living as an artist and antiquities dealer before being recommended as an excavator to Carnarvon.

The rest, as they say, is history. But Carter’s temper continued to be his Achilles heel. After Carnarvon’s untimely death just 5 months after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, Carter once again exploded. This time it was over the refusal of the Egyptian Authorities to allow the wives of the excavation team a private viewing of the tomb. Carter downed tools and took himself off on a lecture tour of America.

But perhaps more damning were the rumours that started to circulate while he was away that Carter was misappropriating items from the tomb. A lotus flower head of the boy king was found inside a Fortnum & Mason wine case. Carter said he’d stored it there for safekeeping until it could be properly conserved. His explanation was accepted without question, but I wonder if the powers that be were really convinced …?

Whatever, the recognition he might have expected as arguably the most famous excavator of all time never materialised.

Carter returned to England in 1935, having taken 10 years to clear the tomb. He continued to deal in antiquities for many of the major museums of the world – perhaps considered a dodgy profession…? He died, aged 65, of lymphoma.

But perhaps the action that meant he could never earn the recognition he deserved was his alleged unauthorised break-in to the tomb the night before its official opening in November 1922. It’s never been proven, but it’s now achieved the status of something of an open secret. Carter and Carnarvon, together with Carnarvon’s daughter and their friend Pecky Callender, are said to have broken into both the outer chamber and the burial chamber of the tomb.

I think, if true, it’s hard to blame them. Which of us can honestly say we could have resisted the temptation after such a long search?

Whatever, rumours of wrong-doing seem to have dogged Carter’s footsteps – and his memory.

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

These provide fertile soil for a writer of fiction, such as myself. In the first book in my series following Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, my heroine finds herself caught up in a mystery that draws heavily on the conduct and character of Howard Carter.

So, despite the lack of any public recognition, I’d like to remember the seventy-fifth anniversary of his death, and thank Howard Carter for his legacy. It was gawping at the Tutankhamun treasures in the Cairo museum as a teenager that sparked my enduring fascination for ancient Egypt … and perhaps that’s when my desire to write was first born. So, thank you, Mr Carter … your legacy lives on …

Fiona Deal

Author of Carter’s Conundrums, Tutankhamun’s Triumph, Hatshepsut’s Hideaway and Farouk’s Fancies

Tourists return to Egypt

The British Foreign Office relaxed its restrictions on travel to Egypt last month. This is good news for all those whose livelihoods depend on the tourist industry, and a positive note on which to end this year which has seen so much political drama in Egypt.

I do hope the tourists will venture back to Egypt quickly. Speaking as one who visited Luxor a couple of weeks after similar restrictions were lifted in 2011 when the Mubarak regime was toppled, I can only say it was a delight to visit when the tourist sites were uncrowded. The Egyptian people were warm and welcoming (yes, there was some hassle, but it was good-natured and perfectly understandable in the circumstances.)

As Egypt ends the year on a more positive note, so do I with the publication of the fourth book in my series following Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt. This story is set in the spring of 2013, before the events of the summer, which saw the ousting of President Mohammed Morsi from office. Merry’s latest adventure, Farouk’s Fancies, draws on the events which saw the monarchy topped in Egypt and King Farouk sent into exile. It was interesting to observe the political situation unfolding in Cairo this summer while writing about broadly similar themes which saw Farouk removed as king. The story also involves the Dead Sea Scrolls and the theories put forward by some historians claiming key figures in the Bible were in fact ancient Egyptian pharaohs.

I look forward to a return to Egypt and to continuing the adventures of Merry and Adam. I’m starting to think about how they’ve experienced the latter half of 2013 in Egypt and where their adventures will take them next.

Tourism in Egypt takes a hit

All Giza Pyramids in one shot. Русский: Все пирамиды Гизы на изображении. Español: Las Pirámides de Guiza (Egipto). Français : Les Pyramides de Gizeh (Egypte). Català: Les Piràmides de Giza, a Egipte. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During these troubled times in Egypt it’s impossible not to spare a thought for all those whose livelihood depends on a thriving tourist industry.

Since President Morsi was ousted last month most Western governments have issued a travel warning against travel to Egypt and asked their citizens there to depart. Pre-revolution 12% of Egypt’s workforce was employed in the tourism sector. In 2011 visitors decreased by 37%. I haven’t seen figures for 2012 or this year but on my last trip to Luxor in April the historical sites remained uncrowded and there were more cruise boats moored six-or-seven-deep along the riverbank than sailing up and down the Nile.

English: Temple of Hatshepsut, Luxor, Egypt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those of us for whom Egypt is a favourite holiday destination can only hope for a swift resolution to the current political turmoil and spare a thought for all those people who contribute to making our visits so memorable and who must now be going through such tough times.

Great Temple at Abu Simbel, Egypt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Egypt has a unique and awe-inspiring cultural heritage. Having been preserved for all these millennia it would be a tragedy to watch it to crumble beneath the weight of political chaos now. I can only hope the reports that some of Egypt’s ancient sites are unprotected and vulnerable to thieves are exaggerated. So my wish today is for a speedy return to calm so that Egypt may once again welcome foreign visitors so we can marvel at her monumental history and help preserve it for future generations. And, if you’d like to go there in your imagination since you can’t go there for real right now, you may wish to sample my trilogy of novels set in Luxor…

Fiona Deal

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

Book 2 of Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt

Author of Carter’s Conundrums, Tutankhamun’s Triumph and Hatshepsut’s Hideaway – following Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt – all available in Kindle or paperback on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

History repeats itself in Egypt

So, Morsi has been ousted and scenes of the celebrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square have been flashed around the globe.

Photo Credit: Amr Nabil pic.twitter.com/Utceetv5zI

As an outsider to Egypt I find it hard to take a definitive view of the happenings in Egypt this week. The closest thing I can compare it to is trying to look inside someone else’s marriage. Only the people on the inside really know the truth. It’s easy to take a ‘superior’Western view and claim the Egyptian’s first foray into democracy has been a disaster. But I’d hesitate to take the moral high ground when one looks at the history of bloodshed in the West through which, arguably, our own democracy has been won. Although perhaps our willingness to stand by our own decisions is telling. As a friend of mine said, ‘when we choose the wrong government – and when did we ever choose the right one – we live with it.’ That’s democracy. I guess the scenes of mass celebration tell their own story, with some Egyptians claiming they have now completed the revolution they started in 2011. The governments in the West state they cannot support the military intervention in Egypt that has removed a legitimately elected president. A cynic might say of course not. For how precarious might that make their own position? And the media reporters comment sagely about the precedent set as ‘the people’ make it clear that if they have the power to remove one elected president, they can surely do so again. But was Morsi the architect of his own downfall? At the risk of writing a political blog and as an outsider, I think my view would be yes. I certainly heard no words of conciliation or compromise in the speech he gave earlier in the week. The rot seemed to set in when he granted himself what one reporter called ‘Pharaonic’ powers in November last year – although under extreme pressure he rescinded most of them. And it’s clear he was presiding over a sinking economy. As a regular tourist to Egypt, I was dismayed on my last visit in April, to experience the almost-daily power cuts and to see the queues for cooking gas. And Morsi seemed intent on killing the already afflicted tourist industry stone dead. His decision a couple of weeks ago to appoint as Governor of Luxor a man implicated in the terrorist atrocity at Hatshepsut’s Temple in Luxor in 1997 seemed calculated to ensure tourists wouldn’t venture back to Egypt but surely succeeded only in hastening his own departure from office. The people rejected him for promoting an Islamist agenda. And so he now languishes under house arrest and the military run the show once again.

Some might say there is nothing new under the Egyptian sun and history has an interesting habit of repeating itself. It’s possible one of the first military coups in Egypt was led by General Horemheb at the end of the once-glorious 18th Dynasty, famous for such names as Hatshepsut, Thutmosis III and Tutankhamun. More recently, in 1952, the Association of Free Officers that ultimately saw President Nasser come to power, led the movement to topple the monarchy and remove King Farouk from his throne. Nasser is now feted as one of the towering political figures of modern Middle Eastern history and politics in the twentieth century. Interestingly, he distrusted the Moslem Brotherhood, and did much to clip their wings. Let’s hope there’s someone waiting in the wings in Egypt now who can lead the country on to better days.

So, moving from these political musings to some more personal musings. Where does all this leave me as the writer of a series of adventure/mystery stories set in present-day Egypt? My first three published novels are set in the period May – December 2012, when things were relatively calm; although the post-revolutionary landscape provided a useful backdrop to the stories. Each of these adventures has a link to ancient Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. My current novel, to be published next month, uses the more modern history around King Farouk’s removal and subsequent exile as its basis. I’m wondering, with the British Foreign Office’s rulings against all but essential travel to Egypt whether I may be forced to bring Merry and Adam home. Perhaps these are the risks a novelist must take in deciding to set her series in such turbulent times. The trouble with not writing purely historical books is not knowing the ultimate outcome. All I can do is hope and pray that Egypt can return to a more stable footing and happier times.

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

Fiona Deal -Author of four books following Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

Book 2 of Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt

Egypt – beyond the tourist bubble

On a recent trip to Luxor, a couple of experiences got me thinking about life outside the tourist bubble…

Firstly, I decided one evening to eat outside my hotel and visited a charming restaurant in downtown Luxor. It was warm and I was glad of the air conditioning. No sooner had I given my order – for a rather tasty Egyptian tagine – than all the lights went out and, yes, you guessed it, the air conditioning unit shut down. Apparently these power cuts were a daily – even several times daily – occurrence. Candles immediately appeared on all the tables and each of the waiters carried a small battery operated torch. Luckily an emergency generator kept the kitchen operational. But as the temperature started to rise (no air conditioning and all those candles) it struck me what a challenge it must be for local businesses having to deal with this type of interruption to their service on a nightly basis, and at peak trade. As one of the staff said to me, “When this happens in the evenings we’re at home, the heat and the pitch dark mean all you can do is lie down and pretend to be a vegetable.” I loved the prosaic attitude. But with temperatures at this time of year regularly hitting 40 degrees (and not cooling off much at night), it made me realise how much we tourists take the electricity supply for granted. Of course, the power cuts don’t affect the hotels because they have their own on site generators. Apparently the power cuts are the result of the government’s agreement to sell electricity to Israel. This link is the latest I’ve been able to discover about this agreement. I couldn’t quite make up my mind what I thought about all this. One one hand, I understand the government’s need to underpin the Egyptian economy – which relies so heavily on tourism (so sadly depleted since the revolution) and agriculture. But for this to be at the expense of local businesses struggling to keep their own heads above water during these tough times didn’t sit completely comfortably with me.

The second experience that gave me pause for thought was during a trip to the West Bank to visit some of the tombs of the nobles. These tombs riddle the Theban Hills giving it something of the appearance of a mountainous Swiss cheese. What’s fascinating is that over the centuries a modern village called Gurneh sprang up on the hillside, in many cases with the dwellings built literally on top of the ancient tombs. I remember on my first visit to Luxor in the 1980’s, the village was still there – although over the last decade or so the villagers have largely been relocated to the modern, purpose built New Gurneh to enable proper excavation of the Nobles’ tombs to take place.

My taxi driver for my excursion to the West Bank was a friendly chap (I’ve yet to meet an unfriendly one) called Hassan. Once he’d deposited me at the tombs I’d chosen to explore (see my previous blog about the El Khokha tombs), he then offered to drive me around the village of New Gurneh so I could see for myself the new homes so many people have relocated to. I was impressed. He showed me the school and the hospital. Then, on the return journey, he suggested I might like to call in on his family for some tea. Being decidedly hot and dusty by this stage, this was an appealing idea. The Egyptian tea is hot and sweet, served without milk, and usually with fresh mint. He took me to a rather tumbledown mud brick house near the canal that runs inland from the Nile along the West Bank. It was deliciously cool inside, the windows shuttered and the thick mud brick walls keeping the heat of the sun out. The interesting thing was that tea wasn’t the only thing I was offered. As I sipped the hot, fragrant beverage, his brother brought me a selection of ancient Egyptian artefacts to look at. Hassan carefully explained in rather broken English that his family grew up in the old village of Gurneh. Many of them had ancient tombs as cellars. As children they made a habit of digging for treasure, and the artefacts I was being shown now represented just one families’ collection. There were lots of small carved figurines made from faience, and small stone scarabs and carved cats. The piece de resistance was an exquisitely carved stone head of a pharaoh, complete with the uraeus snake rising from his brow. It was heavy, probably solid granite, and rested in my palm, probably about the size of a large orange. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hassan and his brother very keen for me to make an offer on any of the pieces that took my fancy. This presented me with something of a dilemma. I did not wish to appear rude in the face of their hospitality and I could certainly sympathise with their attempts to supplement a no doubt meagre family income. But at the same time I had horrible visions of being stopped by customs officials at the airport and trying to explain how a genuine pharaonic artefact came to be in my luggage. It was enough to bring me out in a cold sweat. But it made me wonder … If this was just one families’ selection of the artefacts they’d dug up, effectively from their own back yards, how many more such exquisite and possibly important pieces must there be stored in cupboards and boxes in the homes of the ordinary people of Luxor’s West Bank? The Egyptian people live a simple agricultural life. I’ll be honest, I was a little bit horrified to be offered antiquities for sale in a private home. But “finders-keepers” is a deep-seated concept in many cultures. So who am I to judge these warm, welcoming people for trying to earn a few extra pennies from the ancient Egyptian artefacts that literally turned up under the floorboards, so to speak? I resisted the temptation and eased my conscience with a generous tip when Hassan deposited me back at my hotel.

So, the economy in Egypt is struggling and the local people seize whatever opportunities they can to make a living in often difficult circumstances. I admire them. And I do what I can… just small things like preferring to visit the sites by taxi and in the company of an Egyptian guide, rather than on an organised tour with one of the travel agencies. I’d rather put my money in the pockets of the local people where possible.

These little slices of everyday Egyptian life are so special. I am a writer, and have so far published three mystery/adventure stories set in present-day Egypt, so experiences like these are invaluable.

I have been back from my most recent trip for a few weeks now. When I look back I find it is not the tombs and temples that made the most significant impression on this occasion. I remember the night the lights went out in the restaurant, and I remember the thrill of handling a genuine artefact in a humble homestead on the West Bank. These are memories to treasure – a little slice of the real Egypt outside the tourist bubble.

Fiona Deal

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

Book 2 of Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt

Places to stay in Egypt – great book locations

Jolie Ville Kings Island (Photo credit: iifu)

I have now completed three novels set in Egypt and am approximately two-thirds of the way through the fourth. My central character, Merry, is a tourist to Egypt and starts her series of madcap adventures in Carter’s Conundrums while staying at the Jolie Ville hotel, which is situated on Kings Island, just outside Luxor. I’ve been lucky enough to stay at the delightful Joilie Ville twice, in 2009 and 2011. The sunsets looking across the Nile are the most spectacular I’ve seen anywhere in the world.

Merry also gets the chance to stay in two of Egypt’s finest old hotels – both world class – both dating from Victorian times. The first is the Mena House, once a Khedive hunting lodge built at Giza, a stone’s throw from the foot of the pyramid plateau. Here’s a snap of me taken in 2008 in the Mena House garden, with the pyramids in the background. It was a hazy day, but you get the general idea of how close they are.

The second of these grand Victorian hostelries is the impressive Winter Palace in Luxor. This is where Lord Carnarvon stayed during the heady days of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by his excavator, Howard Carter. I don’t imagine it’s changed much since then. It makes a wonderful setting for a novel. I’m also setting chunks of my latest novel, Farouk’s Fancies there – to be published this summer. It’s no coincidence that King Farouk, the last sovereign of Egypt – who was deposed in the 1950’s an exiled to Europe – once used The Winter Palace as his home in Luxor.

While Carter’s Conundrums and Tutankhamun’s Triumph are both set at the Jolie Ville hotel, the third book, Hatshepsut’s Hideaway, takes Merry on a Nile cruise from Luxor to Aswan and back for her latest adventure. I chose as my setting the wonderful steamship SS Misr, which dates from 1918 and was lovingly restored by Jules Verne. SS Misr was also once owned by King Farouk, who hosted lavish parties on board. I took a Nile cruise on the Misr in 2008 -a superb trip.

If you’re travelling to Egypt – and I heartily recommend it despite the political situation – you’re spoilt for choice for wonderful places to stay. My personal favourite has to be The Jolie Ville. How can you beat a hotel that comes complete with its own star attraction – Ramses the camel offering rides to all and sundry? Nothing comes close to the experience of sipping a cocktail while watching the fiery sun slowly slipping beyond the Theban Hills on the West Bank of the Nile. Enjoy!

Fiona

Don’t miss the Tombs of the Nobles – el-Khokha Tombs

One of the highlights of my trip to Luxor was the chance to visit some of the little-known Theban Tombs. They riddle the Theban Hills like a mountainous Swiss cheese. According to my guide book there are thousands of them, although only a handful are open to the public with a ticket purchased from the ticket booth near the Colossi of Memnon. I visited the three tombs of El-Khokha.

The tomb of Dhuti is unusual for containing seated statues,presumably images of the deceased tomb-owner himself, gazing over his grave goods.

Nefersekhuru and Neferrenpet were both Scribes of the Treasury in the Estate of Amun-Ra during the second half of the reign of Ramses II,

and would presumably have known each other. It’s tempting to see thrm trying to out-do each other with their tombs. Both bear their original paintings, the colours remarkably preserved considering the passage of some three thousand years. Nefersekhuru’s tomb has a beautifully painted geometrically patterned ceiling, shown here in the photograph.

The Theban tombs show us a slice of real life that’s not so easy to glimpse in the royal tombs, which are laden with religious iconography. These are the houses of eternity that you or I may have chosen for ourselves, had we happened to live in dynastic Egypt and boast a reasonably good job. Here’s just a selection of the scenes. The guard on duty was more than happy for me to take photographs in return for a little baksheesh. I switched off the flash of course.

Do visit if you ever get the chance. These wonderful little sepulchres are not to be missed.

Fiona Deal

Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt.

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

Dendera Zodiac

The Dendera Zodiac was on the ceiling of the Greco-Roman temple of Hathor at Dendera (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ok, so here’s the question that’s been playing on my mind today. Is it a good thing or not that the original Dendera zodiac was chipped from the wall of the temple at some point during the nineteenth century by the early explorers of Egypt and now resides in Le Louvre in Paris? Would it not be better for it to have remained in situ in the wonderful Ptolemaic temple where it was first carved?

I visited Dendera Temple yesterday. It’s an hour’s drive north along the desert road from Luxor; or it’s possible to take a boat trip if you want to make a whole day of it.

The temple sits on the West Bank of the Nile, opposite the modern town of Qena. It’s quite simply stunning. A beautifully preserved temple, full of the chirping of hundreds of sparrows. The tops of the columns in the Hypostyle Hall are unusual for having the Hathor-headed capital – still with original colours. It’s right up there with some of the other hugely impressive temples of ancient Egypt.

This temple was built towards the end of the Ptolemaic period, some two thousand years ago. There’s a huge carving on the back wall of Cleopatra with Caesar and their son Caesarian who was sadly never to assume his place at Pharaoh once the Roman Empire fully took charge after the joint suicide of Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

A clean-up job has begun inside the temple. The roof is blackened from the centuries when the temple almost disappeared beneath the sands of time; and the old Bedoiuns used to camp out inside the temple walls, and build fires to keep warm and for their cooking pots. The smoke from these fires has blackened the roof with centuries’ worth of soot. The careful cleaning job is revealing a remarkable ceiling, beautifully painted and with its original colours still largely intact. This picture looks like it’s half in the shadow and half in the light. Actually, it shows half the ceiling – cleaned – and the other half still blackened with dirt.

But back to the question that’s been bugging me. The trouble is, I can argue it both ways. The museums of the world – notably the British Museum in London, Metropolitan in New York, Le Louvre in Paris and the Turin Museum in Italy – are filled with treasures taken from Egypt in those early days of exploration before the Egyptian Antiquities Service put a stop to it in the early twentieth century.

My heart tells me that Egypt’s treasures should have remained in Egypt. I would love to visit the temples and see them filled with their statues and original wall carvings. I can’t help but feel Egypt has been robbed of some of its fabulous heritage. But it’s also a simple fact that some people will never get the opportunity to travel to Egypt – and to see the fabulous statuary and artefacts in the museums of the world is better than never seeing them at all. And perhaps this is what inspires many people to come to Egypt in the first place. So it’s a circular argument in the end.

But standing in Dendera temple yesterday, and looking at the huge metre-square replica of the zodiac on the roof of the dark little chapel where the original once resided; I couldn’t help but question the ethics of those original explorers who chipped this remarkable carving off the wall and shipped it to Europe.

Fiona Deal – Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt. Three modern adventure stories set in Egypt, with ancient mysteries to solve…

Pharaoh leaves nothing to chance

Façade, Temple of Seti I, Abydos, Egypt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday we visited Abydos, a drive of about 2 hours north from Luxor along the desert road that connects Cairo with Aswan. Abydos is one of the oldest sites in Egypt and contains archaeological remains from every period of ancient Egypt.

A cult grew up in ancient times that it was the burial place of the god Osiris; and for a thousand years or more ancient Egyptians made pilgrimages to the site to make offerings.

Today, it’s most famous for the temple of Seti I (father to the prodigious builder Ramses II) who ruled at the start of the 19th Dynasty, a little over three thousand years ago. The quality of the carving, many in raised relief, is outstanding. The detail on Seti’s crown in this photograph, for example, is exquisite.

The temple is contemporary with the great Hypostyle Hall of pillars at Karnak. But unlike at Karnak, here at Abydos the original colours of the wall reliefs are beautifully preserved. Perhaps because of this, the content of the scenes is easy to make out, even for the untrained eye. Here we have Seti I making offerings before all the major gods of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. We see him before falcon-headed Horus, ram-headed Knum, ibis-headed Thoth, lion-headed Sekhmet, jackel-headed Anubis and crocodile-headed Sobek. We see scene after scene of him before Osiris (god of the afterlife) and his wife Isis, with their son Horus.

Temple of Osiris at Abydos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course, these scenes are replicated on temple walls the length and breadth of Egypt. But what really struck me at Abydos – where they hit you square between the eyes – is how little Pharaoh was prepared to leave to chance. Literally every square inch of his temple is decorated with scenes of him worshipping the gods. I’m very sure he was well looked after in the afterlife!

Abydos is also famous for its ‘king-list’. This is a wall carved from one end to the other with the cartouches of the kings of Egypt who preceded Seti I – from Narmer who unified upper and lower Egypt in the Old Kingdom through the Seti’s father Ramses I. Notably, there are a few key individuals missing. Hatshepsut has been left out – possibly because she was a woman. And the controversial kings of the Amarna period (Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ay) also fail to get a mention. The Amarna period was within the living memory of the older folk among the population – a time of social upheaval and religious oppression.

Abydos is a wonderful temple – well worth the drive from Luxor. And I think my visit may have given me another idea for a book!

Fiona Deal

Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt.

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

The curse of Tutankhamun

George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, at Howard Carter’s home on the Theban west bank, according to Griffith Institute, Oxford (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The curse of Tutankhamun was born ninety years ago today, with the untimely death of his patron and benefactor Lord Carnarvon, allegedly of an infected mosquito bite.

The story of the curse started circulating immediately. Despite persistent ill-health following a near fatal car accident as a younger man, Lord Carnarvon was only in his fifties when he died on 5 April 1923.

Howard Carter famously discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb on 4/5 November 1922, and Lord Carnarvon was there to enter it with him for the first time three weeks later.

The story of the pharaoh’s curse that ‘death shall come on swift wings to those who enter this place’ took hold immediately.

Here’s a link to an article explaining a bit more. Mummy’s curse.

As a matter of chance, today I visited Howard Carter’s house on the West Bank of the Nile, at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. It’s a hugely atmospheric place, now open as a museum.

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

It was very evocative for me to be back in Howard Carter’s house, as this is the setting for the opening scene of my first book, Carter’s Conundrums. Merry discovers she’s been inadvertently trapped there for the night. It’s the start of a thrilling adventure. Trying to escape, she smashes the picture frame of a watercolour painting by Carter … only to find a secret message and some mysterious hieroglyphics inside. It sets her off on a quest to solve the puzzle she’s been presented.

Here’s a photograph I took this morning showing Howard Carter’s study – this is the window Merry attempts to escape through, and a replacement for the lamp she smashed !

Book 2 of Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt

I also made use of the story of the pharaoh’s curse in my second book, Tutankhamun’s Triumph.

Everywhere you look in this ancient land of the Pharaohs there’s something to inspire the imagination.

Tonight I will raise a glass to toast the memory of Lord Carnarvon, and the ‘wonderful things’ he and Howard Carter discovered for the modern world.

Fiona Deal

Cruising the Nile

The palm trees nod politely to each other along the riverbank. Black and white kingfishers dart in and out of the shallows, playing a game of hide and seek among the reeds that line the waters edge. The great river Nile surges underneath the boat, making its journey from Ethiopia to spill into the Mediterranean, thousands of miles away. This is Egypt.

To cruise the Nile is to sail through a timeless landscape. Ok, so the electricity pylons compete with the ancient stone-built pylons (or gateways) of the ancient temples. We’re not so much sailing under the gigantic sails of a Victorian dahabeeyah as being propelled through the water by diesel, no doubt leaving choking fumes in our wake.

But this is still Egypt. Exotic, timeless, romantic and just slightly scary. The sun beats from a hard, hot sky, demanding submission in much the same way I imagine the ancient Pharaohs once did. The locals hassle incessantly, citing the delights of caleche rides (horse and carriage) and trips out on a felucca at sunset. Baksheesh is a way of life. The price they suggest is never actually what they mean, or what you’ll end up paying if you’re unwary. But the people are friendly, welcoming and eager to share the delights of their country and way of life.

I don’t think there’s anywhere quite like it on the planet. Ancient and modern juxtaposed in a way that makes you wonder which is more deserving of its position.

This is the setting for my series of books following Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt. Through her, I get to spend all my leisure time in the fabled land of the Pharaohs. There’s nowhere I’d rather be, whether it’s for real or the opportunity to travel along the banks of the Nile in my imagination.

Here’s a short video I made showing typical river scenes from the deck of a Nile cruiser. I hope it brings a little slice of Egypt to wherever you are right now.

Fiona

Egypt – a timeline – ancient to modern

Egypt’s history spans an amount of time so immense it’s head-spinning. I remember as a sixteen year old, on my first visit to Cairo, looking up at the Great Pyramid of Giza and finding it impossible to get my brain to compute a passage of something like four-and-a-half thousand years.

Frankly, I have the same problem today. On a Nile cruise, it’s typical to see monuments spanning at least fifteen centuries, from the ‘old timers’ like Karnak through to the relative ‘newbies’ such as Philae.

Trying to sort them into some sort of chronology is no easy task. As an author (of the series following Meredith Pink’ Adventures in Egypt) it’s important I’m accurate about the age of the ancient monuments relative to each other. So, primarily to keep it all straight in my own head, but also to help travellers to the land of the pharaohs, and those with an interest in Egypt but – like me – no scholarly background … I’ve had a go at producing a timeline. Here’s the result …

Book Four of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

Just to let you know, the latest mystery of modern and ancient Egypt is underway. Chapter 1 is in the bag, and chapter 2 in draft. Usually it takes me 6 – 8 weeks to get a book written – so it’s on target for a late spring publication date.

Fiona Deal

Author of series “Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt”Ancient Egyptian mysteries wrapped up in modern Egyptian adventures. Escapist fiction centred on Ancient Egypt.

Category Archives: ancient Egypt

Sailing the Nile on a Victorian Dahabeeyah

Nothing new under the Egyptian Sun

Howard Carter’s Legacy Lives on…

Tourists return to Egypt

Tourism in Egypt takes a hit

History repeats itself in Egypt

Egypt – beyond the tourist bubble

Places to stay in Egypt – great book locations

Don’t miss the Tombs of the Nobles – el-Khokha Tombs

Dendera Zodiac

Pharaoh leaves nothing to chance

The curse of Tutankhamun

Cruising the Nile

Egypt – a timeline – ancient to modern

Book Four of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt