Travels with Selkit - 3

OCTOBER 2nd, 2024:

Today I have to finish with Cairo and leave for Luxor

An online booking has been done on an express leaving at 10 pm from Ramses Station (it cost me a fortune) and reaching Luxor by 9. But, as per the website, I can't simply board the train - I don't know the seat number etc and for that, a phone call has to be made to a certain Mr Tariq in Cairo.

Tariq says on the phone: "Do you insist on the 10 pm train? I can get you a seat on a train leaving at 8 pm and reaching Luxor at 6 am and it's a very good train!"

I can't remember ever having heard an offer like that. I say I booked the 10 pm train because i don't want to reach Luxor so early.

"Sir!" he almost pleads "the eight pm train is very good! I can get u a nice seat!

(why is he so desperate? And as if a nice seat is a favor after i paid thru my nose for the ticket!)

But I can't argue with someone I haven't ever seen (and probably will never ever see) and that too in an alien land. I give in: "okay! what is the seat and coach number?"

"Sir, I can't tell you now. Please reach Ramses at 7.30 pm and ask at the Tourism Police office. I will arrange with them to give you your ticket - it will have seat number etc - and they will help you. It's a very good train!"

....

That is the situation in the morning. I push the train thing into the background and set out for the Grand Egyptian Museum, being built as a final and suitable resting place for all the treasures now in the dingy Egyptian Museum - Tut and all. The full shift might take years, if not decades, judging from what I am to see.

The GEM opens at 9 am and I am there on time. Entry fee - a whopping 1000 pounds. A board warns: "galleries are closed". But I have no choice but to enter.

From outside, the place looks like a swanky airport terminal - massive, futuristic with the pyramid as a recurring motif and lots of glass.

Right in front is a curiously mounted 'hanging obelisk' dating back to Ramses. In the black framework-like structure supporting it have been carved the names of Egypt in many world languages, among which I could spot only two or three Indian languages - one of which is .... മലയാളം (although the lettering is not quite correct)!!

A huge and sprawling atrium opens up - all I can say is: it simply does not look like the interior of anything, let alone a museum - just see this!

Deep within is a colossal Ramses striding powerfully towards the visitor - the very centerpiece of the whole affair. To me, this Ramses seems a little less distinguished as a work of art than the supine colossus of Memphis but is in near-perfect condition.

What is just as fascinating is some text put up there referring to Nasser's decision to shift this colossus from its original location in the Nile delta to a plaza in the heart of Cairo (from where, it has been brought to GEM as protection from pollution/vibrations) as "a modern strongman symbolically using an ancient strongman to boost his own image"!

To the left of Ramses is a rising terraced slope with nearly a dozen life-plus sized statues of the enthroned pharaoh Senwosret dating back to 20th century BC. The thrones show a recurring motif that I am to encounter many times in this journey - two deities, straining like standard bearers to hold up a pharaonic cartouche. In the statues here, the task is performed either by the flabbily androgynous river god Hapi - a copy of him on either side of the cartouche - or a Horus-Thoth pair.

Here are some more sculptures. They are arranged on the steps of yet another tiered recess. There is an escalator going up from which one can see them collectively but it is much better to actually walk up the steps and get close.

The only pharaoh I can identify on statues: Akhenaton:

The kneeling figure on this sarcophagus is the goddess Isis (my initial guess is Selkit but some browsing corrects me):

Yet another highlight of GEM is one (or some) of Khufu's ceremonial boats, originally buried in a shrine next to the Great Pyramid and restored here. But to my disappointment, it is closed to visitors now.

And that is that. Overall, I have seen some some really solid and really ancient sculpture arranged in a space that is cool and weird in equal measure.

By midday, I am at the hotel. It is time to check out. Tariq's train is at 8 pm. There are some very hot and very vacant hours ahead. I am faced with a choice between the Museum of Civilization where I am told, are kept the mummies of many pharaohs including Ramses and the Museum of Islamic art. I pick the latter, a totally unknown entity. The reason: having seen all those statues showing Ramses as a stalwart athlete, I am not at all keen on seeing him as a shrunken and shrivelled corpse.

By 1.30 pm or so, I am at the Islamic Museum, located, as per the map, not too far from the Sultan Hassan mosque which I missed out on a couple of days back.

Mainstream Islamic art, since it mostly leaves out man and even animals/birds, is pattern-intensive, decorative and intricate. are some of the exhibits at the museum that hold my eye:

The museum has prominently put up a map of the world with the great centers of Islamic art marked. Two Indian sites find mention - Agra and Hampi(!).

I walk a couple of kilometers to reach Sultan Hassan mosque. There is enough time for a quick decco. Inside, as is becoming quite the norm, a fellow latches on to me, shows me around, says something about the mosque in very bad english and demands a tip. The one interesting bit of his performance was to chant the Shahadah in a deep baritone from the center of a huge space within the mosque to demonstrate some impressive reverberation. Both Sultan Hassan and the adjacent al Rifai mosque have very high walls reminiscent of European cathedrals but neither has flying buttresses.

The mosques will soon close for visitors so I step out and with a further 2 plus hours to fill, take a cab to the Cairo tower, a highrise tourist attraction located on an island in the Nile. One has to pay a 300 pounds fee to go up to the top floor and look all around through thick glass walls. The views are nice without being momentous - and 300 pounds is unreasonable. Looking west at the fading day, I can make out the two main pyramids in ghostly outline through the urban pollution. This might be the last time I see them, I muse.

I get out and walk a distance of nearly 3 kilometers (in the process, I once again, walk over the Nile and negotiate a gas chamber like stretch of urban mess) to the Ramses station.

The station building isn't very imposing. The Tourism Police booth is right at the entrance. I mention Tariq and Luxor train to a cop at the desk when another a very potbellied cop, who is just finishing Namaz, rises and fishes out an envelope with my name written on it. Within is this object - is this any kind of ticket at all!

Calling over a young fellow, the fat cop says: "please pay me some tip and then you go with this man to platform 11 and wait. Your train will come by 8 pm. It may be a bit late but it will come; all okay!"

I pay him his tip, pay another tip to the youngster who walks off in a hurry forcing me to run after him. In the process I miss out on a proper look around of the train terminal. All I can shoot is this object:

I wait for over an hour on platform 11. There are no announcements, nothing. So I approach the driver of each arriving train and show him my 'ticket' and am told. "No. wait!". Finally, the driver of the third train says: "Yes, Luxor, first coach!" I jump in in great relief and I am more relieved to see that seat 21 is a spacious and adjustable window seat.

The train - yes, it's pulled by a diesel loco that chugs like a Desi-built alco - leaves by 8.30 and crawls thru Cairo suburbs for quite a while. Then it crosses the Nile and halts at Giza. I try to spot the pyramids... and fail.

Past Giza, the train gains speed. I sink into a tired swoon...

OCTOBER 3rd, 2024:
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A very early start to the day's action - around 1 am, I am woken up by a ticket checker. At 4, another checker repeats the treatment; and yes, the lights in the coach burn bright thru the night. Past 5, the sky begins to grey and thru the smoky coach windows, one sees flat and lush-looking croplands and a line of barren, chalky hills beyond. Just pass 6, we pull into Luxor station.

My check-in at a resort on the west bank of the Nile is from 12. So, there are hours to fill. I get out, luggage and all. From outside, the station building looks as neat as a royal sarcophagus, well maybe.

It's a pleasant and clear morning (as per Wiki, Luxor is one of the driest and sunniest cities in the world. And let me say upfront, I won't be seeing a single piece of white cloud in the sky over my five days here!). The river is just about a kilometer to the west of the station. On the way is the vast enclosure of the Luxor temple, which opens at 6. I walk into the first temple of my trip:
The pylon (basically, gopuram, ceremonial gateway) into the temple with colossal statues on guard:

The pylon acquaints me with one of Ramses's obsessions - his 'great victory' over the Hittites in the battle of Kadesh. That's him as an Arjuna-like /maharathi', mowing down his puny enemies...(in reality, the battle was a draw that Ramses just about escaped with)

What looks like a botched restoration job-does the head match the rest?

A mosque that got patched onto the temple some centuries ago...(note: nowhere do I see any religiously motivated iconoclasm)

My personal favorite from all of the Luxor temple - a pharaonic cartouche flanked by a pair of heraldic serpents, one wearing the crown of lower Egypt, the other, of Upper Egypt; this emblem is carved repeatedly on some of those massive pillars.

Note: All those reliefs carved onto the pillars and pylons were once painted in brilliant colors. It's about time that a VR walk thru of the entire temple is made, with colors restored!

The sphinx avenue connecting Luxor temple with the even grander Karnak temple:

By 10.30, I am temporarily satiated by the temple and desperately in need of a shower and some rest (Luxor is a little hotter and a little more brighter than Cairo). Getting to the river bank, I ask for directions to the ferry (Luxor has no bridge across the Nile). One fellow says, "I take you over in my boat for 200 pounds". I know it is a con job but play along.

The part of west bank I get to looks very Kerala, indeed Kuttanad. Flat and very green riverine setting, highish density of population, hot and slightly humid weather, lots of resorts, narrow and poorly surfaced roads running parallel to the river, canals running alongside the roads with palm trunks as foot-bridges, stray dogs,...

I check in, shower and crash but by 4 I am up and about and walk to the north, leaving behind the canal-laced area and then westwards along a wide road running towards those chalky hills which now loom big and forbidding.

The two Memnon colossi (actually they are statues of the pharaoh Amenhotep III) mark an entry point into the vast Thebes Necropolis that stretches parallel to the river both to the north and south for several kilometers.

A little ahead, once stood the funerary temple of Amenhotep III. Precious little remains.

One reaches a fork: the left-going road winds into the range of hills and takes you to the Valley of the Queens and the Deir el Madina. The right branch leads to the Valley of the Nobles and then the temple of Hatshepsut and above all, the Valley of Kings. And straight ahead rises that ridge of bleak hills. So the West Bank of Luxor is a barely 3 km wide strip sustained by the Nile and just about holding out against the Sahara.

I retreat for the day. The return takes longer than it should - the closely spaced parallel canals mislead me into some blind alleys from which I eventually get out and to safety. For tomorrow, I arrange a bicycle from the resort people. I need to start at first light, at least by 6 am - "by midday, this place gets too hot!"

Before the day is done, I spend some time looking up 'Selkit'. First up, the 'dolphin' I imagined to sit on her head is actually a scorpion. Wiki says: Selkit protects the dead (protects?!) and guards the canopic jars that preserve the viscera extracted from the corpses to be mummified. Basically, it is quite a stretch to present her as a goddess welcoming *live* visitors as the Egypt Tourism authorities have done - but since I am a bit of a devotee now, I view this as a case of very creative repurposing!