Thu 1 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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It’s one of the most famous sites in the world. How could I refuse?
(Sorry for the people that move in the background between the two shots. I tried to paint them out, but it was very easy to see where I made alterations when viewed in 3D.)
Local Tags: 3d, carissa, egypt, giza, ken, pyramids, sandi, sphinx, stereogram, stereophotography
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Fri 2 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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One of the things that really kept Sandi guessing during our trip was Egyptian money. Egyptians use the pound (LE) as their primary denomination, but unlike an English pound, the Egyptian one is only worth about 20 US cents. This makes negotiating prices difficult because you alway have to remember to multiply or divide by 5 as appropriate to find out how much something really costs, and the merchants here definitely take advantage of this.
Egypt has used paper money almost exclusively in modern times, but a few years ago, they introduced a 1 LE coin with King Tut’s mask on it. This, of course, makes them very attractive as inexpensive souvenirs. It would not surprise me if the government has done this deliberately, following the example of our own mint issuing quarters for each of the fifty states. I would guess that the profit margin on a 1 pound coin is actually pretty high. 1 LE notes are still more common in circulation though… possibly because all of the tourists are taking the coins home with them.
Of course, that didn’t stop us from collecting enough of the coins for Carissa to bring one back for each of her classmates.
Sat 3 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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The main activity of our second day in Cairo was a visit to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. I wish we could post lots of interesting pictures we took at the museum, but unfortunately, photography is not allowed. I don’t think this is for any nefarious reason — I think it’s done primarily to keep the crowds moving. The museum is very busy, even early in the day, and it would probably be impossible to get close to anything in the museum if it was filled with camera bugs.
That being said, the museum is an amazing place. The treasure of King Tut‘s tomb is the highlight, but there are lots of other well-preserved artifacts there as well.
Plus, it’s not as if the items in the museum have never been photographed. That’s the power of the internet — if one person has the pictures, we all have the pictures. If you want to see what we saw in the museum, take a look at Egyptian Museum of Cairo’s Collection Highlights.
Here are some of my favorites from this collection:
(click the picture to view original page) This is a fragment of a statue of Hatshepsut, one of the few female pharaohs, and probably the most powerful one. We have more information about her than many other pharaohs because her successor, Thutmose III, went to great lengths to bury or hide evidence of her existence, which ironically preserved her memory for us to find in the modern era.
Notice her smile: she was Pharaoah for 22 years years, a reign which is generally acknowledged to be relatively peaceful and prosperous.
We saw pictures of this statue of a scribe everywhere in Egypt. Apparently, if you want to associate yourself or your product with smart people, this is the guy you use in your ad.
Scribes seem to be highly regarded in ancient Egyptian culture. Of course, what would you expect — these are the guys writing the records that describe how highly regarded they are!
This is a close up of the statue of Rahotep, who may have been the father of a Pharaoh (I’ve seen conflicting accounts). Notice the inlaid eyes, which give the statue a very lifelike appearance.
It’s also worth taking a look at these pages: One showing the mask and coffin of King Tut and another showing some of the statues of King Tut. Apparently at the time the author visited the Egyptian Museum, the only restriction was that he could not use a flash. I would have happily lived with that restriction!
Carissa found much of the rest of the museum to be “creepy”, including the objects like the mummified bread (black and stone-like — and looking more than a little bit, um, pre-digested) and the animal mummies (cats, crocodiles, monkeys, etc., even a few fakes that were sold to unsuspecting customers!) She was also impressed by the wall containing 400 tiny statues of King Tut that were placed in his tomb to be his servants in the afterlife. Apparently the small size was important so the little doppelgangers would have to obey their master or be crushed!
I was a little shocked by our guide when she showed us some items, like a fan made of ostrich feathers from King Tut’s tomb that has deteriorated more in the last 80 years since being removed from the tomb than in the previous thousands of years since it was made. This seems to be a recurring theme we’ve seen in Egypt — while some things are better preserved by being discovered and taken care of, many other things are not so fortunate.
Local Tags: cairo, carissa, egypt, hatshepsut, ken, king tut, sandi, thutmose iii
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Sun 4 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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We got back home from our long trip to Egypt Jordan and New York City yesterday afternoon. It was a great trip, but it’s good to be home again. I went to bed about 10PM, which is much earlier than I usually go to bed (even during the long days of the trip), and I didn’t get up until about 7:30 this morning — I never sleep 9 and a half hours unless I’m sick! I was definitely worn out and it was nice to sleep in my own bed again.
Cece and Sadie were happy to see us and we were happy to see them too. We gave them all of the little trinkets we picked up for them during the trip — mostly key chains (which CeCe collects) and postcards (which Sadie Collects).
As usual, I didn’t get nearly as much blogging done during the trip as I had hoped. I have a list of at least 30 more items I want to post. Hopefully, I’ll start catching up in the next few days, but don’t count on it… Tomorrow, Carissa and I need to start working on the vacation video for her school project, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have to write. Maybe I’ll catch up a bit at work, but there’s a lot to go through, including a lot of panoramas and stereograms to assemble.
Final picture count:
3806, not counting video clips or around 100 pictures we took with our cell phones to post to Facebook or mail quickly to Cece and Sadie.
2431 in Egypt
1188 in Jordan (not including around 50 photos of Petra that seem to have gotten corrupted on the memory card 
)
187 in New York City (we didn’t want to look like tourists 
)
The scary thing is, I would have actually taken a lot more pictures if I could have. Many sites in Egypt have restrictions on photography, sometimes to protect the sites, but often for reasons that are unclear. Surprisingly, the reasons for disallowing photographs almost never seem to include “selling more souvenirs”, because often there were no relevant souvenir photos to buy. I suspect that one of the main reasons for disallows photos is to keep the crowds moving along during the high season.
The total picture count therefore includes:
At the rate we were taking pictures, the total would have been well over 5000 if we had been able to photograph these sites. On the other hand, it’s not like these places have never been photographed, so I’m sure I can find pointers to good photos on the web and use those for reference when I write about those places.
Local Tags: carissa, celia, egypt, indianapolis, jordan, ken, new york city, sadie, sandi
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Mon 5 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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After going to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in the morning, we spent most of the afternoon travelling from Cairo to Aswan. By the time we got checked into our hotel and found dinner, it was after 9PM. This apparently still qualifies as early evening in Aswan, though, because the shopping district was still hopping!
We decided to walk through the bazaar to see if we could find a bargain on some of the souvenirs that Sandi wanted to bring back. It was a little difficult to make any progress through the streets because there weren’t many tourists there and we definitely looked like tourists. What this meant is that every shop keeper and his family was constantly hassling us to come looked at his store, where there was always guaranteed to be “no hassling”.
Carissa and Sandi, not being hassled by a non-hassling shopkeeper busy not hassling people into his store where also, no hassling takes place. Looking is free. No hassle.
Sandi eventually found a stall selling the little perfume bottles and inlaid boxes that she and Carissa wanted to bring home as gifts to Celia, Sadie, and Carissa’s friends. She struck up a conversation with the salesman (who ostensibly was not the owner of the cart), which eventually led to one of the most exciting parts of our trip so far. I’m going to try to recreate the conversation, but I’m not sure if I can do it justice.
Mohammed (we didn’t know his name until very late in he exchange, but bear with me): You like bottles? Tell me which ones you like and I give you good price.
Sandi picks up a box filled with the little bottles. They are boxed in set of five.
Mohammed: These are very nice. The are made in Egypt.
Sandi: How much are they?
Mohammed: Where are you from?
Sandi: The USA.
Me (guessing what he really wants to know): How much in Egyptian pounds?
Mohammed: You buy the box?
Sandi: Yes.
Mohammed: For you, good price. 250.
This price makes the bottles about $5 a piece. It’s a little better than the price we got for the one bottle we bought at the perfume store for Carissa, but Sandi has made up her mind not to pay more than $3 each.
Sandi: No, that’s more than I want to pay.
Carissa: We can get them cheaper someplace else.
Give it to Carissa, she learns fast. When we were at the perfume store, she kept talking about how much she liked the bottle we were looking at, and this made it difficult to negotiate on the price. Sandi explained this to her, and now Carissa has adapted to her new role.
Mohammed, though turns to his next trick — the quantity discount.
Mohammed: How many do you want to buy?
Sandi (after talking it over with Carissa and counting up the total number of gifts needed): Ten.
Mohammed: for 10, I give good price.
Mohammed steps away for a moment to consult with an old man, possibly his father.
Mohammed: 400.
Sandi: I don’t know.
Me: That’s still a lot. I don’t have that much.
This is true — I don’t have that much, but even if it wasn’t true, I still wouldn’t pay 400 Egyptian pounds for the bottles.
Mohammed (thinking for a moment): 60.
Sandi and I look puzzled for a moment, but I get out my wallet and start to pull out 60 Egyptian pounds.
Mohammed: No, 60 American.
Sandi looks deflated. I put my wallet back. He’s trying to bait and switch us.
Sandi picks up a couple of inlaid boxes and start to look at them instead.
Mohammed: Ah, you like the boxes too. Please take a look! Tell me which ones you like and I give you a good price.
Mohammed picks up a few more and start arranging them in his hands for display.
Mohammed: These are good boxes. Very fine. Look, smells like Egypt.
He smells the box, then holds it up for Sandi to smell. She sniffs it, not knowing what this is supposed to demonstrate. She picks two of the boxes out to take as gifts for Celia and Sadie.
Sandi: How much?
Mohammed: 400.
Me: Egyptian pounds, right?
Mohammed: Yes.
This makes each box $40, which is clearly insane for a box of the size and quality he is selling. The haggling begins anew, not only on the inlaid boxes, but also on the bottles.
After a lot of back and forth, and by this I mean, a LOT of back and forth, I’m pretty sure the sun has started to come up and we’ve missed our tour bus, literally it feels like eternity is passing us by, so much so that I honestly begin to wonder if I might die on this spot of old age, and well to be honest, it’s not that it wasn’t entertaining. It was an exhilarating experience, and working so hard for the product you want to buy is kind of an unusual experience and… Wait, where was I?
Oh yeah, after a lot of back and forth, the prices come down to: 120 pounds for the bottles, and the same for the boxes.
Now again, I don’t have that much Egyptian money on me, so Sandi decides to take only the bottles. I pay Mohammed.
Us: Thank you.
Mohammed: I make you good price on the boxes. Very good.
Us (edging away): Thank you.
Mohammed: I sell boxes for 110!
Us (walking away): Thank you!
Mohammed (following us): 100!
Us (continuing to walk): That’s OK, we don’t want them.
Mohammed (still following): 90!… 80!… 70!…
We stop again. We’re at least half a block away from the stall now.
Me: 60. If you will sell them for 60, we’ll buy them.
Mohammed: OK, 60.
I pay him 60 Egyptian pounds. But we’re not done yet.
Mohammed: Give me 10 pounds since I gave you such good price.
I’m momentarily taken aback. My first reaction is a little bit of anger at his gall to ask for more after we’ve settled on the price. But I realize that we’re only talking about $2, and it has been quite a ride, so I give it to him. He thanks us, reminds us that he will be there tomorrow if we need more, and starts walking back to the stall.
After all is said and done, we bought 10 small perfume bottles for about $25 and 2 small inlaid boxes for $12. I’m sure that we didn’t get a really good deal. I guess that Mohammed’s profit even at that price was very good. There’s no way he sold any of that stuff for less than he paid for it, and we probably would have been able to talk him down even further if we really wanted to.
But we felt like we had gotten a decent price, and the total amount we spent meant far less to us that it did to Mohammed. Plus, it’s given us something very interesting to talk about, and that’s what you want when you are travelling.
Tue 6 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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As part of my occasional Stupid American tours the World series, I can now say that I’ve eaten at McDonald’s on five continents thanks to our first dinner in Aswan. This leaves only Austrailia remaining, unless they open a franchise on Antarctica.
Notice how impressed Carissa is about my accomplishment. No child can deny the pride they feel when seeing a parent accomplish an important goal such as this.
The main contribution that McDonald’s has made to middle eastern cuisine is the McArabia, shown here by Sandi (yes, the sandwich really fills that entire box). It’s a flat bread sandwich with either beef or chicken, cucumber sauce, lettuce tomate and onion. the only thing that could possibly improve it would be the additon of bacon. Oh, wait.
Again, notice how excited Carissa is by this momentous occasion.
I had a Chicken Big Mac, which is just exactly what it sounds like, but for some reason we didn’t take a picture.
Local Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, mcarabia, mcdonald's, sandi, stupid american
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Wed 7 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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I sneaked off really early in the morning to go from Aswan to Abu Simbel without Sandi and Carissa. It is an impressive site, but I’m kind of getting used to that here. 
Here is a stereogram I captured of two of the statues in front of Ramses II temple. I tried to get a full view, but there was no way to get a good stereogram from that position. There were too many other tourists for that — even at 7:30 in the morning.
More later…
Local Tags: 3d, abu simbel, egypt, ken, stereo photography, stereogram
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Thu 8 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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As I mentioned yesterday, I got up very early in the morning to go to Abu Simbel — about 3:45 and I was back at the hotel in Aswan by about 11, ready to start the day touring in Aswan.
Abu Simbel is an optional part of most tours. It’s very out of the way, nearly at the border with Sudan, and there isn’t much else nearby to see. What is there, however, are two of the most impressive ancient temple ruins in Egypt.’
The larger of the two temples is dedicated to Ramses II, and the other is dedicated to his favorite wife, Nefertari. This second temple is unique in Egypt in being dedicated to a consort of the Pharaoh.
The temples, which were carved into the rock face of a mountain, were completed sometime around 1265 BC, and then sometime afterward lost under the shifting sand of the desert.
The Swiss explorer John Louis Burkhardt rediscovered the two temples of Abu Simbel in 1812. At the time of his discovery, only the the heads of the pharaoh Rameses II were visible above the sand.
The sand was excavated five years later by Giovanni Belzoni, who was the first European to enter the temple. There are sketches (one of which is above) drawn in 1838 by David Roberts, that show the sand had already undone much of Belzoni’s work (the entrance to the temple is just barely visible in the lower middle part of the sketch).
When the Egyptians decided to build the High Dam in Aswan, it became apparent that the temples of Abu Simbel were in the flood plain of the new lake, Lake Nasser. Abu Simbel was literally cut out from the mountain piece by piece, and rebuilt on higher ground. A donation campaign began in 1959, and the move began in 1964, eventually completing in 1968.
The original locations of the temples, from a picture taken in the early 1900s.
A picture of the move in progress. Notice the arch that has been built to support the false mountain that now surrounds the temple.
Wow. Just, wow.
The exterior of the temple of Ramses II, as it stands today.
The exterior of Nefertari’s temple. Is it just me, or does it seem a little odd that Nefertari only appears twice, but Ramses II appears 4 times?
Unfortunately, like the Egyptian Museum, visitors are not allowed to take pictures inside either temple. I bought a few pictures of the temple, that have been helpfully distributed without copyright. I’ll post a few of those when I get a chance.
Fri 9 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under Uncategorized
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I went back and looked at the pictures again, and it turns out that I did get one more decent stereogram of Abu Simbel. This one shows the complete exterior of the Temple of Ramses II.
Local Tags: 3d, abu simbel, egypt, ken, stereo photography, stereogram
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Sat 10 Apr 2010
Posted by Ken Atherton under egypt, vacation
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As I mentioned in my last post, I bought a set of pictures during my visit to Abu Simbel. Since I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the temple, I’ve scanned these photos so I can share what the interior looks like.
Disclaimer: The pictures I got aren’t labelled or ordered in any way, so I’m having to research the details about the different views as I go. Some of the pictures I am not completely sure of the locations, and so it is entirely possible that I have confused a picture from one temple with the other.
This is the main entry of the Great Temple. It looked a lot like this when I saw it, except it was packed pillar-to-pillar with other tourists like me. :)
A better view of two of the statues of Ramses II in the entryway. I believe these are the two back statues on the left hand side in the first picture. (The pink streaks are a printing error.)
These statues are at the very back of the temple in the sacrarium. From left to right, the statues represent Ptah (god of darkness), Amun Ra (king of all gods), Ramses II, and Harmakhis (god of the rising sun). The position of Ramses II is intended to indicate that he is among equals.
The layout of the temple is designed such that the three statues on the right are fully illuminated by the sun on two specific days of the year, six months apart. The two dates are the day of Ramses II’s birth, and the day of his coronation. Ptah, the god of darkness, is never directly illuminated by the sun.
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