The Egypt Story

While Egypt is well known for its Pharaonic artwork and treasures, the Egypt beyond that is not so well known. Maroon managed to master Egypt’s amazing maze of bureaucracies in authoring an award winning photo essay. Read more.

 

The minarets and domes of Cairo are part of the most impressive range of Moslem architecture in the world - the mosque for worship, the madrasa for worship and study, the mosque tombs, particularly of the Caliphs and Mamelukes, and the more modest khans, or merchants' storehouses, to which caravans came from Asia and Africa.

St. Anthony was an Egyptian from a village near the modern Beni Suef who obeyed the command "Sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor." He went into the Eastern Desert and achieved such renown for his austerities that this "athlete of Christ" was asked by the Emperor Constantine for the spiritual support that only such holiness could provide. Parts of the Monastery of St. Anthony may date from a time earlier than St. Anthony himself.

Harvesting wheat is often done by hand - much the way it is shown in the ancient tomb paintings.

Of the Pyramids at Giza only Chephren's retains some of its outer casing of Tura limestone at the top. It appears taller because it is on higher ground. The farthest one is the Great Pyramid of Cheops; the nearest is the Pyramid of Mycerinus.

Dunes of the Western Desert. These dunes are not as great as they are farther west - in the Great Sand Sea, for example - but they are large enough to swallow a convoy in a storm. Farther north, a Persian army disappeared leaving no trace, while marching toward Siwa.

A greywacke statue of Thutmose III, the soldier Pharaoh who brought Palestine and Syria under Egyptian control during the New Kingdom period when the ancient civilization of Egypt was at its most assertive.

Climbers on the Great Pyramid.

The Great Pyramid of Cheops.

At times the Nile widens and the feluccas scud freely as though on a lake. At Aswan the desert hills crowd down to the water.

Unlike the Greek Sphinxes, Egyptian sphinxes did not ask puzzling questions. They were leonine images of kings who guarded holy places and the Great Sphinx at Giza shows the builder of the second Pyramid, Chephren, as a lion. In later times he came to be regarded as a sun god.

A different view of the Great Sphinx.

Ridges indicate the direction of the prevailing winds. In summer a hot wind blows from the south to the west. Sand spouts form, sucking sand thousands of feet into the air. This is khamseen time when the Nile Valley gets suffocating dust-laden storms. But the austerities of rock and sand have a beauty of their own.

Anglo-French interventiont resulted in part from the fear that Egypt would take an unwarrantable control of east-west communication. The war between Israel and Egypt and the desire to separate the combatants was another important factor.

What remains of the largest temple ever built, the Temple of Amon at Karnak, is here illuminated across the Sacred Lake. It was the work of many Pharaohs over about two thousand years from the XIIth Dynasty onward. Pylon walls, hypostyle halls - that is, with the roof supported by massive pillars, - and obelisks testify to Thebes having been one of the great power centers in history,

At Abu Simbel the temple of Ramses II looked east at such an angle that the rising sun struck into the heart of it. The effect was calculated because the temple was mainly intended to honor the sun god.

The great entrance, or pylon, of the Temple of Luxor contained no fewer than six colossal statues of Ramses II. The obelisk was originally one of two erected for his jubilee. The other is in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

The goddess Selket was found in Tutankhamun's tomb and is associated with the scorpion. The goddess was one of four positioned protectively around the shrine containing the king's mummified internal organs.

Sun behind the pyramid of Chephren.

The Valley of the Melons on the road fo Assiut to Kharga is so called because the worn rocks look like melons, particularly by moodlight. The scene looks like those in photographs from crafts which landed on the surface of Mars.

The great dunes of the Western Desert, like this one near Kharga, remind us what the land would be like without the Nile. Sand rather than water makes Egypt an island.

Kharga itself lies in a depression at the edge of a limestone upland sometimes called the Slope. Beyond Kharga is the Nubian sandstone plain.

Kharga itself lies in a depression at the edge of a limestone upland sometimes called the Slope. Beyond Kharga is the Nubian sandstone plain.

The creation of Lake Nasser behind the new Aswan High Dam will make possible a better control of Nile water, but allowance will have to be made for evaporation and the way the dam prevents fertile silt from traveling downstream to nourish the land. The temple of Abu Simbel would have been submerged but for an internationally financed operation to move it and its statues up the cliff. Villages were also moved to higher ground.

On the outcrop of rock to the east of Cairo, Saladin, the great leader of Islam during the Crusades, built his Citadel, or fortress, to command the whole country of Egypt. On this site in 1824, Mohammed Ali began his great mosque in the Turkish style, modeled on the Nuri Osmaniyeh mosque at Constantinople. It was completed by his son, Said Pasha. With its tall, pencil minarets it forms the most striking landmark in Cairo.

The eastern side of Cairo is a "city of the dead," for there, under the Citadel and the Mokattam Hills, the medieval rulers of Egypt had their cemeteries and mausoleums. The tombs of the so-called Caliphs are in fact tombs of the Circassian Mamelukes. Many of these mausoleums have fallen into disrepair. There are more modest tombs, with small courtyards and rooms, where relatives of the dead come at certain times of the year.

The domes of Cairo mosques lack the ornate, bejeweled quality of Persian and Iraqi mosques but they have a monumental dignity. The tomb mosque of Sultan Barkuk, completed about 1410, was the first with a stone dome. The finest tomb, that of Kait Bey, built in 1463, has tiger stripes, an exquisite minaret, a courtyard, and a four-porched madrasa.

The bench in front of the coffeehouse is a vantage point to see the world go by.

Famed Egyptian architect Hassan Fathi working in his home.

El Alamein on the Mediterranean was the sight of a battle in 1942. Tourists now go there for the air — as Cleopatra once did.

El Alamein on the Mediterranean was the sight of a battle in 1942. Tourists now go there for the air — as Cleopatra once did.

 

"There are certain challenges inherent in producing a book on Egypt, and one of the most daunting has to do with the word "bukhra." The story goes that a newly arrived American diplomat in Cairo kept hearing that word over and over, and when he asked a colleague what it meant, was told that it was roughly translatable as "mañana," but without the same sense of urgency.

On my first trip to Egypt in connection with my book, The Egypt Story, I became a bit too familiar with the concept of "bukhra," and I asked the authorities for help in achieving a little more efficiency in my work. They suggested that I send them in advance of my arrival a list of everything I wished to photograph, so that the necessary permissions could be arranged and waiting for me. That I did, but needless to say, nothing ever was arranged by the time I got there. So why, I asked, had I been asked to send the list? Because that attested to their willingness to help! The failure to actually do anything could then safely be attributed to circumstances beyond their control. Not for nothing do Egyptians inject an "inshallah" ("If Allah is willing") into almost every sentence. And they are sufficiently fatalistic that they never believe anyone is coming until they actually arrive at the airport.

As a graduate architect and student of painting, Egypt had always intrigued me. Most of the books I had seen, however, dwelt almost exclusively on the Pharaonic period, and I thought there was a lack of information about other aspects of Egypt's history. Once I began research for The Egypt Story I discovered that the various geographic sections of the country could be conveniently related to various historical periods. Most of Pharaonic Egypt was dependent upon the Nile; the Ptolemaic period was centered in Alexandria; the Coptic monks retreated to the Eastern Desert, where they still remain; Cairo presents both Islamic and contemporary images; and the Western Desert, with its vast supply of fossil water, oil, and minerals, may hold hope for the future. Thus by covering the country's history, one also covers much of its geography.

I found Egypt fascinating on many levels, but the photographer in me was simply overwhelmed. Where else can one find a six-thousand-year visual history that can be captured with a camera? Thanks to its extremely arid climate, much of Egypt's art and architecture has withstood the test of time. Paintings in three-thousand-year-old tombs looked like they could have been painted yesterday. Pyramids and temples have fared extraordinarily well. And there is always the prospect of treasures still undiscovered. It was fortunate for me that I had to eventually return home; otherwise The Egypt Story might have been the book I never finished."