This is coming a bit late, but I wanted to get some photos up from our recent trip to Upper Egypt and the Sudan. Adrienne has a more of the story here.
Category: Nile—النيل
The High Dam & the “General Good”—السد العالى و المنافع العمومية
The following is a slight modification of my in-class essay for Dr. Rick Tutwiler’s class on the Nile river. The question was quite simply, “Should the Aswan High Dam have been built?” (the “general good” in the title is a reference to Rifa’a Rifa’ al-Tahtawi’s equation of the notion of …
Mega-projects on the Nile—مشاريع هائلة في النيل
A post on “mega-projects on the Nile” can perhaps best be introduced by pointing out the differences between the English and the Arabic versions of the term “mega-project”. The English version is a strange neologism which, according to Merriam-Webster, arose in 1976. “Mega”, literally, is of course a simple multiplication …
Desert Development Center—مركز تنمية الصحراء
Today took us on a field trip to AUC’s Desert Development Center (DDC) in Liberation Province. Liberation Province is part of the “New Lands” of Egypt, desert areas that have been reclaimed for agriculture (although they haven’t technically been REclaimed because the area has been hyper-arid desert for eons, it …
Nile water quality management—رقابة جودة الماء النيلي
Today we had a visit from Edward Smith, a professor in AUC’s Construction and Environmental Engineering department. He informed us about the particulars of pollution and water quality management on the Nile through a very well-organized lecture. Almost too organized.
The Violence of the Nubian Museum—بطش المتحف النوبي
How wonderful of Egypt and the International Community to come together to construct this museum to depict the lives of a disappeared culture as a monument in honor of…their own generosity.
Nile Cruise—رحلة النيل
Embarrassing as this fact is, this was my second cruise on the Nile in only a couple months. It’s shockingly easy to live a posh middle-class lifestyle in this country with the right connections and a modest (by US standards) income. But this is not what I wanted to talk …
The Nilometer and Egyptian Museum—المنيل و المتحف المصري
Our trip to the Nilometer and the Egyptian Museum was quite different than the one the previous day to the Egyptian Agricultural Museum. The Egyptian Museum is a stop on pretty much every tourist’s itinerary and is hence tended to by the government with all due care. I had been …
Egyptian Agricultural Museum—متحف الزراعي المصري
Museums are interesting creatures in general, but they seem to become even more so with a constrained budget. The lack of polish tends to bring the building blocks and construction methods—material and ideological—into relief. It’s difficult to focus on the other world into which one is being transported when the …
The barrages at al-Qanatir—السدود في القناطر
On Sunday, I went on a field-trip with the small AUC class devoted to the study of the River Nile. The destination was al-Qanatir (القناطر), the place where the Nile splits off into the Damietta and Rosetta (or Rashid) branches, marking the beginning of the Nile Delta.
The River Nile—نهر النيل
AUC has a long winter break, from mid-December until the beginning of February, and a short intermediate session between the semesters, so I decided to take one of the classes being offered, not having much opportunity to travel anyway. That class is a course through the Middle East Studies department …