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.
First bike wreck in Cairo—الحادث الأول بالعجلة في مصر
Well, I had my first real bike wreck in Cairo today. I don’t count a previous incident which involved just me, my bike, the pavement and some poorly executed fancy maneuvers to fix a loose cog on the fly. In terms actual injuries, however, this is rather less severe than …
A Christmas stroll through Islamic Cairo—ماشي عيد ميلاد في القاهرة الإسلامية
On December 25th, Adrienne and I decided to go for a stroll through Cairo. It didn’t have anything to do with it being Christmas, really. We just wanted to get out.
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 …
Xmas in Cairo—عيد ميلاد في مصر
To answer many people’s questions from back in the States, yes, Cairenes do celebrate Christmas.
Surrender is Surrender
A friend of mine handed me a recent (November 15) article by Slavoj Žižek, entitled “Resistance Is Surrender”. It comes from the London Review of Books. This friend wanted to know my opinion. My answer? The short version is not appropriate for a public audience, so I’ll share with you …
Antiquity as a natural resource—آثار كموارد
In the early 19th Century, Muhammed Ali, often credited with bringing Egypt into the modern age, effected that modernizing project in no small part through the use of antiquities, either a) as more-or-less direct payment for the services of foreign experts, b) as bribes or c) to curry favor with …
Veni, Vidi, Vici—أتيتُ، ريتُ، فتحتُ
Imperial nostalgia through the lens of a camera
Conveying the tourist—نقل السياح
A conventional industry, whether based in manufacturing or agriculture, involves organzing people to produce. Mass production relies upon all the well-known methods of recruiting and disciplining a workforce, organizing their use of time, their movement, and their arrangement in physical space, and developing systems of instruction, supervision, and management. Mass …
Pictures from Aswan and Abu Simble—صوّر من أسوان و أبو سمبل
Ths is the last batch of pictures (at the jump). This includes the pre-dawn bus-ride from Aswan to Abu Simble, the temple at Abu Simble, Lake Nasser, the High (Diggety) Dam, Philae Temple and Elephantine Island. Once again, some commentary is included in the photo captions, but more will follow …
Edfu to Aswan—إدفو إلى أسوان
Here we go with yet more pictures (after the jump) from the AUC-organized Nile Cruise. Featured here are the Temple of Horus at Edfu, some more Nile River shots, the Temple of Kom Ombo and a few more shots on-board the cruise ship. In case the reader is browsing here …