Egypt – A Journey of its Kind…

As the flight starts descending, you realize that you are going to land in the middle of a desert with barren land all around without a single trace of greenery – a stark contrast to the image you had of a country which is known as the “Gift of the Nile”.
As you disembark and start your journey from the airport, you are hit with the sight of an array of naked houses exposing the plain bricks, albeit fitted with air conditioners and multiple dish antennae. And you wonder – is this the same country that is known for its famous art and architecture?

Cairo suburbs

You reach the hotel, freshen up and start for your first tourist spot – the sound and light show at the pyramids of Gizeh. You travel through an extremely crowded noisy market place to reach the venue and enter a gate to be taken aback by a silent sea of admirers sitting quietly in front of one of the seven wonders of the world right beneath the star studded sky. And that’s when the reality hits you… that you have finally arrived in a country that lives in two different millennia at the same time and to be able to know it to the fullest, you first yourself need to be comfortable making that transition. But for that, you first have to know the Egypt that it was 5000 years ago…

Sound & Light Show @Giza

The article below is an excerpt from “Ancient Egypt” by Lionel Casson that gave us an insight into one of the greatest ancient civilizations and acted as a compass that helped us to navigate our way through the multiple transitions we had to make while cruising our way through the Nile.

Egypt – The Enduring Land

Egypt was ancient even to the ancients. It was one of the earliest of the ancient lands to weave the threads of civilization into a truly impressive culture. More to the point, it sustained its achievements unabated for more than two and a half millennia – a span of accomplishment with few equals in the saga of humanity.

Nature favoured Egypt. The early civilizations of Mesopotamia stood on an open plain, and they spent much of their vitality in defending themselves from one another. Palestine, farther west, was largely unprotected, prey to invaders. In Egypt, it was different. Desert barriers girded the Valley of the Nile and discouraged invasion; the people lived in relative security. The scattered tribes that shared the river merged into villages instead of fighting among themselves; the villages learnt to cooperate in controlling the river’s annual flood so that all might reap
abundant harvest.

Well to measure seasonal depth of Nile & hence Yearly Taxes!

Cooperation meant organization. And it was the gift for organization, perhaps more than any other single factor, that enabled Egypt to erect a dominant, enduring state. The first important move in this direction occurred around 3100 B.C. At that time the Egyptian people, hitherto divided into two lands, Upper and Lower Egypt, found themselves under a single Monarch – the first of 30 dynasties of Pharaohs. They thereby became the world’s first united nation and took a decisive step towards establishing a stable civilization. With the first two dynasties, which covered some 400 years, Egypt emerged from prehistoric obscurity into full light of history. From that point on are numbered its greatest centuries. They are divided into three main eras – the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, separated by two intermediate periods when the country’s fortunes were temporarily at low ebb.

Each of the three kingdoms was characterized by accomplishments of its own:
1. The Old Kingdom (2700 B.C. – 2200 B.C.), was the period during which the great pyramids were built
2. With the Middle Kingdom (2000 B.C. – 1800 B.C.), Egypt enjoyed an expanding political strength and broader economic horizons
3. The New Kingdom beginning about 1600 B.C., saw the nation’s zenith as a political power and its acquisition of an empire mostly in Asia. When the New Kingdom came to a close around 1100 B.C., Egypt’s days as a great nation were over, although Pharaohs, interspersed with foreign conquerors, continued to occupy the throne until the Fourth Century B.C.

The unique quality of Egyptian civilization began to emerge under the earliest pharaohs. All power, in theory and to a great extent in fact, lay in the hands of the ruler. Cast in the double role of King and God, he sat enthroned at the pinnacle of society. Supporting him were the high officers to whom he delegated authority. Below them, the ranks of a vast bureaucracy rested upon the broad shoulders of workers and peasants.
The awakening of Egypt was accompanied by the introduction of writing, all-important prerequisite to successful centralized rule. Records could now be kept, instructions issued, history written down, The creators of poems, stories, essays and narratives could now entrust their works to papyrus rather than memory, and Egypt’s literature was born. Methods of calculating kept pace with writing. It became possible to compute taxes with precision, to survey land, measure weights and distances, and reckon time.
As the Nile’s green fringe of agriculture grew ever greater, so did the material wealth of its civilization. With spectacular suddenness, an architecture sprang up that was suitable for kings and gods. Within a century after the first Pharaoh of the Old Kingdom mounted his throne, Egyptian builders had graduated from sun-baked bricks to highly sophisticated construction in stone. Within a brief span of 200 years or so, Egypt’s builders had so mastered the new material that they had finished the pyramids at Gizeh, wonders of the ancient world and the mightiest royal sepulchers of all time.
Art kept pace with architecture. From prehistoric days, craftsmen of the Nile had displayed a sense of beauty and symmetry that touched even the most utilitarian objects – flint knives, stone or pottery household vessels, pins and combs of bone or shell. With the advent of the pharaohs, this esthetic quality flowered into a mature art, distinctively Egyptian in concept and character. For the next 3000 years, Egypt produced a graceful and spirited art that served, among other things, to inspire the great Greek sculptors and artists who followed them centuries later.

–Manoshi