MOUSTAPHA PASHA TOMBS, SHATBY TOMBS AND THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA
Leigh gave us a tour of the Moustapha Pasha Tombs this morning, where I saw what I originally assumed would be comparable to the Tombs of the Kings at Paphos, Cyprus when Leigh gave her presentation: square, sunken-in rock-cut tombs lined with Doric columns and small rooms for burials and rituals.
The site of the Moustapha Pasha Tombs is presented in a very interesting way: there are four separate tombs, each decreasing in quality of preservation with regards to the one numbered before it (the keepers of the site or the SCA have numbered them in this way, probably to give the appearance that they’re all well-preserved to those who visit only the first two). The first has surviving paint and weathered yet recognizable sphinxes atop platforms at the entrance to the main chamber; the last is just a pile of pillars in the middle of a yard at the back of the site.
I enjoyed visiting the Moustapha Pasha Tombs because of the contrast they (or at least Tomb One) present to the tomb at Kom el-Shoqafa, my assignment: the former show a cruder display of craftsmanship in the wall paintings and reliefs, but a very sophisticated design plan in terms of the actual rock-cut structure; this is not executed more skillfully than at Kom el-Shoqafa, but offers a new style of craftsmanship in its own class.
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Before heading to the new Library of Alexandria, we stopped at the Shatby Tombs, which offer the oldest example of Alexandrian-style burials cut into rock. Though weathered a great deal and overcome with mold, these tombs are charming amid the surrounding modern city separated from them by a thin metal rail circumference.
The Shatby Tombs also look somewhat like a mini-museum, with sarcophagi and statues from the ancient Egyptians through the Roman Period surrounding the sunken tomb area. I do wish that these were labeled, as I had no idea what I was looking at when I examined them—in addition, I always wish that pieces could be displayed at the sites at which they were found (a lot of these pieces clearly do not belong at the location of the Shatby Tombs).
Finishing up with a stop at the new Library of Alexandria seems like a fitting end to our journey. The place is like a huge glass container holding a very-condensed version of our whole travel saga, represented by samples from the art of Egypt’s long history and a modern testament to the importance of literature in Egypt.
