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).

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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.

ABU MENA, ITS PORT AND A PILGRIMS’ STOP EN ROUTE

Our visit to Abu Mena in the heat and sun was rather exhausting; we toured two additional sites, the port city associated with Abu Mena and a village of temporary lodgings for pilgrims on their way to the main site, for a grand total of about six hours.

We first passed by an enormous Christian town or monastery, which obscured the site from view if you’re traveling on the main road.  The evidence of an ancient site at Abu Mena is hard to find, nestled between mounds of dirt and spiky bushes, covered with semisoft mud under a crispy crust.  We walked around to try and orientate ourselves, finally ending up at the town’s shops, which are now mere shells of limestone and mortar.  It’s hard to imagine these places busy with people, since time has taken away much of their character.

The ground is littered with green glass and pot sherds, and an occasional marble column (very skillfully crafted) crosses the path every now and then.  Coming upon one of the baked-brick bath complexes, I was finally able to figure out what I was looking at—they’re very recognizable by their material, you know.  Arches and cylinders of brick, part of a huge system.

Up ahead, a man with a radio sat on a ledge at the end of a dirt road, looking up at us as we toured.  The praying and singing of the contemporary church, built on the site of the basilica lined with marble statue and pillar bases, made for some nice background music.  As we approached the church, I noticed that this group of Copts prays in the same fashion as Muslims, bowing all the way to the floor with their heads on the ground.  I’m not exactly sure how this tradition fits into the timeline of the Muslims’ evolution of prayer styles, but it was incredibly interesting to watch.

Behind us was the baptistery, set off along with the church from the “secular” market area by the pilgrims’ court.  The court and other spaces are directional, in that they served to guide visitors efficiently from place to place on the holy site.  But they are also entities of separation, as they make a clear divide between the sacred and the secular at Abu Mena.

The second set of baths looked like a small brick maze sitting in a shallow pool of water.  I know that Abu Mena is sinking, but an old water line on the structures (shown by a layer of dry salt deposits) is above the current water level: how this could have happened, I don’t know.  It could be that although Abu Mena is sinking, the water level rises and falls independently of the course towards the ultimate fate of the site.

When we finished exploring Abu Mena, we drove to a pilgrims’ village between the site and its port.  This village had several latrines and many half-standing limestone structures, which we took the time to explore, but the main event was a wine press, restored to a near-usable state (it just needed a little cleaning).

The press is coated in rosy-beige plaster, which encases its baked-brick inner structure.  The stomping room is a short-walled, waterproofed space next to the wine basin (so deep it has steps on the sides).  Two shallow bowls with spouts letting out into the basin were presumably for additives or fermenting agents.

At about this time, it began to get a bit too hot for our liking, so we quickly drove to the port city associated with Abu Mena for a quick look-around.

Abu Mena’s port is covered in medical waste from a nearby plant.  As Asharaff put it, those who dump here are helping the earth by creating these products, while at the same time destroying the earth by depositing them on an open-air site.  In addition to avoiding needles and glass bottles on the ground, we had to step around small mounds of grass for fear of exposing snake dwellings under our feet.

The city had its own baked-brick bath complex, with a large limestone water wheel nearby.  The track an animal working the wheel would have walked on gets too narrow at one point to have functioned properly, so it was probably modified at one point after it ceased being used for its original purpose.  There were also some nice red granite grinding stones, and white limestone structures with thin bands of red brick running through them (in the same manner as the design on the walls of the “school room” at Amheida).

The day came to a rather nice end with a walk down to the end of an ancient pier, whitened from the sun in a pool of clear, shallow lake water.  I would’ve gone swimming if I’d thought to bring a towel.

THE SERAPEUM AND KOM EL-SHOQAFA

I hadn’t realized we’d arrived at the Serapeum in Alexandria when the van stopped short on a street lined with stores closed for the Friday holiday. It’s an unlikely place for an enormous ancient monument, amid the noise of the taxis and the filth of wrappers and plastics covering the ground.

The site is smaller than I had expected, elevated a few feet above street level and enclosed by a beige gate made of stucco. In the center is Diocletian’s Column, described to us a few days ago by Adam during his presentation. Walking along the edge of the enormous working pit at the Serapeum, one can see bits of round limestone architecture jutting out from beneath the dirt. At the end closest to the guards’ table near the entrance, a large semicircular limestone structure protrudes from the side of the dig area.

The column is indeed gigantic, so much so that I had to back up about 100 feet in order to get Adam and the whole pillar in one picture. It is made of red granite, and the bottom blocks are reused from ancient Egyptian monuments (I didn’t expect this, as it was never mentioned to us before; it was funny, then, to see glyphs lining the underside of this colossal Roman-era structure). I asked Asharaff if there had been a statue on top (as I remember Monika saying something about Trajan’s Column and others in Rome having statues on top), and he said that he believes the simple capital would have been enough to cap it off.

There were also some glyphs inside the base of the column, which we were able to examine thanks to a Page-size hole left by a missing granite block at the back. These images were quite strange, most of them geometric and without comparison to those we’ve seen before.

Next to the column is a labyrinth cut into the limestone underground, which seems to be part of a tunnel system stretching to the edges of the site underneath all of the structures on the surface. Numerous cylindrical shafts dug through to the ground level above let light into the otherwise dark system. I thought about what this could be, and I’ve decided that it may have been part of a network of priests’ and servants’ passages to get from place to place without being seen for whatever reason (no doubt the priests’ would have had something to do with the smooth running of rituals and ceremonies).

Behind the column is the most confusing part of the Serapeum area: the underground tunnel system thought by some to have been an auxiliary space for the Great Library. The passages smell quite dank, and the humidity is unbearable—if it’s so wet, how could scrolls have survived here?

In the main hall that begins at the entrance there are two shallow circular depressions in the ceiling, which run on roughly the same axis as the door and the staircase ahead. One of these is a bit off-center in a roughly-cut low dome. We were unsure as to what these were, but the general consensus is that they were probably part of an unfinished light source. They wouldn’t have been niches for columns, because they’d stand in the way of the staircase and the long hall branching off to the right after the entrance if this was so.

In one room, strange lowercase “r”-shaped niches were carved in alternating top-and-bottom rows along the walls. In the other rooms, rectangular niches are scattered from place to place, seemingly without a base plan. No one seem to have any idea what these were for, but it’s pretty clear that they were not intended for the storage of scrolls.

Someone mentioned animal burials, but that wouldn’t explain their size (too big for a bird, to small for a bull). And if they were cut upon need, as William suggested, then their unorganized, asymmetrical orientation doesn’t make sense. These may be one of the great inexplicable wonders of Egypt, like the mystery of the building of the pyramids (and at least that one has some plausible theories attached to it).

All in all, I enjoyed our visit to the Serapeum not just because it has so many inexplicable features, but also because of the freedom we were given to roam around and explore its underground tunnels. I didn’t feel like my attention was being diverted from the physical remains by a lecture, since Adam gave us the background information we needed on one of our seminar days. And I truly enjoyed venturing off on my own, albeit with the others close behind.

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After our visit to the Serapeum, we went to Kom el-Shoqafa, the site I focused on for my presentation a few days ago. The catacomb looked just as I had expected, since I became rather well-versed in the area of Marjorie Venit’s Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria while doing my research. I must admit, though, that I imagined everything on a much larger scale. The only exception was the triclinium, which in reality has benches so much larger than those I had expected that I gasped out of shock when I entered the room.

I attempted to give the group a tour of the tomb (I’m a Barnard tour guide—it’s in my blood), but certain students decided to wander off and pay me no respect. After a short while, I set off to explore the loculi, which were not described in detail or photographed by Venit.

The loculi run in two rows on top of each other on the second level. The bottom row was flooded as recently as two years ago according to William, and today the ground is still wet (in fact, there were a few sunken-in loculi that were filled with ground water). Nick stuck his hand in the water. Ew.

Though I read through all of Venit’s work, I hadn’t understood her explanation of the placement of the bodies in the Main Tomb until today: the entrances to the coffins are at the back of the naos, making them inaccessible from the chamber.

The rest of the site was just as I’d expected, with the exception of pieces of the Stagni and Tigrane Tombs outside the catacomb. The Tigrane Tomb got its own little house, but a cut from the upper half of the Stagni Tomb sits exposed behind the Tigrane Tomb house, amid broken columns and sarcophagi, perhaps even from other sites. I was frustrated at this, and turned a blind eye when the tourists began to use the statue fragments as benches.

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I was going to add “and some rants about my experiences in Alexandria” to the end of this blog title, because today was the first time I really felt threatened and uncomfortable as a woman in Egypt.

I tried to rationalize the noise level of the city in comparison to Cairo after last night’s Call to Prayer nearly blew out my eardrums. But it’s not because it was Mohammad’s birthday yesterday, nor is it because today is Friday that it happened again. It’s because Alexandria is a much more religious (and fanatical, if I’m allowed to say that,) city than anywhere else we’ve been in this country.

The culture of Alexandria is one of restriction—not just for the women, but for tourists, non-Muslims, and even the men (if you think about the suppression of their sexuality).

We were lied to when we were told that this city is more European, more open, and more modern. As Page put it, the Alexandria of today matured too fast for its own good. It is stuck in the 1950s, with technology from the 1990s and the mindset of an incredibly chauvinist movement. The people seem to have taken for granted the inventions and ideas of other countries, while still perpetuating the hatred and antiquated ideas that set radical sects of Islam off from the mainstream. None of this spells anything good for their image.

Leigh, Page, Adam and I went to the beach this afternoon. We three women were fully-clothed, no bathing suits, with long skirts and sleeves. But the minute we set foot on the beach, we were badgered by young adults and by small children who have (already) been taught to hate.

I cannot imagine being a mother and teaching my child to disrespect women. I cannot imagine telling a child that it is okay to spit on women (as one did with Leigh), to shout at them and to alienate or make spectacles of them by staring incessantly. I will never tell my child to try and make other people feel uncomfortable in their own skin. I cannot imagine teaching my child to clap and shout after a group of women attempting to respect my country while simply wanting to use a public beach leaves the scene because of the torment they elected not to have to endure.

This is not the way Islam is practiced in the U.S., in Cairo or in Jerusalem. This is a product of the religious atmosphere of Alexandria, which is severely different from the others I’ve mentioned. I would love to work in Dakhleh again, to visit Kharga, and to spend a few days mixed up in the hustle and bustle of Cairo. But I will never set foot in Alexandria again. Ever.

KOM EL-DIKKA AND THE ALEXANDRIA NATIONAL MUSEUM

We were treated to a nice late wake-up this morning before heading off to Kom el-Dikka, a site in use roughly from the mid-4th through mid-7th centuries.  The director of the project, Grzegorz Majcherek, led us around the place on an exclusive tour (other tourists were jealous and kept following us around, only to be deterred by Monika, our Lady Defender).

Kom el-Dikka is centrally located, and at the same time representative of ruins from the Ptolemaic Era through the Islamic Period.  There is a great (I think the biggest we’ve seen) baked-brick bath complex, the kilns from the construction of which were uncovered under meters of neatly-layered ash across the dirt road in the center of the site.  Examining the ash layers was such a treat for us (and probably for Dr. Majcherek) because they are so clean-cut!

Certainly the most unexpected elements of the site were the limestone amphitheater-shaped classrooms built along a central portico, proof that some university system existed at this time in Alexandria (there were several laws during the 5th century that forbade the teaching of law in the city and made it illegal for state-sponsored professors to teach privately, if I’m not mistaken, so it was refreshing to see it still flourishing).

Another interesting element was the rock grid laid out on the dirt surface next to the ash pit: it’s the remnant (and ongoing remains) of a contemporary solution to the age-old problem of pottery sorting.  The ceramicists working at Kom el-Dikka use stones to form outlines around piles of pottery and marble found in each sector; I never got to watch the other students sort pottery on-site, but I think this is a great way to go about sorting on location, which certainly beats those rubber buckets.

At the far end of the site is a glass room enclosing the remains of part of a Roman villa, with very detailed second-century mosaic floors.  I couldn’t help but compare the display method employed here, which involved constructing wooden ramps above the mosaics as a sort of viewing platform, with that which I saw in Cyprus at a Roman villa near Kourion.  In Cyprus, they used the same ramp design for the same purpose of viewing mosaic floors; the only difference is that the Cypriot display is much more extensive, and includes ramps that allow visitors to explore the tops of the limestone structures which still survive on the site.

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After our visit to Kom el-Dikka, we went to the Alexandria National Museum.  Housed in the old American Consulate building, it’s quite picturesque from the outside (an off-white exterior with lovely tall windows and black treatments).  On the inside, what looks like a very expensive, well-organized display turns out to be a hassle to get through because of its angular design; it’s also filled with incomplete or incorrect labels!

The basement level is a dark maze of ancient Egyptian pieces, while upstairs a female tomb effigy is dated to 500 BCE when it’s actually from the Flavian dynastic period (I can thank the statues I studied at Kom el-Shoqafa for that identification)!

My verdict is that the Alexandria National Museum spent too much money trying to create a fancy, “modern” display, whilst neglecting to give visitors correct information and good directions to get around.

P.S.

Lord help us, for Monika and I have found the upscale shopping street in Cairo…