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.

(THE GAYER-ANDERSON HOUSE MUSEUM IN) ISLAMIC CAIRO, PART I

Our visit to the Gayer-Anderson House Museum was certainly the highlight of my day! I really love old houses; in fact, I had the pleasure of giving a tour of one just like this (or these two) at the Dragoman Mansion in Nicosia last summer—I had a field day comparing them this morning!

Here’s the rundown.

Basically, Mr. Gayer-Anderson was a British megalomaniac who loved to collect old things and arrange them in his Oriental fantasy world with a total disregard for their provenance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry at the man for purchasing looted antiquities (well, I am…); instead, I was pretty excited to pick out the little details over each and every inch of his combination 16th- and 17th-century Ottoman-style home. The beauty of the museum is that it’s an exhibit on a crazy 20th-century collector, and not on his property.

Gayer-Anderson lived in the house from 1935 to 1942, surprisingly late, I think, for someone who bought into the façade of Orientalism. The collector appears to have had a fascination with naming rooms for different genres and periods of time, like in the guest mansion of a cheesy murder-mystery film, or at the White House. He had a taste for “Oriental” objects, from places traditionally considered Oriental, like Egypt, and also from Asian countries (he even had some modern American art…).

On the front face of the museum are two kiosks, or closed additions to a house that jut over the street. In Cyprus, these were for Peeping Toms. Here, they’re for house-ridden women.

We first walked into a room with large glazed pots in neat stands, and an antique china cabinet. Just ahead is an open courtyard with original arches and added decoration. There are grates on the windows, and a marble fountain in the center.

Side note: the place smells like the hallways at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn. Just a thought.

The next room is lined with before-and-after pictures of the house when Gayer-Anderson was still adding to it, as well as drawings by none other than the lovely Nick Warner of the DOP. The hallway that follows this room is painted bright yellow, with plates (not unlike those you can purchase in the market in Luxor) sunken into the plaster.

The next room was a public water dispensary, older than the house; our guide slid a small wooden centerpiece off of its base and revealed a deep well right in the middle of the room! Of course, we all began shouting into the well…

The same room is plastered with glass display cases housing silver dishes against a red background—strangely, the displays in the Dragoman Mansion are arranged in exactly the same way. The windows are lined with metal grating, in the exact style of those on the windows of the ground floor of Hewitt Hall at Barnard. The ceiling is carved and painted in an abstract design, as in the main reception room (oda, from my notes,) at the Mansion.

(It was right about this point when Page picked up a cat that had been wandering around and declared it the 11th member of our tour group.)

…And it was right about this point when I realized that, although neatly displayed, this collection is a glorified mess.

In the next short hallway with an open-air staircase, tiles that are so over-melted they look like cake frosting are pushed into the yellow walls. The next room has nice stained glass windows, though clearly not original.

The next room was the loggia, an outdoor balcony with raised benches against the walls where The Spy Who Loved Me was filmed. People would originally have sat on pillows on the floor, as the benches are newer additions to the room. It has a nice full-room feel, though it’s only a balcony.

The next room was the Painting Room (here come the names), with a hodgepodge of art on the walls, followed by an outside staircase.

Next came the main reception room (oda, if I remember correctly from the Dragoman Mansion). It really looks like the one in the Mansion! The heater is even in the same place in the middle of the floor. Oh, wait… the difference is that this room has Chinese pieces next to Ottoman pieces, while the Mansion has authentic material (cough).

Stairs up; the Writing Room (kuttab). This room is surrounded by tiny, winding hallways and is filled with freakish wares, like death masks Gayer-Anderson liked to make of his friends. The Who’s-Who of Cairene society during the 30s and 40s are depicted in the display cases!

In the original kuttab next door, Nick Warner has placed a lovely new display. It’s quite spik-and-span, with a quaint little library, though it smells like insecticide.

Stairs up; pass the Persian Room. I can only imagine.

Up to the roof, where a random maze of wooden grates litters the place. The collector liked fountains and sinks, judging by the stash of dozens up there. It looks like a Bed, Bath and Beyond, and you can see the Mosque of Mohammad Ali from the top.

Back down; I found out that the Persian Room serves as a bridge to the second house that combines with the one we just saw to make the museum. The next house begins…

The Byzantine Room is a painting hall with low, cushioned benches with a stolen Hathor capital between them. Hanging above is a blue glass chandelier, which appears to be from the early 19th century. I honestly can’t tell you what’s “Byzantine” about this room.

Next is the Museum of the House (ironically, not a museum of the house’s history or its construction), which is filled with fake ancient Egyptian chatchkis. Among the real material, though, are another Hathor capital and two reliefs, one sunken into a wall and the other into a bench. There are some “magic bowls” for casting spells in a glass case on the wall, suggesting that Gayer-Anderson was one of those trendily-superstitious folks who held séances in his home (the man did have a collection of death masks). Nearby is a 1930s watercolor of a World War I soldier.

In the next hall, the stone face of a Greek statue rests on a shelf. Monika complained that its hairstyle could make it unique if it were from a certain period, but it’s of no use to us because we’ll never know where it came from. Opposite the mask, the full-length cartonnage masks of two mummies are framed on either side of a door. Walking through the door, I came upon the Pharaonic Room, where I finally got a sense of the collector’s preferences: the man liked to steal the beards and arms off of statues and mummy-casings. How phallic. Did I mention that he had an obsession with his young, male Nubian servant?

By the way, I forgot to mention that there’s some information about each room on a framed paper beside each door.

I glanced at a mirror in the staircase ahead of me, then turned back and went up another staircase, gated by a swinging screen made of wood, to the Damascus Room. This room has a nice lintel with Arabic script engraved on it, and wide arches above a canopy bed. I played with the funky door-knockers before going to the next set of rooms.

The Turkish Room is decorated in 19th-century Ottoman baroque style. Next door is the Queen Anne Room, or the room of things that don’t belong anywhere else, alienated by Gayer-Anderson’s specific names. It has a weird cherub door-knocker, which reminds me of his obsession with little boys. In the Chinese Room are three Japanese panels.

Here’s where it gets weird.

In the library there is a framed sketch of Gayer-Anderson as the Sphinx.

On the wall are three icons, two Coptic 18th-century pieces and one early Renaissance one. Sketches of his Nubian servant cover the walls. There’s also a large collection of travelogues, which may have been for show. Maybe he read Penthouse instead?

We all exited the room quite weirded-out, and continued down the hall to the staircase with the mirror on its landing. On our way down the stairs I noticed that the collector had wooden shelves built to fit in the corners of the landings, though they held nothing.

Downstairs were a few very open rooms with a lot less clutter than the rest. Our guide showed us a secret passage to a viewing room that looks over the Celebration Hall (creepy… this guy liked to spy on his guests). In the next hall, light blue circles were pushed into the plaster above the arches. This may have been representative of the Evil Eye. After that is another viewing room with folding chairs inside. Looks like Gayer-Anderson spent a lot of time watching people!

We walked downstairs into an outdoor side room, and then into the Celebration Hall (where Dov was spying on us from above). Next door is a nice open court.

Lastly, we saw two very strange rooms: the Birthing Room and the Bridal Room. The Birthing Room is, as one might think but would be afraid to say, a room filled with wooden birthing chairs. William called it the maternity ward. The Bridal Room houses a collection of spoons and combs in glass cases, and not much else. What gives?

On the way out, we passed the lintels and statues that the current caretakers couldn’t find space for (hide your excess or find a respectful place for it, people).

The whole experience made me think about how authentic the Ottoman Dragoman Mansion is. The House Museum, on the other hand, is a hodgepodge of amazing finds, creepy artifacts and strange obsessions of the collector; it is not authentic, and not Ottoman.

I’m not sure if anybody else enjoyed our visit to the museum, but I loved it! I’m sure you can tell by the detail of my notes…

KOM OMBO, EDFU AND THE LUXOR MUSEUM

We left Aswan at 7:30 this morning and joined a caravan to Luxor. Along the way we stopped at Kom Ombo, a massive sanctuary to Sobek and Horus the Elder (Haroeris), and Edfu, a temple to Horus.

Worship at Kom Ombo is interesting in that it is divided evenly between two gods in a show of unity; though there is only one altar in the center of the complex, every other aspect of the site is divided equally in two. There is symmetry in the pillars with their symbolic reliefs (and even the other god makes an appearance in the imagery on one god’s side), the capitals, the doorways and the scenes at the back of the sanctuary, where the common people would come to see Haroeris and Sobek sharing the wealth peacefully.

On the way to Kom Ombo, William told us that Ptolemy VIII is depicted with two women in the reliefs: Cleopatra II (“the sister”) and Cleopatra III (“the daughter,” though she was his neice). The reason for this is a family feud which led both women to be married to Ptolemy VIII at the same time. I was excited to see this, and was not disappointed: in the reliefs they are identical—you can only tell them apart by their cartouches. Family feud!

We were rushed through the temple at the mercy of our caravan, but I did manage to take some nice photographs of the gigantic inscribed column bases and rectangular stone panels which span across the ceiling with large open spaces between them (sort of like our roof on the second floor of the house in Dakhleh, with low reliefs of the winged sun disk, and much higher up).

The temple was symmetrical to a T, with the exception of a small room on the right of the structure (facing the front of the pylon). In the room were two crocodile mummies in glass cases, unwrapped and covered in a thick grey dust. I found this strange because it was a clear place of devotion to Sobek, but had no equal on the other side of the temple for Haroeris. I guess it’s possible that another structure did exist at one time, or that mummified animals for Haroeris were located in the same place where these mummies were found (since the crocodiles were likely found in a cache elsewhere on site and put in the room for consolidation purposes).

We had time for some small talk while waiting for other groups to clear out (including several groups of Japanese tourists–I listened to a talk in Japanese!), so Asharaff explained a little bit about the king’s life during the New Kingdom period, which was essentially dominated by rituals. I never really thought about the king’s obligations, only his wealth; it seems he would have been in a constant state of performance, always concerned with the upkeep of his image. Poor guy!

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Edfu temple was the site of the ceremonial meeting of the statues Hathor (of Dendera) and Horus (of Edfu). The place is essentially one huge insult to Seth: it’s like saying, “I’m married, look at my beautiful wife (with whom the Greeks associated Aphrodite)… I have a beautiful temple, and there are pictures of you as a hippo being slaughtered on the walls. Ha, ha.”

I saw a lot of similarities between the temple at Edfu and others we’ve seen. For one, the H-shaped gate is nearly identical to the one we saw at Philae. Secondly, the inner hall at Edfu looks like the main hall in the temple to Rameses at Abu Simbel. There are traces of oil on the sides of the doors at Edfu, which points to the same practices as carried out at Kalabsha, Philae and Beit el-Wali.

We weren’t as rushed leaving Edfu, but we were pestered by merchants whose shops were conveniently placed between the parking lot and the temple. Jolly good marketing, I say!

End note: the cartouches with missing names were pretty funny.

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The most exciting thing about today’s travels? The Luxor Museum actually labeled its pieces!

The Museum is very neatly organized, with long ramps and even spaces between artifacts. My favorite part was the set of domestic items, including a bed and several sets of shoes. I was a little disappointed with the restoration of some of the larger pieces, though; the conservation boards explaining the processes undertaken were a nice touch, but the actual work left a visible trail of plaster. It seemed like the work wasn’t very precise, which might be explained by the age of the conservation campaigns. The point of conservation is to change the object as little as possible while protecting it against potential damage, all the while repairing the piece without leaving a trace of one’s work. Who knows what happened here…

Anyway, different subject.

I really like Luxor. When I first spoke to my parents after leaving the Oasis I told them that they’d love Aswan because it’s on the water and has some lovely hotels. I also told them it was my favorite place in Egypt so far, but I hadn’t yet seen this beautiful city.

I think the most charming thing about the city is how close the monumental ancient sites are to upscale hotels, modest markets and rows of boats on the water. It’s really very picturesque. Not too noisy, with cleaner air than in Cairo. Tres magnifique.

PHILAE, NEW KALABSHA, BEIT EL-WALI, KERTESY TEMPLE AND THE NUBIA MUSEUM

This morning we were introduced to the sights in Aswan with a visit to Philae Island. Nick presented on the island, telling us that what we were seeing was not in fact the original: when the Aswan Dam was built, the real island was flooded; New Philae is located on Agilkea Island (formerly a raised area of land, converted into an island during the reconstruction project from 1972 to 1980). Though the buildings were placed in essentially the same layout on the new island, viewers today miss a great deal because the paint was washed off the walls of the temples there as a result of the movement of the water.

Despite this fact, Philae looks marvelous with its backdrop of sea and grasses. The main temple on the island is a temple to Isis, which was in use until about 530 CE. It looks more or less like two large stone forms of the letter H (each one part of a pronaos, or gate), connected by columned halls. The first building was donated by Psamtik II of the 26th dynasty, probably during a campaign against the Kushites (as I did my first presentation on the Third Intermediate Period, I know that Egypt was fighting off southern invaders at this time).

At the first pylon, the figures on the left side are completely defaced, though not using the ordinary scrape-it-off method: instead, they are riddled with pock-marks, which sort of makes them all look like they have leprosy. I have to say that this was quite funny, since the figures on the right side of the pylon were not defaced (they were probably behind a later dwelling or other structure, hidden from view)—it looked like the lepers were being separated from the healthy by a gate!

These gates are much larger and more elaborate than those we saw in Kharga Oasis: each pronaos in the Isis temple is composed of one of the simple, rectangular ones we saw at Hibis and Douche, flanked by two enormous stylized triangles. Over the years, additions and modifications have been made so that the structure we saw today is a mix of architecture until the time of Hadrian. Chunks of stone are missing here and there, but the temple is generally in very good shape.

Columns with alternating species of flowers, each topped with Hathor’s head, line the halls in neat rows as they once did. Where sections of stone architecture are missing, plaster or concrete replicas fill in the blank space without decoration, so as not to take attention away from the original structure. Modern restoration efforts include the placement of wooden screens on the tops of some of the rooms, presumably to simulate their original roofs. I don’t know how much this actually does for the structure, but it’s a nice change from the open halls.

The sheer number of reliefs and glyphs in this temple is absolutely mind-boggling when compared to what we’ve seen until now. The size of the structure alone is daunting for someone coming from the Oasis, and the shock is magnified when one takes a look at the artwork covering every inch of stone (it’s really amazing how they never missed a spot).

One of the most interesting things I learned at Philae was actually not about anything specific to the island; instead, it was Asharaff’s side-note that the reliefs of gods on sanctuary walls face out towards the door, as if looking at the visitor from the inside, and reliefs of kings face inward, as if to greet the gods head-on. I guess I never realized how logical the placement of glyphs and figures on the walls of these temples are; then again, I should have realized because of the attention to detail and wealth of symbolism demonstrated within them.

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It’s important to remember that Kalabsha, like Philae, is not in its original location (and was shifted originally off the straight axis in accordance with an sacred route across the water). It’s about 50km away from where it once stood, though I certainly wouldn’t have known the difference if Asharaff hadn’t told me; it’s essential to keep this in mind, though, because it is a testament to the magic of conservation and restoration.

What I enjoyed most about the site were its minute quirks:

• Would-be stone monsters, in the form of unfinished l-shaped blocks jutting out at the top of a wall, are a nice reminder that this structure is man-made, and by people who were subject to time and financial constraints in the same way artists are today.
• The knees on the gods and goddesses are heavily stylized, with strange snake-like curves.
• Greek graffiti, including an order by a 3rd-century governor to remove all pigs from the sanctuary, marks each stage in time when the temple was in use.
• Slivers of stone are missing in several places, likely carved by worshipers who believed in the healing powers of the temple structure; the deeply-cut eyes of gods are missing their precious inlays.
• Crosses dot the unfinished blocks behind the temple.
• Blocks with straight outlines but roughly-hewn centers are a relic of relief-carving practices, which (we can infer from the stones here) involved carving sharp edges and sinking the artwork into the stone once it was securely in place, and on a rough, raised surface.

I think the most interesting elements of this temple were actually not part of its original structure; instead, I found the Greek declaration of faith, painted in red inside the sun disk on the pylon, and a carving of Silco (a Christian Nubian king, on horseback being handed what looks like a martyr’s crown) to be the most thought-provoking. I am interested in the way later peoples saw these structures, since we today have varying opinions and imagine the way the temples used to be with the bias of our cultural backgrounds.

With regards to its original composition, since Nubian, Ptolemaic and Roman styles of carving (based on the shapes of bodies) can be seen at Kalabsha, the following question must be asked: did Augustus build the temple, or did he simply restore it?

Before we left, a large stone cistern with a hole large enough for an average person to squeeze through made for a nice photo-op with Nick and Page.

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A little blurb about the rest:

 

Beit el-Wali provided us with the first example of well-preserved wall-relief paint outside of the Oasis. Unfortunately, this does not apply to the ceiling (I imagine it would be very nice, were the paint not destroyed). What was fascinating were the columns: they looked Doric, which of course could not be; instead, William called them “proto-Doric”—were Doric columns a rip-off of an Egyptian style?

As we passed the small temple of Kertesy on our way back to the bus, we walked past a row of large stones with petroglyphs on them. It was nice to see something from a drastically different period of time after all of those huge pillars and pylons!

The Nubia Museum was an exercise in confusing tourists. Nothing was labeled (well, if a piece was labeled, then it was a simple label with no context)! There was a Chinese bronze on display…