ISLAMIC CAIRO, PART II

Pre-script: There is Israeli music playing in Costa Coffee right now. I am thoroughly weirded-out.

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I’m not going to lie, today paled in comparison to yesterday’s adventures. At least we ended up at Khan el-Khalili…

We stopped for tea just outside of the Mosque of Hussein (Mohammad’s grandson), where an 11th-century shrine apparently holds the head of its namesake. How is this unlike the possession of saints’ relics?

Some of the most interesting information I gathered today concerns the Shi’ite Fatimid dynasty. Apparently, the Fatimids fancied themselves living representations of God on earth. It was the long period between the original dispute between Sunnis and Shi’ites that led to the development of complex Shi’ite codes and justifications for their right to rule the Muslim world, and ultimately the growing differences between the sects. The Fatimids made Egypt a great trade emporium, but they only stayed in power for the last century of their rule because of the threat from Crusader Christians in 1099. Their demise came in 1171, when they were overthrown by Salahaddin Ayuubi and the Sunnis.

I also learned that the Mamlouk system of power inheritance was unlike any other I’ve heard of: in order to be a ruler, one had to be a slave. This system weeds out poverty, and institutes social stability through control of state and personal wealth. Ingenious!

(Right about this time, Page picked up another cat. It gravitated towards Todd and stuck around until we left the coffee shop. Did you know that Mohammad had a preference for cats over dogs? I promise it’s true. William told us.)

We spent the morning walking down Bayn al-Qasrayn, the Medieval main street that used to separate the Eastern and Western Palaces of the Fatimids. William explained that the Fatimids constructed a parade ground near the palaces, because they liked to throw parties. A very pagan-sounding festival involving the blessing of the Nile-o-meter to ensure a flood was celebrated here, as was the ancient Egyptian New Year’s festival. Were the later inhabitants of Egypt clinging to the history of the people who came before them out of legitimacy? Did they want to say, “those people who built the pyramids, they are our ancestors”?

The whole area around Bayn al-Qasrayn is in the process of a transformation into a tourist zone, so a lot of places were closed. Still, we were pretty fortunate considering. Our first stop was the gate of the original Khan al-Khalili, a caravansenai or wholesale market and merchants’ hotel where wares from Iran were the most common to be sold.

We then stopped in front of the Madrassa of Sultan Salah Ayuub, which served as a courthouse, four schools of Islamic law and a madrassa, in addition to being a house of prayer. The facade is really great, with lovely carved stone detail. It was decorated because it faced the street of an open square; inside, however, the structures are oriented towards Mecca, which make their walls run oblique to the outer walls of the madrassa. Around the back of the madrassa is a classical column abandoned in the center of a trash heap.

Next, we stopped in front of “the Mausoleum of As-Saleh Nagm Ad-din Ayuub,” which sounds an awful lot like Sultan Salah Ayuub. The mausoleum was the first tomb to be added to a religious building in Cairo, and set the precedent for every mosque built afterwards.

Across the street is the Complex of Sultan Qalawoon, the father of Nasser Mohammad (of the El-Nasser Mosque). At one time, the complex enclosed a madrassa, tomb and public hospital. Its facade is adorned with interlocking black and white marble blocks, and its windows are surrounded by recessed, covered arches, which look quite Crusader-Gothic (except for the window grills and continuous inscription band, the whole front looks this way). William suggested that this might be because imprisoned Crusaders are said to have been its builders. In fact, the inner structure of the madrassa closely resembles that of a basilica.

Around the building is a fountain surrounded by columns. It sort of looks like a moat, and (because of its bottom) can give you a feel for the street level at the time of construction. We were allowed inside the complex, which has one of the most elaborate painted and carved ceilings we’ve seen. Unfortunately, my camera doesn’t do such a good job when I can’t use the flash…

Next door is a mosque erected by Nasser (right next to Daddy). The facade is a straight dichotomy of victory and failure, as William put it: the front door comes from a church in Acre, but the minaret is constructed in the Andalusian style. Inside, the structure has the same long-vaulted wooden ceiling as Daddy’s mosque. It also has a lovely mikrab decorated with multiple layers of imprinted stucco in the Iranian style. (I feel like I’m really starting to become familiar with the elements of a mosque. It feels good.) The restoration is… eh. It was done by a German team, and the Germans are apparently into not using any of the original materials when rebuilding. Here it was done to look like it had just fallen apart, with crumbled half-walls of brand-new baked brick. Strange.

Across the street from the mosque another combination elementary-school-and-public-water-dispensary, and there’s also one down the street. We entered the second one, which is covered with the same generic blue and white painted tiles one can buy in the market. These were popular during the Ottoman Period, according to William. The upper floor had some great classical columns and offered a nice view of the street, all the way to the tower of the first madrassa we visited.

Oh, and the building smelled like roasted marshmallows.

Last, we visited the Akmar Mosque. It was the first mosque in Cairo to have a fully-dressed stone facade, and the first to use continuous inscription bands on the street side. Some of the inscriptions are actually political, stating the glory of the builder, et cetera, et cetera. That’s a pretty interesting mix of religion and personal prestige, if you ask me.

The mosque was renovated during the 1980s by a group of Indian Shi’ites on a mission to restore (read: make gaudier, and not in the original style) old Shi’ite structures. Today the walls are painted a pale yellow, which (to the Indians’ credit) actually adds a nice, light feeling to the open-air inner court. White arch covers and window grills sit where some of the old grey ones were lost. The mikrab is made of marble, which wasn’t used on mikrabs until after the time of the building’s original construction (a fatal flaw!).

William led us to the end of this section of Islamic Cairo, where we could see the old Fatimid city walls. Then we turned around and went straight to Khan el-Kalili to buy some kitsch.

P.S.

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

(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…

(THE MOSQUES OF) ISLAMIC CAIRO, PART I

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I just realized that a great New York Times article I have linked on the side mentions most of the sites we saw today (and some from the other day)!

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I put on my nicest set of modest clothes for our trip to the northern part of El Fustat this morning. We visited four mosques, two of which are inside the citadel, and an Ottoman house museum. Strictly because of my interests, I’m going to keep the focus of my thoughts on the museum, to which I’ve devoted an entire entry.

But first…

The Mosque of Ibn Talun is a large open space with pointed arches with swirling patterns of ropes and leaves, atop broad piers of baked brick covered in plaster. The piers are in place of columns we’ve seen elsewhere, because the mosque is based on those in Iraq where there were no remnants of Roman buildings to plunder. The arches are framed by floral friezes, made by stamping wood carvings into wet stucco. Between the arches are long hanging lamps on metal chains. Complex geometric patterns adorn the stone window grills which let the sound of prayer out into the streets. On the minbar (a pulpit of sorts), wooden detail is carved in petal-, star-, and octagon-shaped panels. In the center of the mosque is a domed fountain (meida) from the 13^th century.

The oldest mosque in Egypt to survive in its original form, the space is actually a small-scale model of those in Samara (they get bigger! Wow.). Mosques like this one don’t survive in Iraq today, so it’s quite unique in the world of Mamlouk architecture. During its heyday, secondary mikrabs were carved into some of the piers to give crowds of worshipers a directional aid. Today the space is no longer in use, as evidenced by the prayer rugs’ only covering half of each arcade floor. This mosque has had an interesting history of use and disuse—it was once an insane asylum!

(What I don’t get about Egyptian historical preservation is how appreciation levels are low—they were contemplating putting housing on this site!)

One can trace the development of the Arabic language by examining the inscriptions on the walls at Ibn Talun; both Kufic, with no vowels and consonant-distinguishing symbols in stone on a pier, and cursive Arabic, in gold mosaic on the main mikrab, can be seen. Kufic is interesting in that it mirrors the Hebrew of fluent speakers, where no vowel signals are given and words are read correctly only after one gets used to the language in speech. The Kufic plaque at this mosque quotes a passage from the Koran that is very similar to one from daily Jewish prayers, called Vayera.

We passed three brightly-colored posters with photographs and diagrams of the mosque as we left. I smiled at the man untying the cloth covers from my shoes, and thanked him for our visit. He thanked me back.

Leaving the site, I had a few questions about the history surrounding the mosque’s founding dynasty. How did the Mamlouks remain loyal to their masters? Were they brainwashed? Was a drive for social acceptance somehow involved?

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The enormous Mosque and Madrassa of Sultan Hassan is the result of competitive building during the period of Mamlouk rule. No one could build anything bigger at the time, and it is still one of the biggest mosques in the world today. Its immediate predecessors are smaller, yet more detailed to compensate for their size.

The mosque originally housed four colleges, each neatly tucked into a corner of the main sanctuary. This main room, which has no roof and possesses a series of short arcades around a central fountain modest in comparison with others we’ve seen, looks a little like part of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies.

We were treated to a lovely performance by a cantor (I’m not sure what the Arabic term is for this profession), who sang the verses on the upper border of the tomb behind the mikrab (which looked the same as at the Mosque of Ibn Talun). The tomb was built for Hassan, but he went missing and his body never ended up there. Asharaff mouthed the words of the prayer as the cantor manipulated the acoustics in the room (it was really spectacular—Adam has a video).

Walking back towards the entrance, I noticed that this mosque has the same prayer mat pattern on its rugs as we’ve seen elsewhere, sort of like a template for worshipers to find their place. The Sultan Hassan Mosque uses a long strip of this carpet as a walkway for visitors, which looks pretty funny in the middle of the massive, cold stone floors of its center court. I wonder where the mosques get this mass-produced prayer rug fabric…

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Inside the citadel, the hub of power in Cairo from about 1200 through the 1870s, we visited two more mosques, the El-Nasser Mohammad Ibn Qalawoon Mosque and the Mosque of Mohammad Ali.

The ceilings of the arcades at the El-Nasser Mosque are supported by classical columns, as at many other mosques in the neighborhood. It has a spectacular green-tiled dome on top, and beneath are arcade walls of stone. The walls used to be inlayed with marble, which was stripped and sold at some point.

The general feel of this mosque was much “warmer” than at the others. That is to say, the small size of the mosque, coupled with Asharaff praying in front of us against the mikrab, gave life to the structure. It was more welcoming, more cheerful, and more charming.

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The Mosque of Mohammad Ali is constructed in the dome style, like the Hagia Sofia. Until now, we have only explored arcaded and barrel-vaulted mosques.

The structure has a very large chandelier in the center of its main prayer hall, which is surrounded by several metal circles holding large globular lamps in suspension above the ground. The effect sort of looks like a scene from The Prestige, where an inventor creates a field of glowing lightbulbs with no wires, or from the last Harry Potter movie, where floating orbs of light surround the main characters in a dark room.

Well, this room wasn’t so dark. Actually, it had very nice red carpeting (surprise). In one corner is Ali’s tomb, which we weren’t able to get a very good look at. When you walk outside, you get a spectacular view of Cairo, including the pyramids at Giza in the distance. (I took a video—this was a really great way to end our day!)

DAY OFF, ROUND II

Cairo is so different from the Oasis. It’s much busier and more cosmopolitan, but has less fresh produce. It does, however, have about the same ratio of phone stores to residents…

I’m sitting in Costa Coffee on El Falaky Street, my new home, drowning in a cup of coffee the size of my face. Sad music (from that horrible CD they play over and over) surrounds me as I beg for forgiveness from my notebook of unfinished daynotes. I’ve been here way too long–the lights are starting to make everything blur together!

I’m hoping to get the chance to explore a little on my own on our next free day, since we’ve got a more flexible schedule now that we aren’t traveling. I’m interested in going to Zemalek, taking a stroll along the Nile, and (most of all) spending a day outside!

When I get back to Happy City I’m going to relax on the roof with my hookah and an episode of The Simpsons. For dinner, I’ll have these fantastic street-sandwiches of chili and green peppers that Adam and I have been eating almost every night. I’m killing my arteries, but it tastes so good!

OLD CAIRO

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love churches. That’s why our trip to Old Cairo today was such a treat; we explored an entire neighborhood of places of worship, which were fascinating despite their current state of 19^th-century style and restoration.

Our day began in the small backyard garden of a local café, where we sipped extra-pricey tea as William explained the origins of some of the buildings in the area. The Fortress of Bablyon, the beginnings of which were constructed during the reign of Trajan (wow, that’s old), encloses our wandering vicinity. It was originally constructed right on the bank of the Nile, but shifts westward by the ground have left it about 300 meters away from its original location at present. The neighborhood inside the fortress became a Christian and Jewish ghetto surrounded by a Muslim city after the Arab conquest. On one side of the fortress walls are two large towers, from which one of the only bridges across the Nile (through Rawdah Island) was once controlled. Today, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint George sits on top of the remains of one tower, while part of the other serves as a pedastil for the Church of the Virgin, or the Suspended Church (Muwalakka in Arabic).

The area outside of the Church of the Virgin, between the two towers at the site of the Coptic Museum, looks like a gated community. The facade of the church sports small windows with pointed arches and little balconies too small for use. Walking inside, I scanned the rows of poster-size photographs of past Coptic popes; among them was a frightening image of a deceased monk, split-frame with another image of his decaying corpse years later. I made a note of this, since it relates directly to my major thesis topic (the exhibition of the dead for institutionalized or ritual purposes), and continued down the hallway.

A lovely open court with bright beige walls and dark wooden fixtures serves as an anteroom for the chapel itself. It reminded me a lot of the atrium at the Frick Museum in New York, one of my favorite places to read and study. A lintel made of Ottoman-Period tiles and dark wood hangs over the door to the chapel. A test-cleaning done by the same Italian team working at the Red Monastery and elsewhere left two bright strips on a column beside the door; William explained that the Italian team was simply too expensive for the church to hire, “a mistake”.

When I entered, I could smell the familiar scent of church incense (my best friend is Greek Orthodox). The gallery is lined with pointed arches and is supported by late-antique columns, while on the ground floor are 12th-century wooden screen walls in cookie-cutter patterns and matte walls decorated with 18th-century icons. A strange podium of sorts sits in the center of the sanctuary, much like those I saw in the churches of Cyprus last summer. The roof tyle is “wagon-vaulted,” according to William, symbolic of Noah’s ark. In the second room, the window cut in the chancel wall (or hiekel wall), originally used to view an icon or statue (like at Gebel el-Tayr), allows visitors to examine a newly-discovered 13th- or 14th-century painting. Elaborate wood and ivory carvings and inlays adorn the chancel wall. Beneath the second room is the substructure of the original Roman tower, which visitors can view through a glass panel in the floor, lined with a light wooden balcony. Before I left, I picked up a photograph of that dead monk poster at the gift shop. Thus starts my thesis-driven collection of dead-people pictures!

What I really loved about the Church of the Virgin was the montage of different eras inside and out. It was such a great mix, really showing the evolution of church artistic and architectural styles. I was also pleased with how many connections I was able to make between this church and those I have visited before. It really feels like I’m building up my churchy-knowledge repertoire!

We exited the church and headed down the block, where we walked down a small staircase to a narrow ally paved with stone. The ally was dotted with churches, and the walls showed pockets of exposed brickface, the blank spaces between filled with peddlers’ merchandise. Adam and I met a (presumably Jewish) merchant who spoke perfect Hebrew. He handed us pamphlets on the restoration of Ben Ezra Synagogue, which we would see later on.

After a nice chat with our new friend, we entered the Church of Abu-Serga, the oldest in the area. The chapel felt much more open than that of the Church of the Virgin, with alternating pitched and domed wooden roofs. Pink garlands hung from the chancel wall, which had the same kind of ivory and wood inlays, as well as carvings of saints, as the last church (an element of 12th- and 13th-century style). The same strange podium sat in the middle of the sanctuary.

The same Italian team I mentioned previously recently uncovered a 13th-century painting of Christ in Majesty in the chapel, painted by the same artist who worked at the Monastery of Saint Anthony in the Eastern Desert: this means that the artist had wealthy and driven patrons, since he was able to travel so far to work on these great pieces.

This church sits above a crypt where the Holy Family is said to have lived at some point. We were able to enter the room with the staircase down into the crypt, where I saw many frustrated worshipers sigh at the throngs of tourists in their house of prayer. I really wish we could have gone to these churches at a time when local Copts were not expected to pray, because I hate being an invasive tourist.

Speaking of not wanting to be disruptive to prayer services, our next stop was an inactive house of worship. Ben Ezra Synagogue, probably the only one we’ll see with this program, no longer has an Eternal Light above its altar (which means it hasn’t been in use for some time). Beautiful columns and statues that look marble–but are really cast-iron–have gold inlays of the Ten Commandments and other religious motifs. Ben Ezra is the site where the Geniza Documents, 11th- to 19th-century records of everyday life, were found in the 1890s. I was expecting pointed arches in the style of churches in the area, but instead found rounded arches and a golden-red and blue ceiling.

The layout of the synagogue is very different from what I’m used to: usually, pews for men are in front of the bima, the women’s pews behind them, separated by a screen. Here the sanctuary is lined with black benches, which means that the men probably prayed on the ground floor, facing the center of the building, and the women in the galleries. This is much like the old style of the Coptic Church, which clearly influenced Jewish practices in the area. On my way out, I gave some money to the cemetery-preservation fund. Unfortunately, we were unable to visit the cemetery.

Our last stop was the Mosque of ‘Amr, the oldest mosque on record (built in 641). It started very small, but was expanded 5 times in 200 years (until about 820), using basilica-style construction turned 90 degrees (everything looks very flat and horizontal, with aisles of worshipers facing inward in a square towards the center space). Because it is a “Friday mosque” where everyone prays together, it grew with the population. The Muslim community grew with the conversion of Christians after a failed rebellion over taxes during the ninth century (likely including Asharaff’s family, according to William). Most of what we saw dates to the latest expansion and update, in about 1980.

The women had to wear these absurd neon-green cloaks, which I felt were less for modesty and more for outcasting because of their color (I’m not being cynical; just honest). We sat on a red carpet floor in the huge, open space lined with classical columns and supported by wooden beams while William lectured a little on Islam.

Woven into the carpet were the outlines of prayer mats, so as to arrange worshipers in neat rows. I was fortunate enough to experience my first realtime Muslim prayer service, where I saw men of all ages following the vocal cues of the voice on the speaker. Their prayer is more of a performance than I expected, and included many acute yet symbolic motions that were intriguing for a nice Jewish girl (like touching one’s hands to his ears in a swift, light movement before kneeling to pray). I think a lot of the assumptions I made about Muslim prayer rituals based on hearing their services as opposed to seeing them were turned on their heads today. I’m really glad we got to sit in on the service, and I hope they enjoyed our company.

Alright, I have to leave this coffee shop. They have the same CD on repeat, and I’ve heard When a Man Loves a Woman and My Heart Will Go On eight times already!

GIZA AND SAQQARA

I’m sitting on the roof of Happy City Hotel, smoking a coconut hookah and reflecting on our day at Giza and Saqqara. I’m emailing everyone to let them know that I finally made it to the pyramids, but I still can’t believe it myself.

The pyramids are weathered, their choppy limestone skeletons exposed almost entirely (with the exception of the top of Khafre’s pyramid, where one can still see the high-quality limestone casing that used to cover the whole of these structures). I found it impossible to capture an entire pyramid in one picture, so I had to take several of each to show all of the sides and rows of blocks.

Standing in front of the Great Pyramid gave me a funny feeling: it’s so big and so impressive for its time (2500 BCE), something to marvel at—but I just didn’t know what to do with myself once I was there. Most of the other students bought tickets to go inside and crawl up to the burial chamber, but I stayed behind with Monika and William.

The three of us walked around the structure as we debated whether or not it was ever painted (the answer is of course no, if only because the Egyptians would never have wasted their time adding color to something outside that would fade in mere decades). Monika and I found ourselves at the museum housing Khiops’ solar boat, where we were asked to wear cloth slippers over our shoes; they probably wanted to save money on floor polish, so we did them a favor and slid around the place like we were wearing ice skates.

The solar boat is extremely large–probably too large to have been merely a symbolic grave good. My guess is that the boat was used at some point and then buried with the king for use in the afterlife, though William suggested that it might have been constructed for real use in the afterlife without having been used before. The display is fantastic: three floors of photographs and relics like rope and wood, as well as posters showing the conservation of materials and restoration of the structure. Above hangs the solar boat itself, raised off of the second floor by t-shaped metal posts. The conservators clearly went through a lot of trouble to make the boat look like it was when it was built, probably using images from tombs and other buildings contemporary with the vessel. Though new wood had to be used to reconstruct some of the more delicate parts of the boat, the bottom is made from the original pieces. Amazingly, it is held together only by rope and the pressure of expanding wood after it’s been exposed to moisture.

Our trip to the Sphinx, which we saw next, was surprisingly short. Asharaff took us through the gates to the inner court, which is made of granite and constructed in the same way as the Osireion at Abydos (his theory is that they are linked, though built fifteen dynasties apart). We split up and walked up a stone ramp to the viewing area closest to the monument, where I thought I could get a good photo; instead, I was pushed and shoved by scantily-clad tourists trying to funnel in through the small surrounding walkways. (And what a display of poor taste! Their were shirtless men and women with shorts riding up their rears. No respect, I say!)

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Saqqara was originally supposed to be the subject of my site report, so I found myself adding little tidbits to William’s and Asharaff’s spiels. First we visited the Teti Pyramid, which is covered in neat rows of uncolored glyphs. The ceiling shows signs of earthquake damage and quick restoration to stop it from collapsing, in the form of plaster buffers between the stones. The king’s name is everywhere, filling in all of the blank spaces between the spells! Perhaps they should’ve thought of a more exciting space-filler…

I was particularly impressed by the reliefs in the 6th-dynasty tombs, which focused a great deal on daily life (like Petosiris’ tomb at Tuna el-Gebel and the Old Kingdom tombs), and are so detailed that the rope looks like rope, the fish look like fish and the force-feeding of piglets looks like the force-feeding of piglets (those were quite disturbing, I have to say). Other images included butterflies, dancers and, er, man parts. These images are important no doubt because they can help scholars understand how the people carried out everyday tasks in this area, in conjunction with surviving texts.

Each tomb had one or more false doors with cylindrical lintels, which reminded me of the one on display in the Met’s Egyptian Wing. Whereas the wall art was in raised relief, the decoration on the doors was in sunken relief (except in Mere-Ruka’s tomb, where the door was decorated in paint alone).

In the tomb of Ka-Gmni, two figures were defaced; I have a feeling that these were of the same person, someone who committed some crime or disrespected the ruling party at the time of this act. Other than that, the walls of each of these structures were in great condition, save the missing paint on top of the reliefs. On one wall, Mere-Ruka’s wife is helped to stand by a group of professional mourners, wearing wigs in contrast with her bald head. What a powerful scene!

I really wish we had designated a separate day for Saqqara, because I was exhausted by the time we arrived at Djoser’s complex. It would have been nice to walk around with some energy left in me, since the site contains the earliest known stone structures (exciting!) and is quite well-preserved for its date. Here are the results of the restoration of the world’s first colonnade, and the step pyramid that developed out of a mere mastaba. Instead of exploring the area, I found myself bending my knees around one of the foundation blocks of Djoser’s pyramid to get comfortable as the group nodded with the rhythm of William’s voice.

DAY OFF

We were showered with white paint as we exited the library of the American Research Center in Egypt. It was the last leg of a long walk around central Cairo, for a little bit of business (getting our AUC library cards and finding the Rare Books building) and a little bit of pleasure (finding a tailor to shorten my cargo pants). Afterwards, Adam and I went off on our own to look for a BlackBerry in the maze of electronics stores, butchers and bakeries that is the Cairo city plan.

It feels good to be back in this place, with its dirty streets and well-dressed women, stinking fish markets and antique Victorian-style apartment buildings. Cairo is filthy and beautiful, the best of both worlds.

I am currently working (i.e., fixing my daynotes and doing some research) in the first American-style coffee shop I’ve encountered since New York.  Been here since 2:00, still going strong!

GEBEL EL-TAYR: CHURCH OF THE VIRGIN

One thing you might not expect to hear from a nice Jewish girl is this: I love churches. Church architecture, church art, church music. Really, I’ve considered a Christian Studies minor.

Unfortunately, the mythical (or semi-mythical) history of the Church of the Virgin is far more exciting than the structure itself, though the lintel above the door to the sanctuary is carved with beautiful reliefs of floral and abstract motifs.

Save that, the church looked as one would expect a “3rd-century” building to appear: very plain, with simple, white domed ceilings and red carpet. Much of the structure is rock-cut, including a small niche purported to be the temporary home of the Holy Family on the occasion their stay Egypt during the Massacre of the Innocents (there’s even a map showing their route on the outer wall of the chancel). A beautiful mosaic, which I would say probably dates to the 19th century, hangs on the wall of an auxiliary prayer room. Remnants of painted saints’ heads fade into the plaster on a long wall in the sanctuary. Oil and dirt from the hands of pilgrims and local worshipers coats both sides of the entrance.

There is no foreseeable way to date the church, but I am rather skeptical that it was built by Saint Helena. In any case, the small part of the town of Gebel el-Tayr we were able to see before entering the church offered a nice treat. It is one of few Coptic areas we’ve driven through or visited, with bright yellow houses and a lovely fenced overlook to a row of farms and the Nile.

TINIS (AKORIS)

Tinis (or Akoris, if you’re Greek) has inspired me to seek out more fieldwork opportunities in Egypt. The site is currently being excavated by a Japanese mission—when I heard those words leave William’s mouth, I did what Page did when she first saw the Valley of the Kings: I squeaked with joy, complete with that hands-covering-mouth motion Page whips out at only the most exciting moments.

Apparently (so says Dr. Bagnall’s book, according to William), the site is home to Old Kingdom tombs and a rock-cut Ptolemaic Temple, as well as some architecture dating to Nero’s time. What we saw appears to be Ancient History Stew: a temple gate with inscriptions that point to a Judeo-Claudian origin, an unfinished room with one capital (bearing Hathor’s head) as its only decoration, a shrine on the second level with high reliefs of Egyptian gods, and a long hall with a series of rectangular doorways and two strange, blocky, roughly crocodile-shaped niches carved opposite each other. The site is a mix of strange architecture and earthquake collapse debris; there is a gated room filled with crocodile carcasses, and in front of each doorway (and elsewhere) are shafts so deep they probably end in China. Foot-wide circular imprints dot the floors of the courtyard. Hilly with the remains of mudbrick architecture, white millstones and pot sherds, Tinis is a mess. I love a good mess.

The Japanese team has found several mummies at Tinis, all of which belong to women. Not only does this tickle my inner necrophiliac, but also my inner sociologist: if the women are in the tombs, are the men in the shafts? Are there crocodiles in those shafts?

The Japanese mission digs each July. I have already looked them up, and am currently composing an email to the director in Japanglish.