Cats and Dogs

When we arrived at our Cairo apartment this year we found only a single cat; last year we had two but in 2022 we were feeding up to ten cats. We had to buy food in bulk! I guess the word got out that food was available outside our door. We like to name these so-called street cats. We choose names that describe some characteristic of each cat. In 2022 we had so many cats that we ran out of clever names and so the last one named became just Kitty Kat.

The lone cat this year was Kitty Kat .  Here she is sleeping on her favorite chair where she spent many hours after discovering that we enjoyed her company.

 

She was a bit chubby - we suspected pregnancy. Sure enough, she got bigger and bigger until she delivered three kittens about March 11th.

We suspect that this cat, "Big Tom," has something to do with the situation. He seems to know a secret route into the building even though it's a security building and a key is needed to open the door.

  

 

One night we could see that Kitty Kat was unusually agitated, moving from place to place trying to get comfortable. Just outside our door we set up a maternity ward in the form of a box with a towel. She sensed that this was a good place to rest and immediately took up residence. We went to bed and when we checked in the morning, there they were-mom and three tiny kittens in one mass of fur. 

  

 

The kittens grew surprisingly quickly and their eyes opened;  Kitty-Kat, knowing what a safe place our apartment was,  moved them into our bedroom but we put them back into her box.

  

 

Suddenly, after 15 days they were all gone. I heard mewing sounds in the distance. Kitty Kat had taken the kittens to the very top floor of the building where there is a door to a vacant apartment with an opening of a few inches at the bottom. We saw her, with a kitten in her mouth, slip under the opening and then return for the last kitten. We can only speculate the reason for the move. Perhaps the box was too restrictive or too small for the growing family or ?? Only Kitty Kat knows the reason. Her family, her decision.

 

There are several dogs in the neighborhood too. Like many dogs here, they hang out on the tops of cars. 

  

 

 We offer them some treats when we pass by on the way to the grocery stores.

 

Kitty Kat is quite wary of people but we almost have her fully domesticated. We wish she was as friendly as some of the cute cats we encounter on the street; we will keep trying to build trust.
  

 

 

 

 

 

The Open-Air Obelisk Museum in Heliopolis

Last year, while visiting the Barron Empain Palace, we should have toured the nearby open-air museum devoted to the single obelisk remaining at the large obelisk site. We made a special trip to see it this year.

Located in the heart of Heliopolis, it was surprising to learn that this site is not more widely known and visited.  This was even Roshdy's first visit.  We let the lady in the GPS  app on my phone guide us on a rather circuitous route to avoid traffic.

Suddenly, there it was, right in the heart of the city!

There are signs, of course.  And an admission fee of only 100LE ($2.00) 

  

 

We found an appropriate angle for the obligatory tourist photo.

 

The open-air museum has some delightful exhibits.

 

  

 

And there is a very interesting portion that is open-air but shielded from the rain and sun.

 

  

 

 

And with a little search for the right angle and some Photoshop magic, the obelisk can be made to look a little less like just another city building.

 

More photos at this Flickr Album.

 

 

 

The Adventure Named Egypt!

Devoted followers of this blog, and there aren't very many, are probably wondering what has been going on over the past few weeks.  We headed south for that cruise on Lake Nasser back about Valentine's Day.  It was a six day trip but took me over a month to write about it!

In the meantime, we have begun a major repair project for the apartment.  About fifteen months ago when we arrived in early January of 2024 we found the kitchen ceiling, powder room ceiling and a few other areas in a state of disaster due to water damage from the apartment above us.  Details are in last years blog posts here and here. 

To summarize the situation as we found it fifteen months ago: Large portions of the heavy plaster crown molding had separated and fallen to the floor in our kitchen, powder room and hallway that leads to the bedrooms.  Peeling paint and plaster were falling regularly from the ceiling in those areas.

Our upstairs neighbor, I'll call him Richard - or Dick for short - was the source of the water.  He had inherited the apartment from his father, I'll call him Big Dick.  Big Dick had reluctantly dealt with water leakage about seven years ago.  We refinished the kitchen ceiling at that time and repainted our apartment.  

Here is what our situation looked like in January, 2024.

  

The worst of our recessed kitchen lights (only seven years old) since replacement following Big Dick's first water fiasco, looked like this:

 

With encouragement from friends, we sought legal help.  We contacted a lawyer in the neighborhood who assured us that he could bring a successful legal case.  He had a nice, if not elaborate, office.

 

Within a few weeks he had successfully served papers on Dick and a police inspection of the properties would be scheduled.  Our lawyer visited us twice at our apartment and we completed this phase for a grand total of about one hundred dollars in legal fees.

Alas, nothing seemed to happen over the next ten months, in spite of the tempting promise of another hundred dollars in legal fees for some results.

In the meantime, an informal committee of concerned building residents (three of us) and a building contractor, visited Dick's apartment and pecked away with a hammer at some obvious loose tiles and potential sources for the water.

We carefully reviewed both of Dick's bathrooms and concluded that the floors likely needed to be torn up, proper water barriers installed and new floors laid. There was no membrane under the tile floor.

Since nothing had taken place on the legal front by the time we arrived this January, despite our lawyer telling us that we had a court date in November, we took the advice of another friend and sought legal help from another lawyer on the other side of the river in downtown Cairo.

He had a much larger office.  With a lobby! We were beginning to think that this lawyer would be a little more costly than the previous one.

 

Lawyer number two wanted three thousand dollars up front but said we had a very good case.

Well, this is Egypt.  For three thousand dollars I should be able to repair four or five kitchens AND bathrooms.

A couple of days later, it began to rain in our kitchen.  Linda put out all the pots and pans we own as water was pouring out of the recessed ceiling lights!  Towels were put down to catch other drips - we collected over a gallon of water in the pots in the next hour.

 

We dashed up to the next floor to confront Dick - he was just leaving his apartment, to go to his gym, no less.  We asked him to come into our kitchen to see the damage. He was very sorry. "Sorry" doesn't solve or fix the problem.

 It turns out that the problem was not with the floor of Dick's bathrooms; water was pouring through the floor of the disaster area called "his kitchen".

 

At some point, Big Dick had installed a tank for potable water in the kitchen.  The faucet from it was leaking - as was the faucet for the "city water" in the kitchen.  The water from the first leaky faucet was caught in a jar, the size of a Vlasic pickle jar.  The granite countertop surrounding the sink was broken in half so all leaking water ran down through the cabinet holding the sink - which, by now, had a totally rotted out floor.  A large 5 gallon bucket (think Home Depot bucket size), filled to overflowing, was presumably there to catch the leaking water.  Tip or spill any of the containers - or just neglect the containers - and the water fell to Dick's floor, ran to cracks, leaked along iron re-bar and onto the iron hooks holding our suspended ceiling before seeking an exit at our light fixtures.  Like the river Nile, the water wore its own channels through everything in its path until reaching our kitchen floor. We also had rivulets running down our wall tile from our ceiling to the floor.

With the help of friends, we negotiated a solution.  Dick would hire a plumber/fixer to redo his kitchen plumbing and cabinetry.  We would contribute some cash to make it happen immediately.  In the end, a very good repair job was done; new granite, a "catch basin" surrounding the sink, new plumbing.  There was even a re-grout and seal of the master bath floor just in case any water was coming from there.  It took about three days.  After carefully watching the repairman, I am confident that any water dispensed in Dick's kitchen will now go into the sewer drain instead of our apartment.

Dick was on his own to buy the new granite countertop.  We paid half of all the rest - our share came to $68.

Now, we just had to wait for things to dry out and consider how we would repair our damage.  We considered the possibility of returning to Cairo for a couple of weeks in the fall to supervise a remodeling job.  When our friend heard this idea he replied, "Why spend your money for a ticket? We can do it now." He called a so-called engineer (anyone with the least bit of technical skills is called an engineer) who came to our house to assess the situation. Yes, he could repair it in just five days. Our friend negotiated a price that for us was satisfactory. We knew, of course, that it would take longer than five days but we still had enough time so we gave the OK for the project to begin. We realistically figured that the five days quoted was more like about ten days in real time; but we still had fifteen days before we left. Project start date = March 20, 2025. By the 20th it was changed to the 22nd. Before starting we're two days behind. OK, let's begin.

The project.

• Tear out and replace current dropped ceiling in the kitchen
• Add a new dropped ceiling in the powder room (with lights)
• Repair all loose plaster in hall ceiling and walls
• Repair other plaster with water damage
• Repair numerous cracks that have appeared over the years (not water damage related)
• Install new crown molding in affected areas
  
• Repaint all walls and ceilings throughout

That's a big job; cost will run six to eight hundred dollars.

Finally the day came and the workers showed up and began demolition and paint preparation, (45 minutes late). We're off to a good start??   We moved everything we would need for living into our bedroom -the microwave, coffee maker and electric tea pot.  We covered all the furniture with plastic and crammed it into the living room. We referred to it as camping inside our apartment.

  

 

Day 1 "First, prepare the surface," that innocent sounding first instruction on every can of paint got underway.

  

 

I should point out that we don't actually have plaster walls.  Interior construction here consists of a layer of special "white cement" over the bricks that form walls. The painters used a special "putty" form of cement to fill cracks and holes.

 

 

Day 2  Demolition of the suspended dropped ceiling soon revealed a big surprise.  Our kitchen ceiling was disintegrating as the many years of leaking water had rusted through the re-bar and the bottom two inches of concrete was separating from the re-bar!  Dick has a problem - he and his mother (Dick is single at age 30 and lives with his mother) may soon fall through their floor and into our kitchen. What a surprise that would be for them (but not for us).

  

It is amazing to see the damage that leaking water can do to structural iron bars.

 

Dilemma: should we just patch it up and hide it with some epoxy or do a proper repair?  This is likely a big-money fix. Fortunately for us our downstairs neighbor is very well versed in construction so we called on him to take a look at our project. With alarm in his voice he immediately determined that our original plan was not sufficient to proceed. He knows a REAL engineer who can come and assess the situation but not until after Ramadan. This effectively puts our remodel on hold until after the imminent arrival of the big Eid el Fitr Holiday.

Day 3  Nobody showed up and nobody called to tell us the reason. Are you sure this is a five day project?

Day 4  Sheet rock installation in the powder room.

Day 5 An electrician came to install two recessed lights in the powder room. That's more light than previous and no shadows now.  He also installed two temporary lights in the kitchen so we can see enough for some light food preparation.   

  

 

We do not regret starting the project before leaving because now we have a good idea of what will happen in our absence. We will have to trust our friends to supervise the final repairs and finishing work.  We'll keep in contact via messenger, voice and photos, along the way. We have faith that it will all turn out well but wonder, "what will this cost - and will Dick end up paying for the damage?"  

Watch this space for the final  chapter to the story, next January!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Cruise on Lake Nasser, Egypt. Day Six. Part II.

Review of the area around Kalabsha Temple (Temple of Mandulis)

In the previous post, I covered a bit of the geography and history associated with the ten-mile long stretch of the Nile around the area of the narrow mountainous passage known as bab el-Kalabsha.  Then we took a close look at the Beit al-Wali temple that had been cut into the stone a short distance to the northwest above the massive Mandulis temple at Kalabsha.

We next will take a look at the mammisi (birth house of the gods) that was originally positioned within the outer wall of the temple at one of its corners, then browse the unfinished Kiosk of Qertassi from a few miles north of the temple on the other side of the bab, take a look at the remnants of the Temple of Garf Hussein that was moved from twenty miles south of the Kalabsha temple and finally tour the grand Kalabsha Temple itself.

 

The Mammisi (Chapel of Dedwen)

 The "mammisi" or birth house was originally positioned within the outer wall of the main temple.

  

There's not much to see beyond the remnants of the columns.  There is nothing to see inside the tiny sanctuary, so the action is all concentrated in the bas-reliefs surrounding the entrance.

Dedwen (also Dedwan or Dedun) is a rather minor god in the Egyptian world but was significant to the Nubians.  The reliefs around the chamber entrance depict an unknown pharaoh making offerings to Dedwen.  (Author Sarah Holz has a nice write-up on Dedwen here, there is quite a bit of reference to him in the Jebel Barkal Visitor Guide too.) Here is a bit of information from Dedwen's Wikipedia entry.

God of Incense, Wealth, and Prosperity

The earliest known information in Egyptian writings about Dedwen indicate that he already had become a god of incense by the time of the writings. Since at that historical point, incense was an extremely expensive luxury commodity, and Nubia was the source of much of it, he was quite an important deity. The wealth that the trade in incense delivered to Nubia led to his being identified by them as the god of prosperity and of wealth in particular.

Finding an image attached to information about Dedwen is quite difficult.  In fact there are several Internet sources that specify Dedwen as a goddess, or even a serpent-headed goddess, and a few others "punt" by referring only to a "god" or "deity."  The travel site, Egypt Tours Portal, ventures both a description and a picture:

Dedun was an ancient god of wealth, prosperity, and incense. He was worshiped mainly in Sudan and Nubia, a region south of Egypt that was sometimes under Egyptian control. He was mentioned in the pyramid texts and was believed to provide the precious resources that came from Nubia, such as gold, ebony, ivory, and exotic animals. He was also the patron of craftsmen who made incense and perfume. He was often shown as a lion-headed man wearing a crown with horns and plumes. 

A very contemporary, non-academic but apparently well-researched, modern depiction of Dedwen by computer gamer, Cedric Ferris, can be found here.

 

Moving along the guided path, we next reach

The Kiosk of Qertassi

Qertassi (also Gertassi, Gartass, Kertassi, Kardassy, or Kardeseh), about 29 miles north of Kalabsha, was the site of numerous quarries where the stone for the temple of Philae and many other temples originated.  It appears that the quality of sandstone fell off to the south of this point in the river.  This stone was even transported vast distances upriver into modern day Sudan to Jebel Barkal.  

This archeological landmark is likely one of the most frequently depicted ruins that lay in the path of the Lake Nasser floodwaters.  It stood on relatively high ground and was visible for miles.

 

Situated on a slight rise behind the Kalabsha temple, this fragment still appeals to all photographers.  

 

The landmark appears to have been part of a temple which was never completed so its date and role is subject to considerable speculation. Only six columns remain of the original 14.  Most scholars these days believe that the two “Hathor heads” were there to serve as patron saints for the workers in the quarry.

The most compete description of this partial temple is found in Jocelyn Gohary's Guide and is worth quoting in part:

Hathor was the patron goddess of miners and quarrymen, and two Hathor-headed columns flank the entrance.  Near the kiosk at its original site was a rock-cut shrine to Isis and a local form of Osiris. The kiosk consists of a single chamber, formed by four columns with exceptionally fine floral capitals, with screen-walls between them (that on the south side is destroyed). 

... The kiosk was originally roofed with sandstone blocks, but these are no longer in place. The concept is similar in design, though on a smaller scale, to Trajan's Kiosk at Philae. No dates were found at the quarries earlier than the Ptolemaic Period, to which the Kiosk of Qertassi can therefore almost certainly be assigned.  

The most distinctive feature except for the columns is the twenty-four foot long sandstone beam across the top, most likely a part of the ceiling since wood was extremely scarce in this area. 

Here's a closer look at the tops of those columns.

  

There was one more partial temple to visit.

The Temple of Garf Hussein

One of the significant temples only partially salvaged in the Nile Valley of Nubia was a large one at Garf Hussein (also Gerf Hussein, Gerf Hossein or Gyrshe.)  Just a half-dozen columns, a few stone slabs and a solitary  large statue of Ramses II sit within a small stone plaza on New Kalabsha island.

 

Approaching the entry to the plaza, a second statue of Ramses comes into view, hidden initially by one of the columns.

A look at the visitors' guide near the entrance reveals the look that the memorial creators were trying to duplicate.

  

Originally, the temple was reached from the river by ascending a walkway some three hundred feet long, lined with sphinxes.  After the completion of the "low dam," the river flooded that walkway and was just a few feet below the portico as shown in the above photo.

The temple itself consisted of a portico of ten columns lined with Ramses II statues, then a 140 foot deep cavern cut into the stone laid out in a pattern similar to Abu Simbel. Inside, a group of six colossal statues of Ramses stood about 20 feet high to greet the visitor moving on toward the sanctuary dedicated to the god Ptah. Only a portion of the portico and the two Ramses statues were brought to New Kalabsha along with a few stones from the interior depicting the accomplishments of Ramses.

On the 20th anniversary of the "Save the Monuments" campaign in 1980, UNESCO published a lengthy summary of the project.  Much of the publication was devoted to Abu Simbel, Philae and Kalabsha but for Gerf Hussein, only this mention:

As for the temple of Gerf Hussein, which was dedicated to King Ramses II ... it was, for technical and financial reasons, only partly salvaged.  

Among the "technical reasons" was certainly the poor quality of the sandstone; a major chunk of one of the statues was held in place with clips as seen in some pictures.  But, perhaps it just wasn't worthy of a full preservation.  Going back through the descriptions of visits recorded  during the 19th century, I found these comments:

... having been executed in the infancy of architectural art, when the artist produced an imposing effect not by the gracefulness, but the magnitude of his figures

... although these statues are rudely executed, the outlines of their bodies being less correct even than those of the statues at Seboua, and their legs mere round blocks

... the floors have been broken up in search of treasure, and are now covered with rubbish

...Of the sculptures and hieroglyphics with which the walls of this temple were covered, very little is now discernible, the sand-stone being of a very friable nature, and soon falling to decay; added to this, the walls are quite black with smoke from the fires kindled by the neighbouring shepherds, who often pass the night in the temple with their cattle; enough, however, still remains to show that the sculptures are rudely executed

... It is a gloomy place within—an inferior edition, so to say, of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel

... The osiride colossi, which stand twenty feet high without the entablature over their heads or the pedestal under their feet, are thick-set, bow-legged, and misshapen

... The side-chambers at Gerf Hossayn are infested with bats

... some hostile hand had been at work, and had carefully destroyed them, leaving only traces

... fanatical hands had done their best to ruin the interior of the temple, not only with crowbar, pick, and chisel, but also by filling it with combustibles to the very ceiling and then setting it on fire. The walls were covered with a tarry deposit, and black with smoke ; the surface of the stone had been calcined. The sculptures, once richly painted, presented only scanty traces of colour

... the extent of destruction is surprising. Masses of stones, broken pillars, and capitals, were lying about everywhere. The people gathered in abody with torches, and guided us to the interior, which, unlike Abou Simbel, so long buried in the preserving sands, has been open to the tribes of the desert, who have stabled their camels in its precincts, defaced the walls, and mutilated the paintings and sculpture. It is blackened with smoke throughout

...The interior is supported by six dwarfish and ill-proportioned colossi

Images of the interior were recorded by artists before photography became commonplace.  Below on the left is a "realistic" painting from Emil Prisse published around 1819.  On the right is one of David Roberts more commercialized renditions from around 1850.

"Does this picture make my ankles look fat?" might have been Ramses reaction to the older painting.  One of those large statues from the interior has been preserved in the Nubian museum in Aswan.  We haven't seen it but a photo is available on Wikimedia.  (A version showing the king with more profile can be seen at Lilly on the Loose blog.)

 

The better of the two exterior statues preserved at Kalabsha is a popular place for a photo to be taken.  I like this one with the Soviet-Egyptian friendship monument included in the background although Linda prefers to omit that modern landmark.

  

 

Two Stelae and Some Stones

In addition to the UNESCO-driven project to save twenty-two monuments, there was a multi-year, multi-national effort in the early 1960's to accelerate a number of archeological digs and retrieve whatever artifacts might be found before they were submerged forever beneath Lake Nasser.  Numerous items went to museums, and some went home with the digging archeologists as rewards for their work.  Quite a variety came to New Kalabsha.

Two large stelae are displayed along the walking path between temples on the island.  The Victory Stela of Psamtek II is the more historically notable.  The stela is a memorial to his defeat of 4200 Nubians farther to the south in modern day Sudan.  There is considerable information about this campaign available in the Jebel Barkal Visitors Guide here.  Warning, you might lose several days reading about Jebel Barkal - I did.

 

The other stela nearby is from Sety I, father of Ramses II.   Sety is pictured with a knife in hand about to decapitate an enemy.  This stela was recovered from Qasr Ibrim, the island that we observed on our first afternoon after leaving Abu Simbel.

 

Also found in this open-air museum are a number of pre-historic petroglyphs showing relatively crude drawings of animals, much as one might find in such diverse locations as Minnesota, Nevada, etc.

  

Salim pointed out the images of several images that were hard to discern after several thousand years including this elephant.

 

The Temple of Mandulis

Finally, after seeing all of the minor attractions on the island, we returned to tour the featured New Kalabsha's temple of Mandulis.

We approached the portico of the temple without having the benefit of a copy of David Roberts watercolor print at hand.

I would love to have had a copy in hand to compare as we walked through the area.  Roberts did an impressive job with his watercolors.

 

Linda found the capitals to be particularly interesting because they are so varied.  She took a number of pictures which I combined with a few from other monuments on the island.

 

Past the portico, Salim pointed out some of the inscriptions.

  

 

  

 

  

 

That last picture, of the God Mandulis, prompted me to look for other images.  Of course, Wikipedia has this one plus a very brightly colored copy.  By this time in my Klalbsha research I had become interested in colors of these paintings, having read about their erasure from taking impressions (see discussion above).  Here is the Wikipedia image of Mandulis.

 

I would love to see a color image taken from some original source to confirm this kind of coloring.  If you have never looked at a Wikipedia "talk" page where the Wiki folks "get into it" with one another, you might find this one interesting.  Aside from the merits of vector imaging, this argument presents some good discussion of Egyptian versus Nubian gods and coloring; it also brings up the subject of that Sudanese archeological site, Jebel Barkal.
 

... why do we need a standard version of Mandulis' iconography when there are so few examples of it in the first place? As far as I can tell, the only images of him come from Kalabsha and Philae ...

Putting that subject aside, let's move into the sanctuary.

  

 

The lighting in this area is such that the colorless stone relief images render best in black and white, so that is how I am showing them.

  

 

 

And that concluded our tour of New Kalabsha.

Our English speakers returned down the ramp to our launch where we departed for the twenty-minute trip across the lake to our ship.  I took one last picture of Mandulis' temple and of course, of the Soviet-Egyptian Friendship monument.

  

 

Back on board the ship, we said "good-bye" to our fellow travelers.

 

The travel agency sent both a driver and a guide to meet us at the foot of the boarding ramp of the ship.  The guide took our luggage and showed us the route along the quay to our awaiting car.

 

From there is was a quick trip back across the dam to Aswan International Airport where we discovered that the Air Cairo plane would be an hour and a half late departing for the one-hour flight back to Cairo. 

We definitely recommend the Lake Nasser cruise for a relaxing respite, particularly if one has been on an intense 8 or 10 day "see it all" visit to Egypt.  We will likely do it again in a couple of years and I'll know what to look for after re-reading this blog post.

Additional Resources

Many more pictures available at our Flickr album, of course.  Back to day one of the Aswan visit, here.  For a delightful trip through Nubia with many historic pictures, visit the Ascending Passage webpage;  start here at the Kardassy Temple entry and follow the "NEXT CHAPTER" links on each page.