Faces

 As someone who sees the world in pictures, I often wish that there were no barriers to taking photographs of people's faces. It's tricky territory. But every face hides a lifetime of experiences, achievements and disappointments. Sometimes faces speak more of a foreign country than sights - such as those that The Nile reveals when you are cruising upon it.

In Egypt, I managed to capture a few faces. Current faces in addition to the many faces we saw in tombs and on the walls of temples. At Edfu, I gave the man at the top fifty Egyptian pounds for his image which seemed to disgruntle him. Fifty Egyptian pounds is about seventy pence in British money or $1 US.

This second portrait is of Fatma - our lovely Nubian guide on Elephantine Island, Aswan. She kindly agreed to my request and I said that the reason I wished to take her photo was because she had a nice face.

I spotted this mural on Elephantine Island. I guess that she is also a Nubian woman. The same artist had decorated some other walls in the neighbourhood.

Ayman was our onboard Egyptologist. He knew a lot and was certainly blessed with the gift of the gab but he didn't seem to understand that what people sometimes require is peace and quiet and time to absorb what they are seeing.

This lad was steering our "felucca" sailing boat across The Nile and was happy to pose when I asked him.

This young man was on security duty by The Avenue of The Sphinxes in Luxor. Naturally, he needed a hundred pounds after snapping a picture of an old Yorkshire couple in their sun hats with Luxor Temple looming behind them - like the perfect backdrop for Verdi's "Aida"...

By the way, the tall obelisk on the left was meant to be balanced with a similar granite needle on the right but it was stolen by France in the nineteenth century and re-erected in Paris at Le Place de la Concorde. In my humble opinion, they should give it back. 

Sideshow

Not many rivers flow from south to north. The Nile is the most significant river on that small list. It has two sources. The Blue Nile rises in the mountains of Ethiopia. The White Nile begins its journey in Africa's great lakes region. These two parent rivers meet in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

Then the great river flows north to Aswan which is southern Egypt's most significant city. Moving further north it is about 140 miles to Luxor which in ancient times was known as Thebes. This was the very cradle of Egyptian civilisation - an economic and cultural awakening that endured for three thousand years.

It hardly ever rains in central Egypt. Without The Nile, Egypt would have been an inhospitable and barren desert. The river brought the means to exist and prosper. To this day, The Nile nourishes the land to both east and west, forming green strips of agricultural land. Even in ancient times, Egyptians knew how to divert river water - building canals and irrigation ditches. All wealth grew out of The Nile.

Unlike Steve Reed who cruised from Cairo to Aswan in 2019, Shirley and I drifted from Luxor to Aswan and back again. The banks of The Nile were like a sideshow or even a slideshow sliding by. You never knew what you might see.

Sometimes people waved. Here a fishing boat. There a mosque and the muezzin calling  believers to prayer. Here a woman washing pots. There an egret flashing white  in front of dense date palms. Ruins. A remote railway station. A white 4X4 vehicle on a beach. And all the while - The Nile flowing northwards like an everlasting dream.

Messaging

Hieroglyphs were everywhere. Carved into temple walls. Lining the subterranean tombs in The Valley of the Kings. Painted on coffins. Carved into statuettes. Engraved  upon jewellery. Not artwork or mere decoration but messages to gods and to educated people and to those who would follow later. Everything you saw meant something.

Most ancient Egyptians were illiterate. They tilled the soil, fished in the river, harvested crops or responded to the commands of their superiors. Royal families operated at an entirely different level. After all, they were themselves god-like.

Ordinary people were generally excluded from the main temple sites which were reserved for the priesthood and obviously the blessed rulers with their families and entourages.

None of this is new to you. In the western world, Egyptian iconography been familiar for decades. We may not know what it all means but we have seen it. Some of us have long known of the principal Egyptian gods: Ra, Osiris, Anubis, Isis, Amun and  Horus - the falcon god.

Ancient Egypt coloured both the Greek and Roman worlds. Those invaders marvelled at what had been achieved in The Land of the Pharaohs over countless centuries and sought to adopt that knowledge, attach themselves to that wonderment.

And always the symbolism, the hieroglyphs. With this blogpost there are just a few examples of random images of messaging I  chose to photograph - speaking to us from three or four thousand years ago.

Mind blowing.

Amenhotep

Seen just yesterday morning in Luxor Museum. It is the magnificent granite crowned head of King Amenhotep III. Once it was attached to a colossal statue that was one of many that decorated his funeral temple on the west bank of The Nile opposite Luxor. He inhabited the New Kingdom of Egypt some 3350 years ago and was the ruling pharaoh for forty five years.  Tutankhamun was his grandson.

His reign marked a time of exceptional prosperity and grandeur, during which Egypt reached the height of its artistic and international influence, making him one of ancient Egypt's greatest pharaohs. He was also one of the few pharaohs worshipped as a deity during his lifetime.

What a remarkable privilege it was to be in the very room where that beautifully carved granite head now resides. It might have been machine-made just last year but it was expertly hand-carved, smoothed and polished over a thousand years before those three wise men allegedly arrived in Bethlehem.

Egypt... so many stories, so many puzzles, so much magnificence... and through it all ran The Nile.

Silenced

 

This blogpost was composed several hours ago. I scheduled its publication to happen at 11.30pm on Monday night.

You see, we are not sleeping in our own bed tonight. Instead, we should be nicely tucked up in the Ibis Budget Hotel at Manchester Airport. At 9.00am on Tuesday morning we will take off for Luxor, Egypt. 

Staying in the airport hotel meant we did not have to get up in the middle of the night, drive for an hour and park the car before heading to Terminal 2. Just too much stress.

I have no intention of blogging again until Wednesday, March 18th and will be absent from all my usual haunts in Blogland.

This means that authors of the blogs I habitually visit will be able to relax. You can let your guards down with regard to spelling, grammar, right wing remarks and seedy reminiscences. Think of it as a kind of holiday. No Yorkshire Pudding for nine days. Whoo-hoo!

Shirley and I have never been on a cruise before. The idea of those huge cruise ships is quite appalling to us. Our River Nile cruise should be rather different with just seventy cabins and no pesky children.

Two nights in Luxor before journeying up The Nile to Aswan. It is a pretty standard itinerary for Nile cruises. Along the way we are going to see several temples and ancient tombs. On our very first morning we will be heading to The Valley of the Kings  where I hope to stand where Howard Carter famously stood in November 1922  -  inside The Tomb of Tutankhamen - the boy king.

There are two possible flies in the ointment. Firstly the possible repercussions of the Netanyahu-Trump  war upon Iran. Hopefully, Egypt will remain unaffected but you never know. Secondly, toothache is stirring in my skull and it is too late to seek intervention by a dentist. I have some oil of cloves, some cottonwool pads  and some hope that the pain will creep back into its lair. Bugger it!

More

All right. Let's see more pictures from yesterday's trip to Kingston-upon-Hull - or Hull as it is more commonly called. Not only does it stand on the north shore of the River Humber, it also spans The River Hull. That is a much smaller river that drains south from The Yorkshire Wolds, dividing the city of Hull in half. Sometimes at Hull City matches, a chant goes up..."East Hull Tigers!" with the response following, "West Hull Tigers!" as different Hullensians reveal their territorial loyalties.

Hull is in my bones. It is where I went to school between the ages of eleven and fifteen. It is where I first  saw Jethro Tull and Free and Genesis and The Moody Blues and  Donovan and Nothineverappens - a Hull band that you have probably never heard of. It is where I first fell in love and where I saw my first rugby league games and also became a lifelong fan of  Hull City - a football team I have supported for over sixty years now. And Mum would travel into Hull by public bus sometimes and bring back cream meringues and coconut mushrooms and salted peanuts and new pairs of underpants and Hull was proud and wonderful.

Hull is where my brother Simon died in a hospice and it is where my father was cremated. It is where I was the best man at Lee Dalley's wedding when I was only sixteen and it is where I almost saw The Beatles in concert at the age of twelve... but my parents vetoed the idea. It is where I played rugby for Hull Schoolboys and where I had my front teeth knocked out in a cricket match when I was fourteen.

Yes. Hull is in my bones. That's for sure.

The Emigrants statue on Hull's waterfront with "The Deep" aquarium beyond.

Before yesterday, I realised that I would have a problem taking my backpack into Hull City's home ground - The MKM Stadium. Nowadays, there are strict rules about what you can and  cannot take into a football stadium and the searching of bags has become commonplace.

Philip Larkin again

Unfortunately, there is no longer a left luggage facility at Hull's Paragon Station so where could I leave my bag - containing my camera, my steel water flask, my books and my heroin syringe? After all, I did not want these items to be confiscated.

I stumbled across a website called "Stasher" that provides a useful service across the globe. It lists trusted businesses where you can leave bags securely - from large suitcases to small backpacks. You pay a relatively small fee and then the name and exact address of the business is provided via e-mail. I left my backpack at  the "Upper Cutz" barbershop just a stone's throw from Hull's main railway station and collected it on my way back from the game. The arrangement worked perfectly.

View of Hull Marina from the new footbridge

Hull

Detail of a family statue on the Humber riverfront

It remembers European emigrants who passed through Hull before 

boarding trains to Liverpool and then ships to North America.

A lunchtime kick off at The MKM Stadium in Hull today. It's annoying how Sky Sports and other commercial broadcasters dictate when so many football matches will kick off just to please their schedules. What about the fans?

Today Hull City were playing a less well-known London club - Millwall. Their fans would have had to set off to Hull at the crack of dawn. But with the usual 3pm kick off time they could have left London much later.

I travelled over to Hull by train. Normally, I drive but today, as well as seeing the match, I fancied a stroll around the centre of the first city I ever knew - my home city. Hull sits on the north shore of The Humber estuary and has long been associated with the sea.

I wanted to take pictures of a mural near the city centre - painted in memory of a local working class heroine - Lillian Bilocca. Spurred into action by the Hull triple trawler tragedy of 1968 which claimed 58 lives, she led a direct action campaign to prevent undermanned trawlers from putting to sea and gathered 10,000 signatures for a petition (the Fishermen's Charter) to Harold Wilson's government to strengthen safety legislation. She threatened to picket Wilson's house if he did not take action.

In the end, the key requests were implemented and necessary legislation was passed. Apart from anything else, the story proves that protest really can work and bring about meaningful change. Lillian was just a humble fisheries worker until the trawler tragedies roused her into action.

I walked to Hull Marina where major improvements are still underway to connect the Humber riverfront and the historical old town area with the modern city centre. I saw many eating places and wondered  how many people regularly go out to eat these days?  Restaurants, cafes and pubs need customers.

By the way, our lads somehow managed to lose today's match even though we were the better team. I caught a late train back to Sheffield but before that I took a few pictures of a statue of one of Hull's most famous adopted sons - the poet, Philip Larkin. It stands within the precincts of Paragon Station - as though Larkin is hurrying to catch a train.