Ancient Egypt Day 6
We saw many mirages as we crossed the desert. I was fascinated to note that the mirages are sometimes inverted, as in the top mirage here, and sometimes not, as in the lower one. Explanations on a postcard, please...
Abu Simbel was the biggest disappointment of our trip. The round trip across the desert took about 4 hours but we only had about 1 hour to explore the 2 temples (Ramses II and his wife Nefertari, whose temple is shown here - note the queue to get in). The crowds were so bad that I could not reach the sanctuary of the Ramses temple.
The Abu Simbel complex is on the shore of Lake Nasser. The construction of the upper Aswan dam and the creation of this lake were highly controversial.
One problem is the waste of water - about 10 billion m3 of water evaporates from the lake each year. Another major problem is that silt accumulates in the lake instead of being carried further downstream. The absence of silt in the water further north means that farmers have to use chemical fertilizers. The erosion of the delta region is no longer compensated by the arrival of silt, and the reduced flow of the river is not enough to stop salt water encroaching into the delta, where up to 40% of the earth has been sterilized by the salt. A project to create a 'second Nile valley' parallel to the first is progressing slower than predicted and may not compensate the problems mentioned above. But the existence of the lake did at least protect Egypt from years of drought which caused thousands of deaths in the Sudan a few years ago.
Our boat, the Hapi 2, is smaller than most of the hundred or so boats that cruise the Nile. It's named after Hapi, the god of the flooding of the Nile. Hapi is one of the four sons of Horus. The sons of Horus were responsible for protecting the internal organs which were removed from the corpse during the mummification process and placed in 'canopic jars'. Hapi was responsible for preserving the lungs.
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