Stories from the Nile
Notes on Egypt, its temples and its river — travel dispatches for the unhurried.
Karnak before the crowds
The gates open at six. For the first hour the Hypostyle Hall belongs to whoever bothered to set an alarm — and the light does something it will not do again all day.
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How to read a cartouche
The oval loop around a royal name is a rope with no beginning and no end. Learn four signs and you can pick a pharaoh out of a temple wall yourself.
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A dahabiya is not a felucca
Two sails, two very different weeks. One is an afternoon on the water; the other is a floating house that happens to move at four knots.
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Philae, the temple that was moved
The island you visit is not the island it was built on. Between 1972 and 1980 the temple of Isis was cut into forty thousand blocks and rebuilt next door.
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What to pack for a Nile winter
Between November and February the days are perfect and the nights are not. Nearly everyone packs for the afternoon and regrets it on deck at ten.
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Kom Ombo, the double temple
One temple, two of everything: two entrances, two sanctuaries, two gods who could not share. The symmetry is the whole story.
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