Egyptian Journey to Aswan Day 8

Sunday, January 20, 2019. 2:54 AM  Day 8 of my Egyptian

Dear Friends and Family,

Today will be another adventure. We leave in about an hour to catch the train for a three hour train ride to Aswan. We will be staying at Elephantine Island in the middle of the Nile River. The train will follow the Nile as our group will have a reserved sleeper car.  I don’t plan a to sleep at all!  Today we will visit the Nubian Museum, This museum has over 3,000 monumental artifacts that tell the story of Nubia from ancient times. Tonight we will see a sound and light show at the rescued Philadelphia Temple.

I am up writing because this hotel (The Winter Palace) has had the best internet connection of our trip. The temperature is to be a high of 72 today.

Yesterday we visited the Valley of the Queens but the BIG experience was visiting the Morturary Temple of Hatshepsut, one of three female pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. According to some Biblical scholars she could have been pharaoh’s daughter from the Bible as she was the daughter of Tuthmosis I and married to Tuthmosis II (half brother) and co-ruled during the time of Tuthmosis III her nephew . It is all very confusing when they have the same name. It was all so long ago and no one left us a history book to follow. I’ve not asked our Egyptologist. I’ve already gotten one “I love my job.”   Everything including the dates is all theory based on the information found up to today. Excavation of new information is coming all the time and may change our perceptions and change our theories.

One interesting fact I read about the Jewish settlements in Egypt is that there were at one time in recent history over 100,000 Jews in Egypt.  Many came during the time of Jeremiah when Babylon captured Jerusalem. However, today there are only about 120 Jewish Families in the country. More Jewish Synagogs that families. Many left during WW II from fear of the Germans under Rommel and settled in South Africa and Morraco.

I will again try to include photos from the trip at the end of this blog.

I hope that I will be able to write again this evening but will an average of only 5hours and 10 minutes of sleep over the past 7 days (according to my Garmin) I may sleep through the sound and light show I’ll see in 16 hours from now.

Thanks for reading!

Ellen