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We chose Egypt for our millennium, as it was Egypt's second millennium.
Whilst the celebrations were billed as huge and spectacular, with the
fitting of a gold top to the largest pyramid by helicopter, we spent our New
Year's Eve moored at a tiny village on the side of the Nile. Dressed in
traditional costume and smoking cinnamon and apple tobacco through shisha
pipes, we got to meet the locals and see how they did things. We didn't
really get to choose where we went - our tour was 10 days and encompassed
the main sites in Cairo, the museums with King Tut's mask and finery, and
many more mummies and treasures. The pyramids were our first stop and I
could have gone home then and there, satisfied. I think it's the idea of
such history, combined with the manpower and technology of their time. How
they managed to build such precise structures was really mind blowing.
The Valley of the Kings/Queens was incredible also. The paintwork on some
of the tombs was just as I imagined it would have been all those years ago -
so very bright and vivid. They used pigment paints so strong that even in
places that are exposed to the sun, the colours are still visible. People
have been unable to recreate such powerful colours in a laboratory today!
Going in to the tombs at the pyramids was scary - tiny, narrow passages -
quite back breaking. Once inside the centre of the pyramid, we saw 3 or 4
people sitting cross-legged, closed eyed with elbows on knees. They, along
with the other kooky guy who was playing dead in the stone casket, were
mediating. The guide described them as 'stupid Americans with too much time
on their hands!" But I suppose people come to the pyramids for all sorts of
reasons.
Some people, of course, are against the tombs being visited. We had one girl
on our trip who refused to go into any place that had housed the dead (which
basically ruled out all the stops on our trip!) Her feeling was that she
would hate to have people stomping all over her grave. She was, however,
quite happy to tip every one of her cigarette butts into the Nile when she'd
finished with them - warped thinking huh?
I suppose as Egypt is such a poor country, tourism is ever important. The
ongoing archaeological costs are immense and still mostly carried out with
the financial assistance of other countries. A rock and a hard place
considering what damage thousands of tourists traipsing through such
delicate structures must cause. The biggest draw for a lot of Kiwi's to
any place like Egypt is the history. Coming from such a 'young' country as
New Zealand, it is almost incomprehensible that Egypt's recorded history is
at least 6000 years. Amazing!
This material has been produced by UNITEC Institute of Technology
under contract to the Ministry of Education.
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