Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts while on the Train to Luxor –

As we are driving through the countryside going from tourist stop to tourist stop we see a lot of people – adults and children – walking around their streets. The kids all stand up and wave and yell as our van moves through their street. When we wave back at people, their faces light up and they smile and wave back at us. We may live differently with different foods to eat, different clothes to wear and different houses to live in but we are all basically the same everywhere.

Most Egyptologists agree that the way to become a King in ancient Egypt was to actually marry the daughter of a king. This doesn’t mean that the son of a King can not become a king. He only needs to marry his sister! King Tut actually married his half sister and there are many more examples of this throughout Egypt’s history.

The Nile river supplies all of the irrigation for the farmers of Egypt. Canals are built leading from the river into the towns and rural countrysides. The farmers then “plug” into each of the canals by cutting their own canals that lead to their farms.

What do things cost here? A dozen box of 1.5 liter waters cost us 50 Egyptian Pounds (EGP) or $9.12 US Dollars (USD). Our train ticket cost 44 EGP ($8.03 USD) from Minia to Luxor. I bought two bags of candy (the size you would buy to hand out at Halloween) and each one was 8 EGP ($1.46 USD). Try your own conversions (Yahoo Finance) and see what something in the US would cost in Egypt.

From Scott, of course: A law in physics states that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. We had a lot of difficulty convincing our driver, Josef (aka Tony Stewart), of this. (the title of this particular blog entry is “random thoughts”)

Farming in Egypt: Most farmers are growing sugar cane, tomatoes, eggplants, carrots and grains. The farmers here are considered very rich. A 100 square meter plot of land costs about 10,000 pounds ($1,824.15). It looked like each farmer had, on average, 10 plots. Farming has allowed Egypt to become very prosperous throughout time. A rich farming community allows an army to be supported. If you think about having 10,000 soldiers marching out of Egypt to conquer Syria, for example, how are you going to feed and pay them? The wealth from the farming created, through the excess food, the ability to do this. This also allowed a large population of priests because the ruling family gave the priests land for them to farm and support themselves.

It’s also important to remember when studying any ancient culture, especially Egypt, that not everyone agrees on how things used to be. For example, there are no papyri that explain the mummification process. Egyptologists have had to speculate what the process involved. An Egyptologist that we have been studying has actually mummified a human being and he thinks he has figured out the process. On the other hand, there are many clues that provide Egyptologists with direct evidence of how things actually were. An example of this would be the tools that were used to accomplish different tasks. Tools made of different materials make different markings in the stone surfaces of walls versus the surfaces of clay pots. This gives clues as to what they were using and when they were using them.

Mummification process – I’m going to attempt to describe the most widely accepted theory on how a mummy was created. The entire process took about 70 days. When someone died, they removed the internal organs through a slit on the side abdomen with an Ethiopian stone. The brain was removed through the nose with a large hooked iron rod. The heart was left inside because they thought that the heart was the “brain” and you needed your brain in the next world. After the actually brain was removed they pored resin into the brain cavity to help in preservation. The body was packed inside and out with a salt and baking soda combination called Natron to dry out the body for 35 days. The body was then wrapped in linen and buried or entombed.