Touring Aswan

 Friday, February 13, 2026

Aswan

 We spent the day touring Aswan except for the dam, which we’ll see on Sunday.  We started by taking a felucca to the Botanical Gardens.  The felucca is “a traditional, wooden, open-deck sailboat with a large triangular lateen sail, commonly used for centuries along the Nile River in Egypt and in the Mediterranean” (Google AI).  

On the boat we were entertained by the crew; Kathy joined in the fun: 

The gardens are on an island in the river and, while rather small, are lovely and cool: 


Our next stop was the Nubia Museum.  Nubia is the region between the first cataract of the Nile, near to where we are now in Aswan, and where Khartoum is in Sudan.  There were ancient, pre-dynastic cultures here, and the museum has artifacts from them.  Here are some pots from the Naqada Culture, circa 4000 BCE.  That’s 6000 years ago! 

And some Kush heads, circa 270 BCE: 

I love going to local markets—you can really get a feel for a place in them.  The Aswan market is large, and has the usual vendors of spices and vegetables.

Bread in Egypt is subsidized by the government, and there are lines at the bakeries: 

There are hookah cafes.  You sit at the table, buy some flavored tobacco and a coffee, and sit smoking here: 

There is a lot of cigarette smoking in Egypt, too.  The butchers are not what we’re used to: 


Tomorrow will be very exciting and a fulfillment of a long-held wish of mine.  We’ll fly to Abu Simbel in the morning for a visit to the incredible tombs there which were cut completely out of the mountain and relocated above the water line as the Aswan Dam flooded the valley where they had stood for millennia.  We’ll fly back in the afternoon.  More then.

Comments

  1. Ralph P. LockeFebruary 21, 2026 at 2:18 AM

    I love the musical entertainment, with a repeated musical phrase that wouldn't be hard to join in on, plus a syncopated rhythmic accompaniment that keeps things fresh and varied. Nice dance-like movements from crew members and Kathy!
    --The gardens look like a relaxing environment--but must require a lot of watering, I suppose!
    --As for food, I notice what looks like white-flour bread (little fiber), meat, coffee, and you mention tobacco. Put that all together and it seems like a recipe for ill health! I wonder how traditional cultures sustain themselves. I've read that it's been impossible for successive Chinese governments to persuade people to switch from white rice to brown (whole-grain).
    --Thanks for all these glimpses of life in Egypt! Amazing sculptures from Nubia. (The area near where Egypt meets Sudan.) Apparently that is where Princess Aida and her father Amonasro come from, in Verdi's opera. The land is called Ethiopia in the libretto, but the location is really to the south, not the southeast.
    --I've seen on a TV documentary that the Nubians, during the times that they ruled Egypt, introduced the concept of . . . the pillar to Egypt! (I don't know if that theory has been disproven by now.)

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