Tag Archives: history

The next stop on our Nile boat-trip from Aswan to Luxor, the ancient capital of the Upper Kingdom, was the city of Esna, home to the temple of the ancient Egyptian god Khnum. The ancient Egyptians had a great many gods (here’s the list); Khnum was a creator-god who molded the first humans out of clay. But to study all that in detail you’d need to dive into further reading; we, meanwhile, just headed for the temple:

On the way to the temple we were told that, over thousands of years, the temple had sunk down through the soft rock beneath it, and that’s why it had sunk so deep into the ground – by some 15 meters. But somehow I don’t buy it. The earth’s strata aren’t uniform, so a temple “sinking” down through them would most likely have simply fallen apart. So the earthen walls around it are probably the cultural layer built up over the millennia, plus the desert sands, which have buried a great many structures along the Nile.

Read on…

Sixty kilometers down the Nile from Aswan in the town of Edfu, there’s another ancient Egyptian temple complex that shares the town’s name: the Temple of Edfu. It’s one of the largest temples of ancient Egypt – and a pretty well-preserved one at that. Alas, the oldest structures have been almost completely destroyed, and what stands today is a complex rebuilt during the Hellenistic period.

As our guide told us, some of the ruins (ancient walls) date back to prehistoric times – some of the stonework here is around four thousand years old. We’ll take his word for it…

Read on…

Onward!… Down the Nile from Aswan to Luxor…

We’d finished checking out the tourist sights at our point of departure (the Aswan Dam, an unsuccessful dash to the ancient quarries with the unfinished obelisk, and the Philae temple complex), our boat barge pulled away was pulled away from the pier, and our leisurely 2.5-day journey downstream along this great African river began.

// That’s not our boat; it’s a vessel under sail heading upstream toward Aswan.

And this bridge was right by our starting point:

Read on…

An absolute must-see for tourists near the Aswan Dam is the Philae temple complex. Its origins are truly ancient, but it’s been ruined and rebuilt many times over – so in the end it’s not so much genuinely Egyptian as something remade “Egyptian-style” later on, in the Greco-Roman eras. And then other cultures/religions came along and trampled all over the place too: as our guide told us, “religious barbarians/fanatics” destroyed the images of the “wrong gods”. Yes, I can believe it. How else to explain all this obviously deliberate damage to the ancient stone frescoes and sculptures?

Some of the artifacts just lie about, while some of the structures are clearly being put back together by archaeologists:

Read on…

Ladies and gents!

Today’s topic is going to be unexpected and a little out of the ordinary…

I know this won’t be of much interest to all my dear readers, but for some of you, it might bring on a wave of nostalgia – and maybe even a tear to a wrinkled (or, on the contrary, smooth and soft) cheek.

Here’s the thing: today marks the 50^th anniversary of the release of the album Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd!

 // Photo by Jim Geuther, from here.

But first, here’s my “view from the Soviet Union” regarding this classic album and the era in which it was released…

Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, foreign vinyl records on the black market would run you a hundred rubles or more – which, for perspective, was around a month’s salary for an engineer! So a record back then was pure, rare luxury. Music lovers would borrow them from their lucky friends – or rent them for a handful of rubles from acquaintances – to make reel-to-reel tape copies of them. And Pink Floyd records were especially prized. When I was in ninth or tenth grade at the math and physics school of Moscow State University, I got my hands on some such records and tapes. And Wish You Were Here is one I remember most. Still to this day I consider this musical masterpiece (and I’m not afraid to call it that) to be one of my favorite albums of all time.

Also, back in school, I learned English by listening to Pink Floyd (also The Beatles), since in lessons we were taught either German or “mathematical” English – which is a whole other story :-). Still, even today there are turns of phrase in their lyrics that I still can’t grasp – including lines from this album. For example: “you wore out your welcome with random precision”. I guess that’s something flowery about how Syd Barrett (see below) drove everyone to their limits. Or is it? Maybe muzo-philologists could explain it better?!

Anyway. If you listened to this masterpiece a long time ago but may have forgotten about it – go and refresh your memory. Or, if you’ve never heard of it – give it a shot: you might be surprised. There’s a real chance you’ll love it. I know folks who’ve discovered Pink Floyd as adults and love the band just as much as those who got into them in their youth…

Now, a few words about why this is a masterpiece – and why, curiously, it’s still relevant today…

First, there’s the album’s theme: Wish You Were Here is dedicated to the band’s former front man, Syd Barrett – a genius experimenter who, alas, lost his grip on reality not long after Pink Floyd made it big due to drugs causing a nervous breakdown. The album cover, with its handshake and the man on fire, has become almost a symbol for “burnout” – something widely discussed today; for, alas, mental health issues have hardly lessened over the last half-century (and instead seem to have only gotten worse).

Second, it’s a protest against the alienation and cynicism of the music industry (and really of everything else too). Welcome to the Machine is about a system that chews people up. And it feels like in the past 50 years, this “machine” has only gotten worse. So, if you ever get annoyed by the homogenous stream of today’s music, go have a listen to Wish You Were Here: an album with zero bowing to labels, trends, or recommendation algorithms. If Roger, David, Richard and Nick fancied doing eight minutes of melancholy instrumental – that’s what they recorded. And the result: awesome!

And finally, third: if you miss someone, or want to be with them but just can’t, the album Wish You Were Here (especially the eponymous track) is simply a waterfall of missing-you emotions.

So, come on – check it out! And happy anniversary – 50 years today! – to this legendary… musical monument. This album, especially on this day, needs to be celebrated – and listened to!…