Journey to the Western Desert in Southwest Egypt and Northern Sudan: A Journal (March 2007)

The Great Sand Sea

By Leigh Marymor A Journal March 2007

Journey to the Western Desert in Southwest Egypt and Northern Sudan

Point Richmond, California 2007

Noe, I carried you in my heart the whole way. . . .

Preface When Jeff LaFave approached me during the International Rock Art Confer-ence in Agra, India in 2005 to propose an expedition to see the remote rock-shelter paintings in southwestern Egypt at a place called the Gilf Kebir, I had no idea of what to expect, beyond a romantic vision of the “Cave of the Swim-mers” that had been popularized by Michael Ondaatje in his 1992 novel, with subsequent Hollywood movie, The English Patient. In due course, Jeff would come to know Andras Zaboray of Budapest, the preeminent modern surveyor of the region’s rock-art resources, and via e-mail correspondence over a period of months, the two of them arranged an expedition for a small group of enthusiastic explorers – most of us members of ARARA. What follows here are some personal impressions culled from the journal I kept during the three weeks of travel, the majority of which was spent on the vast Western Desert in Egypt, remote and austere, rugged and beautiful. I of-fer travel notes, descriptions of the rock-art motifs and landscapes, inter-spersed with the personal aches and dreams that often accompany travel in a difficult environment.

3/07/2007 Cairo Arrival

The street is noisy six floors below this room at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in downtown Cairo. Brightly lit retail shops, streets full of people, tea houses crowded, hookahs lit. In the main square: hustlers, “Where are you from? Where are you staying? Do you want a tour?” Etc. The “painted papyrus” dealer, Abdullah, draws us into his shop and pressures us for a sale, saying, “No pressure! You can have business every day, but friends are rare! For you, a special price.” Later, a miserable bowl of pasta noodles mixed with wild rice and pasta sauce at a street side fast food joint. We (my travel companion, Jeff La Fave) liked the painted “whirling Dervish” mural, the pop-Egyptian MTV.

“Whirling Dervish” mural detail: Cairo

3/08/2007 Cairo – Sakkara.

Now I’m really tired after a day with Jeff, Geoffrey (from Scotland), Astrid (from Denmark), and Mohammed the taxi driver. We embarked on a congest-ed, polluted drive out of Cairo, along and finally over the Nile River to Sak-kara and the famous “Step Pyramid”. Deep catacombs have been excavated. Many tombs have carvings and hieroglyphics. The transition from the fertile Nile Valley to the desert is immediate and stark. Later to the “Red Pyramid” with a long trek up, then down, down, down into its belly – a hip chamber whose inverted walls step back, converging 65 meters above us toward the pyramid’s apex – the whole stinking of ammonia, and hot, unlike a cave. Slogging back up the inclined ramp the artificial lighting suddenly extin-guishes and we must feel our way up, finally emerging into bright sunlight and the long views back toward Sakkara. We are unable to go on to the “Bent Pyramid”. Mohammed tells us the area is closed due to military maneuvers. We question his veracity among ourselves, but we certainly9 did hear and feel the reverberations of a large blast when we were deep in the “Red”. The ancient city of Memphis, the old Egyptian capitol for whose ruling class the pyramids were built as a necropolis, is now a museum that houses rem-nants of broken statuary – a huge Ramses II is housed in the museum build-ing proper. Lunch at the “Sakkara Rest” outdoors under a tented ramada. Off over there school children are having a party. We arrive at the old Coptic city at Cairo just before the close of tourist visit-ing hours. I meet an old Jewish merchant who greets me warmly and fleeces me for cheap jewelry. He helps me get the guards to open the gate to the an-cient Cairo Synagogue which was beautifully restored in the 1970’s as a by product of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord. I stand in the sanctuary facing the beemah (raised platform where the Torah is chanted) and cry quietly there, for all that has gone before, for a vision of my ancient ancestors never

known. I bring loving thoughts of my daughter to this place. Above Sakkara detail Below Museum employee: Memphis

3/11/2007 Daklah to the foothills of the Gilf Kebir

Waiting for our vehicles to load at our hotel in Daklah. Yesterday, a twelve hour run on hard top due south from Cairo via El Baharia and Farafra to Daklah (a series of palm oases in the central desert, situated north to south, like a string of pearls). Mornings and evenings have been temperate, mid-days hot. The oases towns have been humid and pungent – especially as we enter off the dry desert pavement. We smell the green of thick planted fields, palms and irrigation canals. Riding with Andras Zboray (our guide, from Budapest), John Greer, Bob Mark ,Evelyn Billo and our new young American friend, Gerald, who has just completed several years working with an NGO in Azerbijan. The conversa-tion is animated, or at times, nonexistent, as we hurtle down the blacktop. The seating is croweded and we all shift and groan, seeking relief for our knees and butts. The desert is changeable. At times skirting the soft sculpted dunes of the Selima Sand Sheet, cresting a high place with long views of an-cient and broken formations, or dark crusted surfaces of worn, broken flints and ferrous oxides, or into the famous white desert – animated pillars and mushrooms of white chalk, like a wonderland. I’m wearing a bright red Ara-bic scarf now and everyone is calling me “Omar Sharif (Omar, for short). The Bedouin drivers especially like my white beard, sometimes calling me “Mr. Moustache”. Today we face another twelve hours of driving. Continuing south a couple hours on the hardtop, we finally meet the Selima Sand Sheet head on. We stop awhile to let the air out of the vehicles’ tires to enable the next fifteen days of driving on sand. We cut to the west, running fifty miles an hour over the packed sand sheet, heading for the foothills of the Gilf Kebir, our first rock-art destination.

. Above Blowing sands on the Daklah Rd Below Driving across the Selima Sand Sheet

3/11/2007 Daklah to the foothills of the Gilf Kebir

Dream sequence from night before last. . .I’m sitting at a folding table with friends Bill and Susan, their children, Nathan and Gena, and maybe some oth-ers. It’s a high school science fair and each student is demonstrating their pro-ject. One young dark-skinned boy is a psychic. He scrunches up his eyes and face in deep concentration, then opens his eyes and asks, “Ok, who works at Burt’s?” Apparently, no one here does, so back into deep concentration he goes, seeking his next revelation. . . .

Gilf foothills. Tented down after our second twelve hour drive. We left the Dakhla road after two hours, pulled onto the Selima Sand Sheet, set course by GPS and spent the day speeding across the sand. A steady wind has blown most of the day – the sands are constantly on the move, and as promised, get into everything. Tent flapping just now, but save for a howling blow, I should be sound and reasonably sand-free for the night. Jeff just passed by in the dark and dubbed the tent, “Casa de Omar”. It was barren desert here prior to 8000 years b.p. and post 3500 years b.p., the window between hosted a sa-vannah environment, habitation and opportunity for the creation of the rock art. . .sounds like dinner might be ready. Chile beans. We’re eating sparten, and the wind is picking up.

. Above The White Desert Below Crescent dunes: Foothills of the Gilf Kebir

3/12/07 Gilf Kebir to Karkur Tal (Jebel Uweinat, Sudan)

Tented down at Karkur Tal in a small side canyon. We’ll be here for the next five days, each day will offer dawn to dusk rock-art explorations. This even-ing at camp we find new petroglyphs that Andras has not seen before. I find a site that prompts a new site designation number, #KT921B. Jeff found the first of the new glyphs, three panels featuring crude giraffes. I find a glyph of two canides facing each other and a large standing slab covered with giraffes and antelope. Earlier this morning I walked out across a beautiful sand sheet for a mile or so while the others broke camp. Alone on the Libyan Desert, the constant sand ever blowing around my boots, the sun low, the horizon ringed with the Gilf foothills. Our first destination heading south out of the Gilf was “Shaw’s Cave”, locat-ed up on a low divide between two archaic valleys – a shallow rock shelter painted with depictions of a herd of cattle and several small red dynamic fig-ures – one sheltered under an arching line with simple objects hanging from it – symbolizing a homestead, perhaps. From here on to a large rock-cairn monument built by Lazlo Almasy in the 1930’s to honor Kemal Din, the Egyp-tian explorer who first discovered the Gilf Kebir massif in the early 1920’s. Kemal Din later became sponsor for Almasy’s southern desert explorations. The large stone cairn set at the southern tip of the Gilf sheltered two tins of notes placed there by passing travelers – surprising how many have come this way – I left my business card. Two hours further on we reach the Jebel Uweinat via Clayton’s Craters. We’ve crossed into northern Sudan to set camp. It’s taken three full days of driving from Cairo to reach this point.

. Above Cattle Pictograph, Shaw’s Cave Below Shaw’s Cave

3/13/2007 Karkur Tal South

I just killed a very intimidating spider in my tent. Yikes, creep me out! I have a small welt on my wrist. Did she bite me in my sleep? I hope not. Jeff LaFave is not well. He’s suffering from constant dizziness, and now, some pain be-hind his right eye. Is this connected to the glaucoma procedure he underwent, or something else? We don’t know and I make sure all of his buddies and An-dras know to keep a close watch on him. The camp is stirring. I think every-one has their thoughts on breakfast and taking advantage of the morning light. Karkur Tal South sites. We returned to camp about twenty minutes ago from a full and constant day of rock-art photography in the main branch and also up the north and south branches. Beautiful panels of polychrome cattle pre-dominate in the rock shelters and under the overhangs. Often sand has drift-ed into an overhang making photography all but impossible. Cattle, giraffe, ostrich, hunter familiars and warriors are predominant themes in the en-graved art, also canines and a few bird motifs. We visited one carved slab ele-vated up on the canyon wall that was set with a large, finely carved turtle, two giraffe – one eating from a tree – and one bovine familiar. The long views out over the wadi were spectacular. Andras says the subject and engraving style are unique to the valley. We visited a Tibu burial (a Mediterranean, dark-skinned nomad people originating in the Tibesti in northern Chad) that dated back maybe one hundred years. We climbed up one drainage to a large shelter with several groupings of fine dynamic red painted figures – mostly humans in domestic activity. . . I’m tired and worn. I think we are staying slightly under-hydrated and fed. The fare Andras has prepared is very lean. Crackers and peanut butter for breakfast, crackers and cheese with failing vegetables for lunch, starchy dinner – last night’s spaghetti was bad. I’m go-ing to loose the weight I anticipated. The best moment of the day was sitting on a sandstone shelf in the lengthen-ing afternoon light, shaded with a slight breeze blowing, taking in the broad view across the main branch, acacia trees, deepening rose hues, canyon walls and the far mountains. Solitude.

Karkur Tal petroglyphs: Giraffe tethered to a lead, ostrich, anthropomorph.

3/14/2007 “The Belgian Sites” This morning I awaken bothered by a chaffing at my inner thighs from sweat and walking. The hardest walk is yet ahead, so I am concerned. I can hear wa-ter boiling and the drivers chatting in Arabic. Someone opens a tent zipper. The air is cool with a small breeze – just enough to slightly ripple the tent fabric. Today we drive up the main wadi for a two km walk to visit the “Belgian Sites” (first published by Francis Van Noten, 1978). The sites are located in a series of small and large rock shelters and over-hangs. The largest is at least one hundred feet of painted wall surface with intricate scenes of cattle interspersed, and often under-laid, by finely articu-lated red dynamic figures. Most often depicted are hunting scenes, domestic scenes, archers, and herders. An incredible scene in one shelter features a multitude of archers who are raining scores of red-tipped white arrows on what appears to be a large lion, depicted in white with red legs and red eye spots. We have spent the entire day up the canyon looking at these and con-cluded with a large two-panel petroglyph site first reported by Hassanein Bey (the Egyptian explorer to first traverse the Great Sand Sea, by camel caravan in the 1920’s, working his way along the Egyptian/Libyan border from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to Khartoom in the south, discovering the Jebel Uweinat mountain range in the process). Across the wadi and up the canyon wall a little is a camp site with horizontal petroglyph panels and grinding slicks located just outside a painted rock shelter that was first de-scribed by Kemal-al-Din. I’m satiated – saturated at the end of each day, rock-art overloading my senso-ry circuits. Our drivers are beginning to sing a bit. I was moved close to tears at entering the large shelter this morning, other times quietly viewing the paintings and endless vistas.

Above Pictographs depicting cattle and dynamic figure herdsmen Below Painted rock shelters tucked into the wadi walls.

3/15/2007 “Winkler and South-west Sites“

Camp stirring. I’ve jumped up to take a long, satisfying pee at the desert uri-nal, a perfect notch of sandstone, just out of view, offering clean sandstone and beautiful morning light casting highlights along the wadi walls and bot-tom. This morning is all about body care, treating chaffing and rashes, trying to get clean and medicated in an environment that is simply not conducive. I may be willing to sell body parts for a hot shower before long. . .at least the handi-wipes are holding out for the moment. Last night’s dinner: reconstitut-ed mashed potatoes and carrots, also a “Bagnold’s Special” (Ralph A. Bag-nold, British soldier and desert explorer who pioneered light vehicle explora-tion in the Eastern and Libyan deserts in Egypt in the years running up to WWII) consisting of one part bourbon, one part rum, a dash of worcestshire sauce, and lime juice. Better to just waive the bottle of worcestshire sauce over the drink, in my opinion. Today we hike to two Winkler Sites (Hans A.Winkler, 1938 and 1939, pub-lished the two volume Rock Drawings of Southern Upper Egypt), an hour’s walk up the canyon wall and over the plateau. I realize I don’t know what day of the week this is. We walked ten km in total, six-and-a-half km to see the Winkler sites and associated finds. We discovered at least one new paint-ed shelter in a side branch to Karkur Tal on our way back. We also discovered a hammered steel-coil Tibu knife blade in a small shelter along our descent route back into the main wadi. The second Winkler site was especially excel-lent with both paintings and petroglyphs. Also profuse with artifacts includ-ing a carved Tibu staff, scrapers, manos, flakes, pottery and a pestle. This site, Andras tells us, has only been seen by four other people since Winkler first described it in the the 1930’s. Andras relocated it last October. We followed a camel track up and out of the wadi and onto a flat pebble and boulder strewn plateau in the shadow of the high reaching Hassanein Plateau. The camel tracks lead from Karkur Tal over and into Karkur Mur where the only water in the area can be found. We completed the day in the rear most recesses of one of the southwest branches of Karkur Tal where we visited five more painted shelters. Above “Dynamic Figure” pictographs Below The high ground of the Hassanein Plateau in the distance.

Left Northern branch of the Karkur Tal pictographs Right Same view with color enhancement by “D-Stretch”

3/16/2007 Northern Branches

Today we will take morning and afternoon day hikes to visit painted shelters in the northern branches of the Karkur Tal. The weather cooled a bit yester-day and last night. The wind picked up again, but gently. We hiked in 73 de-gree temperature yesterday with 23 percent humidity – warm and dry. We walked four-and-a-half hours into and back out of one of the northern canyons, visiting sites known to Andras, and making new discoveries all along the way. In total, Andras added five new painted shelters to his inven-tory this morning. The most incredible shelter included a large, bold round-head (“round-head” style, the earliest painted phase dating to 8000 b.p.) fig-ure sitting in the “hocker” (squat) position with a large erect penis painted in white. The shelter opened in back into a deep canal strongly suggesting the feminine. One facing panel included a large black hand print – the first I’ve seen here, one of two known to Andras. My feet are badly broken out with heat rash. I think I’ve lost at least five pounds, my knees have not been hurting, and I’ve been able to scamper along pretty well. I say, “thank you G-d” frequently for my relatively good condi-tion and good health. We set out in a half hour for another trek up a second northern canyon. Colder and windier. Even Andras’ spaghetti w/sauce tasted good. Jeff says in another week it will taste good enough to market in the U.S.. I saw the fox that has been visiting our campsite tonight. She’s quick, small, and grey with a banded tail. She knows where the tourists keep their food. Another tour group is camped down the canyon in the main wadi making the fourth group we’ve seen – much heavier visitation than I had imagined would ever make it this deep into the Libyan Desert. I estimate there have been a hundred people come this way this week. Tomorrow we take our twenty km hike to the upper southwest branch of Karkur Tal via a high plateau located in the shadow of the Hassanein Plateau. We followed up a northern wadi this afternoon, its sandy bottom giving way to boulders and slick rock. On the slick rock are engravings – a lion image was especially fine. Climbing up onto the plateau via an ancient camel track, we encounter sandstone slabs that are both engraved and incised. Finally we arrive at a series of three large shelters, two of which I visited. The first was spectacular with a cacophany of cattle, round-heads and dynamic figures in-termixed. Stone circles on the pass. A beautifully worn grinding surface. A portable stone with holes drilled in it. On the way down canyon – more en-graved slabs, this time lit by the rose light of the late afternoon sun. The views from the high ground extended into Libya, and to all the far-away peaks.

3/17/2007 Dream:

On the fifth night camped out on the Libyan Desert just across the border from south-west Egypt into Sudan, tucked up tightly against the wall of a sandstone ledge along a barren wadi, after days of trekking in order to reach remote rockshel- ters adorned with prehistoric rock paintings, vestiges of human genera- tions layer thou-sands of years deep, I had this dream: The Marymor family has gathered. In- side the family is chanting the Kad- dish (prayer for the deceased) but they can’t proceed until my brother joins us – he’s the first born male and he’s to lead the response, “Ye-hei she-mei ra -ba me-va-rach le-a-lam u-le-al–mei al-ma-ya” (“May his great name be blessed forever and for all eternity”). I walk over and put my arm around Grandpa Abe in what is a mov-ing moment for me, but his body is still and cold. It’s clear then that these are the spirits of the ancestors who have come to this family gathering, intermin-gled with those of us who are alive today.

Naomi and Mordechai Maryamov

3/17/2007 “At the foot of the Hassanein Plateau”

The morning birds are calling We ascended the canyon wall at the head of the southwest branch, crossed a vast pebbled and broken plateau to meet one of the western branches at the foot of the Hassanein Plateau. Here we visited about a dozen painted sites, walking perhaps eight miles in all. We found an excellent example of super imposition with round heads on bottom, then darkly painted and decorated figures, then red dynamic figures on top. Some detailed “homestead” scenes, stylized hand prints, a bold giraffe hunting scene. Incredible habitation re-mains in and about the shelters included hearths, walls, milling stones, flakes, a possible (camel) tethering stone, stone platforms, and more recent Tibu activity including sticks with attached rope stuck into rock shelter crev-ices and animal traps made from petrol can sheetmetal. On the plateau, very old stone circles and clearings, some very large, all with associated flakes. John Greer thinks these can be twenty thousand years old.

Pictographs from one of the rock shelter in the south-west branch of Karkur Tal

3/18/2007 Jebel Uweinat to Wadi Sora via Clayton’s Craters

Breaking camp for our next destination, Wadi Sora. Gear is being broken down and stowed, the trash fire is burning – the white plume rising vertically for lack of breeze to sway it. The morning sun is rising over the east wall of our little canyon, the wall across the main canyon is fully illuminated. Last night “our” fox put on a full display, scampering down the rocks almost into camp where the drivers had been laying out food waste. Agile and quick, now seated on a stone perch watching us, now darting behind this boulder and that stone, a quickly moving trace, she settles on a lower stone, or approaches the garbage cache – ears standing alert are visible above the rock, the only part of her we see. Snatching a bit of food, she runs up the wall to a higher perch before enjoying her meal. This show goes on for twenty minutes or so. Some are flashing photos, Andras is filming the display. High on the ridge top a flashing shadow reveals the fox’s partner is nearby. Arrive at Wadi Sora and set up camp. The hard core have immediately rushed down to the painted site, so I’m staying away until tonight and will try some flash photography. I’m having trouble with the Nikon, the batteries are bouncing back and forth between charged and discharged, so the equipment is not always reliable.

Above The approach to the Gilf Kebir at Wadi Sora Facing page Self portrait at Clayton’s Craters

3/19/2007 Wadi Sora

Slept through the night. We are camped in a beautiful cirque bounded by massive sandstone walls and set in the center with a large sandstone massif. Voluminous dunes sweep up the back wall. The night sky here was deep and clear, free of dusty particulate, so the milky way, stars and planets were all strongly lit against a totally black backround. We spent our day visiting the painted sites of the Western Gilf. Revisited the “Cave of the Swimmers”, which is here by our camp, by morning light. Facing top Pictograph panel from the “Cave of the Swimmers” Facing bottom “Cave of the Swimmers” Below: Detail of “Swimmer” motifs

3/19/2007 Zerzura/Foggini Shelter

Then we traveled about a half hour to the north to visit the “Zerzura/Foggini” site. This is the most spectacular painted shelter I can ever remember visiting. One climbs a long dune that has swept up the side of a sandstone wall to reach a rock shelter running perhaps sixty feet long. The entire surface is painted, end to end, and from below the sand line to maybe twenty-five to thirty feet above. Glyphs are mixed in with the paintings, and many of these show traces of once having been finely painted. There are scores, probably hundreds of hand prints, from large to diminutive, some missing digits, some showing wrists and forearms. Most are blown in in the negative. Many are overlain by multitudes of periods of polychrome painting. Vivid scenes of anthropomorphs and animals. Headless lions appear to be devouring hunt-ers.. Large dominating anthros in red, or in yellow. A large elephant painted in white. A line of more than a dozen “swimmers” floating across hand prints, intertwined with anthropomorphs. The whole is completely over-whelming and recalls what Wadi Sora most have been before much of the painted surface was lost to weathering. We photographed for more than two hours until spent with photo exhaustion. Each trying to capture something of the effect of the place – most of us will have failed miserably. We went on to visit threee more small shelter. The second shelter was so rife with artifacts and scatter that I forgot to view the paintings. I discovered a hand axe and a chopper there. John thinks these date way back, more than 15,000 years, I think.

Previous Centerfold Detail. Hand stencils and anthropomorphs Facing top A portion of the pictograph panel Facing bottom Zerzura/Foggini Shelter

3/20/2007 Wadi Sora to Abd el Melik

We climb the el Aqaba Pass to the top of the Gilf Kebir today. We camped at Abd el Melik where giraffe engravings shown with their young are incised at the lower reach of a spillover from the plateau above. This is the “Zerzura Oasis” of Lazlo Almasy claim, one of three branches of the Wadi el Melik. The search for the rumored lost oasis of “Zerzura” was widely publicized in the European press between the two world wars and became the motivation for explorers in the twenties and thirties, members of the “Zerzura Club”, to explore the Western Desert via light vehicles and aircraft. Their scientific ef-forts yielded a trove of maps and desert travel know-how which was eagerly sought and utilized by both Axis and Allied powers during WWII. A roman-ticized version of the era was made popular in the 1992 novel by Michael On-daatje, The English Patient, which was followed by a Hollywood movie of the same name. Beginning with this camp, we now break camp every night on our five-and-a-half day journey back north. The new moon set early tonight, with a strong Venus an arm’s reach above.

3/21/2007 Wadi el Melik to Wadi Tal

We’ve had a walk up the Abd el Melik to see two recorded sites – one report-ed by Bagnold and Shaw in the thirties. Roughly pecked quadrapeds, some with interior body lines and in-fill pecking. The Bagnold and Shaw shelter had four painted quadrapeds. I found a Neolithic pot weathering out of the sand, circa 3500 – 7000b.p. Also stone industry choppers, cores, blade, flakes, etc.. Camped at Wadi Tal. A morning of survey for new sites in Wadi Abd el Me-lik. We drive out the main branch which measures at least one mile across, finding one site previously reported by Giancarlo Negro. We head up the Wa-di Tal in search of a monumental tumulus reported by Cambieri and Peroschi in the Sahara Journal in 2006 – and we find it after much driving. Below Twilight, Andras and Gerald in camp at Wadi Tal Opposite above Abd-el-Melik zoomorph with eight legs Opposite below Tumulus in a side branch of Wadi Tal

3/22/2007 Wadi Tal to the Libyan Glass Desert

We’ll have a bit later start this morning making our way by early afternoon to the Libyan Desert Glass area where we’ll camp.

Opposite Libyan Glass Desert Below Libyan Glass Desert camp site

3/23/2007 Libyan Glass Desert to the Great Sand Sea

We spent the day “prospecting” in the Libyan Desert Glass area in 103 degree heat with a stout southern wind – two hours on the desert pavement and I was dehydrated and starting to blister – so retreated to the vehicles for cover. I did find a nice example of glass and many artifacts which John says are characteristic of the Achuelian Period circa 55 – 75,000 years b.p. I collected a beautiful scraper and hand axe, but after sleeping with the pieces in my tent, decided not to carry them out of country, so left them there on the desert. . . A long drive today along the western edge of the Great Sand Sea skirting dunes all day, running out across the Libyan border at one point to avoid crossing the bulkhead of a great dune. The dunes reach 400 feet above the serir (desert pavement) and occupy 45,000 square miles, some dunes reaching 65 miles in length – the largest in the world. It’s been windy and changeable, sometimes blowing from the south and filling the air with dense brown haze, limiting visibility to maybe fifty meters, then shifting to winds out of the north. The sand lays down, but the temperature also has dropped. Tonight might be downright cold. We’re all relieved to be at the end of our longest drive and to be nearing Siwa, three hours away. We want good food, hot showers, freedom from the vehicles, real beds, and a bit of sightseeing and shopping. Its been a long 13 days on the ground – in the field.

3/24/2007 Great Sand Sea to Siwa

The night was heavy with dreams. The wind stayed down and the tent stood fast – bolstered with sand anchors fashioned out of empty water bottles and Ziploc bags. There are no stones at this place to weigh down the tent flaps. The wind having died down, the morning air was clear and highlighted with high thin running clouds. We race the dunes across the Great Sand Sea to Si-wa, stopping to explore and incredible dessecated limestone myocene ocean bed that was covered with thousands of fossil shells and a few sea mammal remains. Some found sharks’ teeth. Also many flint flakes, a fine arrowhead – I found a broken one. Lunch in Siwa. Egyptian veggie pizza with orange juice – two orange juices! A fine hot shower left pink foam on the shower pan floor. A walk around the village square with Jeff. A donkey cart ride out to see the Oracle’s Temple of Ammon where Alexander the Great came to consult in +/- 335 B.C.E. Dinner at the hotel. A bit of shopping and computer e-mail with Gerald Kolbe. A walk up onto the roof of the old city, now a brightly lit tourist attraction.

Dream: I received an Easter card from Noe. It was hand illustrated and showed se-quential panels of Christ’s death and rebirth, scenes of sin and redemption, leading to a grace with G-d. . . .

3/25/2007 Siwa to Cairo

The night sounds of Siwa resolving into early morning are these: roosters crowing, donkeys breying, Muslim prayers calling, dogs barking. . . Dream: I received an Easter card from N__. It was hand illustrated and showed sequential panels of Christ’s death and rebirth, scenes of sin and redemption, leading to a grace with G-d. . . .