On our way to Egypt

[mark alba escobar]

On our way to Egypt – through the looking glass of time

Unencumbered by the sweltering heat, we slipped across the border of Palestine and visited Mt. Sinai. That sense of expectation and possibility of what we thought of made us realize to keep focused on our faith and keep our Christian hope alive that despite poverty and the angst of centuries ago, we were still animated by our faith that could be recalled in times past by all those who visited or lived in these places. This however was laden with biblical meaning as we were reminded of the exodus, wanderings of the children of Israel, with the Tables of the Law that God dictated to Moses. The latter is one of the two summits known as the Gebel Musa and the Rases-Safsafeh which are located in this zone, and is now identified with the Mount of Wooden Tables.

As early as 2:00 A.M. we began to climb the rocky Sinai mountain. Along the way we met some desert people known as Bedouins who inhabit there with their camels as their only source of income and means of transportation. We took the camels and paid $10.00 to take us to the summit. It was my first time though to ride in a camel. I got scared when the camel took the edge of the trail road whilst coming down from the top. It was such a scary experience that even made both my thighs so sore.

According to history, the name “Sinai” probably be related to Sin, the goddess of the moon, who was adored by the ancient inhabitants of the desert, or perhaps to the Semitic word “sen” which means tooth. It remained isolated. The mountains here range from 750 to 2500 metres; the most important peaks are the Gebel Musa (Moses’ mountain) that reaches 2285 metres and Mount St Catherine (Gebel Kathrina) of 2642, the highest on the peninsula.

Following from this, tradition says that on Sinai celebrated episodes took place: that were connected with Moses, from that of the burning bush to that of the manna falling from heaven. But the main thing here was that of the Tables of the Law which God gave to the children of Israel. It is also worth remembering that through that biblical event passed the armies of numerous powers from those of the Egyptian Tutmosis III and Ramsete II to those the Persian Cambises; from those of Greeks Alexander the Great to those of the Romans of Antioch. Then again, followed the Arabs and the Crusades, Napoleon and Lawrence, up until the last, most recent ones of Israel and Egypt.

During the time of sporadic persecutions, thousands of Egyptian slaves who worked in the copper and turquoise mines sought refuge here for their salvation and a consolation to their prayers. Mount Sinai became the citadel for thousands and thousands of pilgrims, Christians and ascetics who worked in the mines.

After a long, long walk we met together at the Monastery of St Catherine which belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church. Most of the monks who live there are Greek. Their abbot who is elected by the four Archimandrites and is consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who is one of the six ecumenical Greek Orthodox patriarchs, together with those of Rome, Moscow, Alexandria, Constantinople and Antioch wears the mitre and the crown, and carries the scepter and the gold cross. He is also called the archbishop of Sinai. According to history, the monks practice the rules of St Basil the Great, who was bishop of Caesarea and who lived between 329 and 379 A.D.

Indeed, its presence there continues to attract many pilgrims and worshippers, travelers and tourists, who follow these paths of faith and tradition.

Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine ordered the construction of a small chapel on the site where the burning bush had been located. The chapel was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. But due to raids and murders by nomadic tribes of the desert, Emperor Justinian in 530 A.D. ordered the construction of a much larger basilica, the church of the Transfiguration.

Our tour guide this time was Osama which means lion in Arabic. He was nice though. He taught us some Arabic words like yala (let’s go), Hussein (good thing), sabajal hil (good morning), etc. We were in two buses with a guard with us. From Sinai we went to Cairo, the capital city of Egypt which is today the home to sixteen million inhabitants and is composed of three governorates: Cairo, Giza and Qalyobia, as well as twenty eight quarters. It is considered the most populated African city where there is a great political, cultural and economic centre in the Middle East. Eighty per cent of people are Muslim and twenty per cent are Coptic Orthodox or Egyptian Christian.

It took us six hours to get to our hotel. We were pretty tired though. Then the following day we went to see the Egyptian Museum which is situated in the centre of Cairo. It contains a big library and 100 exhibition rooms occupying two floors. The French Egyptologist, Mariette Pasha was instrumental to the construction of this big museum to house those Pharaonic works of art.

Actually, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the museum. There were a lot of tourists from all walks of life but most of them were from Europe. We followed our tour guide with a little flag to identify our group. Due to time constraint, we were only limited to see some important collections of the museum such as the famous Tutankahamun who lived in 1361-1352 BC. His gold coffin is made of 450 pounds of solid gold. It is, probably, the finest and greatest example of goldsmithing work in history. He was pretty young though when he died. He was only 18 years of age.

It was Howard Carter, the English archaeologist who discovered his tomb in 1922. According to history, Egypt then fell into a state of anarchy and later into the hands of military rulers: Horembeb, Ramses I, a professional soldier, Seti I who revived the policy of conquest to the east, and finally Ramses II, known as Ramses the Great, who brought his forces to conquer the armies of the Hittites. He had reigned for seventy years and enjoyed his great power by building huge monuments e.g. Abu Simbel, Karnak and Luxor. On his death he was succeeded by his son Mineptah.

In 332 B.C. the Egyptians called on Alexander the Great to help them and he was acclaimed as a Liberator. He was declared the son of Ra by the oracle of Luxor. He build the new city of Alexandria and he was buried there in 323 B.C. this became the cultural capital of the whole of the ancient world. His death marked the beginning of the Ptolemaic or lagidan dynasty which started the Hellenisation (Greeks and Egyptians) of the country.

We saw also king Tut’s tomb, Dwarf Seneb with his wife holding him with her right arm and their two children in the place of the dwarf’s short legs, the Scribe (Dynasty IV) which is made of painted limestone and is of an unknown squatting scribe holding an open papyrus roll on his knees, the statue of the noble Kaaper who was also known as the great priest, the black granite representing the mayor Senefer of Thebes sitting beside his wife Senetnay with their daughter Mutneferet between them.

I learnt that Osiris, known as the god of the after-life, united the Upper Egypt which is symbolized by the vulture and Lower Egypt symbolized by the cobra. But it did not last long. According to legend, it is only from about 3200 B.C. that one can start to talk about Egyptian history in any serious sense. It is said that the Old Kingdom of the Egyptian civilization is sometimes called the Memphis Kingdom, the capital being moved from Abydos to Memphis (Memphis, the capital of the first nome of Lower Egypt).

By the same token, Egyptian religion cannot be called primitive although many of its gods were depicted in animal or nature form, however, the essential characteristics of a Totemism were lacking: the animal represented the form in which the mysterious divine power manifested itself. For the Egyptian people, the most perfect image of God was the sun with its three attributes: shape, light and heat. The sun’s soul was called Amon or Amon-Ra, a name which means ‘hidden-sun. He is the father of life and the other divinities are only the different parts of his body. He is at one and the same time the Father, the Mother and the Son of God without leaving God. These three persons are ‘God in God’ and far from destroying the unity of the divine nature together they bring forth his infinite perfection. The Father represents creative power while the Son, image of the Father, strengthens and manifests his eternal attributes.

It was interesting to find out that like the Christians they have the Trinity which is not the only dogma they had retained from primitive revelation. In the holy books one also finds original sin, the promise of a redeeming God, future restorations of humanity, and the resurrection of the flesh at the end of time. At each change of dynasty there was a monotheistic revolution and the Supreme Being prevailed over the fetishism of other divinities.

We went to Abouzeid Restaurant for lunch. Then we went to Ghiza archaeological site to see the Great Pyramid. These are the three pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Micerinus. Typically each pyramid consists of a funerary temple in the valley. The complex of Cheops is almost completely devastated while that of Chephren is largely extant. The pyramid of Cheops is the largest of the three. It was originally 146 metres high, today it is only 137 metres high, its truncated summit being a platform 10 metres square. Today the pyramid has completely lost its external façade, thus revealing the huge internal blocks of stone over which one must have laboured up to the hilt in order to reach the pinnacle. Chephren’s pyramid is the only one which is still has, at least at the top the smooth external façade. It used to be lower than Cheop’s, today it is in fact the same height because it is not truncated. The smallest of the three is Micerinus’, barely 66 metres high but of fairly regular dimensions. In the 16th century it still had its granite facing which today has completely disappeared. In front of Micerinus’ pyramid there are three satellite pyramids, even smaller than those of Cheops. The one to the east, originally covered in red granite was perhaps intended for the wife of the pharaoh Kharmer-Nehty II. The poor state of preservation of Micerinus’ funerary complex could be due to the fact that it was done in haste. Hence it decayed easily.

Across the pyramid which is around 350 metres from Cheops’ pyramid stands the Great Sphinx, known in the Arabic as Abu el-Hol which means ‘father of terror’. This represents a lion with a human head which some believe to be a likeness of Chephren standing guard over his tomb. Originally the Sphinx was called Hor-em-Akhet, which means ‘Horus who is on the horizon’, from which the Greeks derived the name Harmakis.
There was something which reminded me of the Greek Sphinx. It was Oedipus who was able to answer his riddle. The question was: what animal walks on all fours in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night? The answer is man, of course. And according to mainstream Egyptology it says that the Sphinx was carved from bedrock during the reign of Khafre (2520-2995 B.C.) as a self-tribute to the pharaoh.

It was very evident that throughout all these centuries, the profound meaning of their struggles, religion, history, etc. still speaks to us. Certainly, I shall go on cherishing these beautiful memories I’ve had with my companions in this pilgrimage. I was immensely engulfed by the awesome works of art which deserve a respect for the technical skill of ancient Egypt a thousand years before Israel was born.

I remember the words of John F. Kennedy: “The time to fix your roof is when the sun is shining”. This is another good idea whose time has come for us to stir in the rest of us a sense of human potential, a heightened sense of what we might do, or who we might become as we continue to commit ourselves to new frontiers of human endeavour. This presents us with that spectacle of the whole resources of our country organized to prepare a pluralistic society where hope sustains us to walk with God through trials and tribulations.

There is reason for hope. Like the ancient Egyptians who prepared a final resting place for their god-king, we too prepare our future to ensure that the light of freedom and justice in all aspects continue to shine for the next generations