8 - 14 November 2001
Issue No.559
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8 - 14 November 2001 Issue No.559 |
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Egyptian treasure house
- Leisure Tourism in Egypt, Vol. I. West of the Nile, Aly Raafat, Cairo: Inter-Consult Research Centre, 2001. pp134;- The Best Diving Sites in the Red Sea, Farid Atiya, Cairo: Farid Atiya Publishing 2001. pp144;
- Red Sea Panorama, Farid Atiya, Cairo: Farid Atiya Publishing 2001. pp144;
- The Temples of Edfu and Esna; The Temple of Dendara; The Temple of Kom Ombo, all titles by Ian Portman, Cairo: Palm Press, 2001. pp24;
- The Temples of Philae, Abdin Siam Hassan and Ian Portman, Cairo: Palm Press, 2001. pp22
With so many books about Egypt on the shelves, it's sometimes hard nowadays to make a choice -- often the best cover and the prettiest pictures will do. Aly Raafat's Leisure Tourism in Egypt, Farid Atiya's The Best Diving Sites in the Red Sea and Red Sea Panorama and the small guides by Palm Press are all very different, and all aim for different markets -- the professional tourist industry, the serious diver and the tourist in turn. Of this collection, Atiya's well-presented books carry a souvenir or gift value all of their own.
Raafat is a professor in the engineering department at Cairo University. While he has written books on architecture, he now makes a foray into tourism. Raafat's background undoubtedly gives him a head start when it comes to producing maps and plans: tour operators will get plenty of mileage out of his cross-sectional site plans of beaches on the north coast. It is a great pity, however, that his methodology has not extended to the editing of this book. Readers will find it very cumbersome to extract the meaning from some of the English constructions used. Particularly irritating is the transliteration of proper nouns well known in English from the Arabic back into English -- or Latin, as in the case of Dayaklshyan for the Emperor Diocletian.
Mis-translations go beyond the careless: it is erroneous on many levels to term Bedouin tribesmen "gypsies." That there is no index might also be a drawback to investors and tour operators, while reference to other sources might have given Raafat more accurate information about some of the sites he describes. It is legend, not fact, for example, that the temple of Osiris (or, as most scholars now agree, Isis) at Taposiris Magna was "the palace of the romantic Arab worrier (sic) Abu Zeid El- Helaly." Nor was the nearby walled town of Borg Al- Arab constructed as a "fortified Florentine mediaeval hill village" by the commander of the Western Desert; it was actually built for the local Bedouin within living memory by the then district governor, Wilfrid Jennings-Bramly. Nor was the enemy of Cleopatra and Antony called Octavia.
When it comes to natural and climatic history, however, Raafat demonstrates his scholarship and interest. He gives a worthy description of the physical geography of the Western Desert, its coastline and the oases it contains, from Alexandria to Sallum in the north, and from Gabal Uwaynat to Lake Nasser in the south. Most importantly, he provides details of accessibility and does not forget to include the sites en route.
Leisure Tourism in Egypt will be a useful companion to the professional tourist, even if it falls short of invaluable. An edited and more easily readable translation would doubtless be welcomed by the tourist industry.
Farid Atiya has been diving and photographing the coral reef of the Red Sea since the early 1980s. In The Best Diving Sites in the Red Sea he presents a valuable guide to more than 50 sites, from the Maria Schröder below Taba in the Gulf of Aqaba to the Brothers Islands off Port Safaga in the southern Egyptian waters of the Red Sea.
Descriptions of the sites, their access, entries and dive plans are accompanied by geophysical details, as well as mention of the species one would expect to encounter there, with their common and Latin names. The text is entertaining and informative, and the line drawings of the sites will be of interest to those methodical -- and sensible -- enough to do their "homework" before setting out on a dive.
Red Sea Panorama takes us above as well as below the surface. In production Atiya uses innovative print styles, and on certain pages throughout the book chooses a themed "desktop pattern" for a backdrop to the photographs: when I canvassed approval for the effect, I found a response of 50-50 in favour of a backdrop versus a white page. Some loved it -- perhaps, like this reviewer, the types who snip the white edges off photos when they get them back from the printer, or are so accustomed to a computer screen they can only pay attention to a fully interactive page. Others felt it detracted from both images, and preferred the usual squares on a white page. Whether or not one likes the layout, there's no doubt the matt paper finish enhances the photo quality. Both Red Sea Panorama and The Best Diving Sites in the Red Sea are also available in Italian, German and French editions.
Red Sea Panorama refers to the natural panorama, so although there are beautiful shots of Wadi Feiran there are none of St Catherine's. They have been so often photographed that they are not missed. However, the photographs (some of the best are repeated in both books) do inform as well as delight: as with the book on dives sites, there is a comprehensive fish reference section -- 13 butterfly and angelfish are carefully photographed, so there should be no mistaking each variety. I did not know that camels ate mangrove leaves, or that although a sea-horse's dorsal fin flaps 10 times a second it takes about five minutes for this little creature to cover half a metre. In the last chapter Atiya recounts a rare encounter he had off Jackson Reef in May this year with a pod of the giant Rosso's dolphin, Grampus Griseus, a scene recaptured on both the front and back covers.
What distinguishes Atiya's books from many similar ones is their outstanding colour reproductions, which faithfully copy the vivid reds and blues of the reefs and wrecks and the water around them.
The slim new guides from Palm Press on the temples of Edfu and Esna, Dendara, Kom Ombo and Philae are the first four of a series. All are by Ian Portman, the one on Philae written with Abdin Siam Hassan. Photography in all the guides is by Joseph Hunwick.
The guides give visitors such practical information as how to get there, opening times and how to buy tickets. They give a general description and history of the sites, information on the cult-worship and deities to which each temple was sacred, and details, with maps and line drawings, of the buildings and decorations. In the case of Philae, there is a short chapter on the rescue of the monuments.
The temples of Isis at Philae, Sobek and Horus at Kom Ombo, Hathor at Dendara, Khnum at Esna and Horus at Edfu are an indication of the cult gods and goddesses who favoured the Ptolemies along the Nile. Portman gives us a brief outline of the ceremonies and festivals which took place in the temples, among them the funeral rites of the god Osiris at Dendara. This was one of the places where parts of the fertility god's body were buried after he had been slain and dismembered by his brother, Seth. All these temples were built in the Ptolemaic era -- relatively late in the history of Ancient Egypt. Although they were built by the Ptolemies and added to by the Romans, some of the buildings rested on earlier sites or shrines. It is a sobering thought that when work began on the earliest, the Giza pyramids were already 2,250 years old -- a tribute to the strength of the prevailing culture and religion.
These excellent booklets will be an invaluable companion for visitors to the sites, as well as a handy reference.
While this crop of new guides reveals different aspects of tourism in Egypt, they all reinforce the received wisdom that Egypt is a treasure house, and that each visitor will make a trip here his or her own legend. Every traveller has a goal and, who knows, someone exploring the Western Desert might one day stumble across the lost oasis of "Zerzura -- for "adventure lovers," as Raafat says, "a symbol of undiscovered parts of the world." None of these books tells you how to get to Zerzura, but they do make you want to go there.
Reviewed by Jenny Jobbins
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