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AFUW-ACT
Inc. Meeting Report
Topic: TRAVELS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Speaker: Dr. Catherine Evans
At our May meeting Catherine Evans gave us a very interesting power
point presentation of her pilgrimage to Egypt,
Israel and Jordan. The group started in Cairo and found the atmosphere
to be very polluted, so that even though the
city of Cairo stretched up to the pyramids, because the haze was so
thick, no evidence of Cairo could be seen while
viewing the pyramids. Cairo has a population of 17 million people, so
is a very significant city.
Memorable visits were made to the Sphinx, the Aswan High dam, Lake Nasser
and Abu Simbel. At latitude 30
degrees the best time to travel was in the cool of the morning before
11 o’clock so many of the sights were seen early
morning with some very early starts like 4am breakfast prior to catching
a plane! The Cairo Museum was visited to
see the remarkable Tutenkahmen funeral mask and artifacts from his tomb.
Travel on the Nile was by luxurious vessels with a couple of rides in
feluccas to cross the river to see the Nubian
village. Catherine also mentioned that they traveled by horse carriage
when visiting temples of Philae. There were
villages on both sides of the Nile but greenery/agricultural land was
not very common. Visits were made to the Rames
II tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, the Colossi
of Mennon.
The bus trip from Cairo to Sinai was through very desolate country.
St Catherine’s monastery stands at the foot of Mt
Sinai and is the location of the ‘burning bush’. The next
stop was Petra in Jordan via the corner of Israel. The best
known building in Petra is near the Treasury Building but there were
significant numbers of caves where the
Nabbateans lived from about 300 BC until recently when they were relocated
to a purpose built village. Another
highlight was the visit to a 2000 year old fishing boat that had been
dug up from the Sea of Galilee.
The pilgrimage visited the Jordan River in Israel and spent 5 days in
Jerusalem ranging out to see various biblical
sights. The group visited the Mount of Olives, the Jerusalem museum
where the Shrine of the Book holds the Dead
Sea Scrolls, the Wailing Wall, the Via Dolorosa and the Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem. Longer trips took the
group to the Dead Sea, Qumran where the dead sea scrolls were found
and the adjacent excavated Essene Village.
The Port of Haifa seen from the hill overlooking the city appeared very
hazy but once down on the coast at Caeserea
the pollution had dissipated. Catherine noticed in the arab part of
Jerusalemas that there was a mobile vet hospital.
As a veterinarian, Catherine found that the treatment of animals, in
particular the horses, in Egypt was less than
satisfactory, but horses in Jordan and Israel were obviously better
treated. In fact in Egypt, she reported that the horses
were inspected to see that they were in reasonable condition before
members of the group climbed up into the horse
drawn carriage.
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