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Touring Egypt
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By Dotty DeCoster, July 1998
Concerning Egypt
itself I shall extend my remarks to a great length, because there is
no country that possesses so many wonders, nor any that has such a number
of works which defy description . . . and the rivers unlike any other
rivers, but the people also, in most of their manners and customs, exactly
reverse the common practice of mankind.
—Herodotus, c484 - c425 B.C.
Beginning with a map ...
Reading a contemporary map, one scans from north to south, downward.
Lines are marked with the names of rivers, roads, borders, directionless.
On the southern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, to the east, a few blue
lines move southward, converge at a large circle, then a single blue line
continues on south, down through the nearly empty rectangular northeast
corner of a large land mass labeled "Africa." Circles and dots follow
this blue line to the border line. Right and left, east and west, of the
blue line are occasional dots but no other blue lines. The Nile has no
tributaries in Misr.
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 Herodotus, The Histories, translated by George Rawlinson, Encyclopedia
Britannica, University of Chicago Press, 1952. This quotation is found
on page 56 in The Second Book, entitled Eurterpe. (section 35) |
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Dorothy DeCoster toured Egypt (and Misr) for
three weeks in the Spring of 1997 on a 20-person tour guided by Farouk
Seif, Professor at Antioch University Seattle and Adrian Bridger-Chalker
of Travel by Design.
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Antioch University—Egypt Study Abroad
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Below the border line, the Nile becomes more sinuous through emptiness
and then it branches, each branch ending far into east/central Africa.
The water from the sea appears to flow into the continent, moving downward,
southward. This long thin blue line appears to connect Egypt to Africa.
Not so. The Nile flows to the sea, straight up the map to the Mediterranean
Sea, northward. While Misr's relationship with Africa is contemporary,
in Egypt "Africa" did not exist; the two sources of the Nile were unknown.
A different mapping would make this easier, touring Egypt more comprehensible.
Imagine a map drawn on a flat page with south at the top. South would
be drawn sketchily, perhaps with animals like elephants or giraffes or
objects that came from this direction. Nubia, the frontier would be more
clearly drawn, perhaps beginning with a sketch of Dongola, certainly including
the cataracts at Wadi Halfa and Aswan. Upper Egypt would be detailed along
the Nile with trade routes east and west noted and cities along and islands
in the Nile named. Moving down the page we would come to Lower Egypt,
the delta. Expedition routes to the Red Sea and Sinai and points further
east and north would appear on the left side. To the right side the ancient
oases would be marked, but most of the map would be empty, fading into
the deserts we call Libyan and Sahara. At the bottom of the map would
be the Mediterranean Sea, islands off the coast, and perhaps coastal sea
routes.
The map maker might have been a scribe employed by a merchant, or an artist trained in carving hieroglyphs or painting monuments. Perhaps the sun would appear rising to the east (left) and setting to the west (right) colorfully brushed on the papyrus. The map would focus on the Nile, the center of life.
© 1998-2001 Dotty DeCoster
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