Egypt Accommodations
To view examples of types of available accommodations and vehicles - Click Here
Founded on the site of Babylon, near the ruins of ancient Memphis, Cairo has been the largest city in Africa for centuries. More than 15 million people work in the city every day. Modern Cairo encompasses many former cities and their monuments and is today a bustling metropolis with high-rise buildings dotting the skyline. Five thousand years of culture are concentrated here, at the junction of three continents. World-renowned landmarks within the city include the Egyptian Museum, the Citadel, many famous mosques, and the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar. In the desert, just a few miles from the city, one finds the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx and the ruins of the ancient city of Memphis.
CAswan is one of the most attractive towns in Egypt with many monuments within easy reach including the Temple of Philae. The temple was dismantled and reassembled about 500 miles away when they built the High Dam. A huge attraction itself, the High Dam was hailed as an engineering miracle with is was built in the 1960s. Today it provides irrigation and electricity for the whole of Egypt.
Edfu was one of several temples built during the Ptolemaic period, including Dendera, Esna, Kom Ombo and Philae. It was built on the site of an earlier, smaller temple also dedicated to Horus, although the previous structure was oriented east-west rather than north-south as in the present site. Over the centuries, the temple became buried to a depth of 12 metres (39 ft) beneath drifting desert sand and layers of river silt deposited by the Nile. Local inhabitants built homes directly over the former temple grounds. Only the upper reaches of the temple pylons were visible by 1798, when the temple was identified by a French expedition. In 1860 Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, began the work of freeing Edfu temple from the sands.
Luxor is unique among the cities of the world. Wherever you tread, you feel you are experiencing the past and the present at one and the same time. There is hardly a place in the city that does not have a relic that tells of the grandeur of the Egyptians of several thousand years ago. That is why the visitor is awed by the city, made immortal by its huge pillared monuments along both banks of the Nile – in the City of the Living, in the east, where the life-giving sun rises; and in the City of the Dead, in the west, where the sun, in its never-ending orbit, bids farewell to life! On the east bank of the Nile, in the City of the Living, Luxor and Karnak Temples greet the sunrise. The sunset on the west bank throws shadows through the City of the Dead: the Tombs of the Nobles, The Colossi of Memnon, the Valley of the Kings and Queen Hatshepsut’s temple.
As you arrive by boat the magnificent Ptolemaic temple is in a dramatic setting on high ground beside the Nile, surrounded by sugarcane fields. Dedicated jointly to Haroeris, The Good Doctor, and Sobek, the crocodile god, the temple is famous for its twin entrances, halls and sanctuaries.
The Western Desert is 262,000 square miles of dunes, canyons, oases, mountainous plateaus, and valleys that span most of land west of the Nile Valley. Once you reach the White Desert, sand and black rocks give way to the awe inspiring sight of a magical landscape full of strange limestone concretions that are shaped like giant mushrooms, fjords and icebergs. Quench your thirst at any of the five oases.
|
© 2010 - 2012 by African Safari Company
Everplex | Terms & Conditions | Sitemap |