Myhat in Egypt Through the Eyes of a God
Ana pointed to a worker who was doing something amidst a field of green crop. He was wearing just a loin cloth. It was very hot, much hotter than Ed had expected for quite early in the day. Ed felt overdressed in the djellaba over his jeans and tee-shirt, with me still clinging onto his head.
When they reached the worker, Ana spoke to him in Arabic.
The man shrugged and said something back. He was staring straight at me; I knew that I fascinated him and he wanted me on his head – not that Ed knew, but I would not have minded for a while, just to see through the man's eyes.
“He's saying hello, I think,” Ana said, turning to Ed.
“It's not Arabic though, it's more like Berber, the language they still speak in the desert in Morocco. I didn't know they spoke it here. I'll try and ask him where we are.”
Ana tried a few words and pointed around the place where they stood.”
The man pointed across the river and said “Oo – are – set.”
Ana looked at him and pointed also across the river. She said “Luxor?”
The man shrugged and said “Happy”.
Ana said said something that was not English and smiled. “Temple of Hatshepsut?” she asked.
Another shrug.
“Temple Karnak? Ramasseum?”
No response to that, just a big smile on his face and a small bow.
“Oo – are - set! Oo – are - set!” he said pointing and laughing.
“I don't know those words,” said Ana, “maybe it's somebody's name, like his boss? Or just an oo - are”
“Oh well,” said Ed, “From what I can guess, if we go round the hill we should find the road back to the village or at least see something familiar. It's kind of weird here. It doesn't look at all right. I just can't fathom where we are.”
They bowed slightly to the smiling man and set out to walk around the end of the hill that covered the tombs and tunnels they had passed through. From there, Ed thought, they should be able to see Luxor and the Temple.
In fact they did see a town spread out on the other side of the Nile, quite a large place but it was certainly not Luxor.
There were no big buildings or hotels, no Temple, just what looked like a palace. There were no tourist cruise boats moored there, no feluccas, just small craft, going back and forth across the river. There was no ferry.
Ed was quite stressed out by now, I could tell, and I too was getting concerned that they were lost. Yet this side was not exactly a huge area, just fields between the hills and the river.
It just looked like somewhere completely different, as if they had exited the tunnels many miles up or down stream, somewhere they had never been before. They found no road, saw no trace of human habitation except for the few men working in the fields.
“The phone's still not working,” said Ana, “I think we better go back and find that boulder and get back to Ayman and find out what's going on. Maybe he knows where we are. Maybe he has been here himself.”
They walked back round the hill and scrambled up to find the chalk marks.
As Ed was about to climb through the gap above the boulder with the chalk mark, Ana asked “Is this yours?”
She passed Ed a small lighter which had a picture of the pyramids on. Ed flicked it, but it didn't work. He put it in his pocket anyway. It was a very hot day and I knew that Ed was keen to get back into the cool tunnels.
They quickly climbed back into the tunnel and followed the chalk marks, much faster than it had taken them coming this way, not stopping so much. There were several other tunnels leading off at points, so I sensed Ed was glad he'd marked the way. He had not noticed them all on the way through.
Just about half an hour later, they exited through to the garden in the dilapidated house.
“I'll phone Ayman,” said Ed.
As he looked at his own mobile phone, he said “Well I get a signal but my phone says it's only eight-thirty”
Ana checked her own phone. “Weird, mine too. But it must have been two o'clock at least when we turned back, the sun was really high and I'm sure we were away for longer than that. We've definitely been gone for more than a few hours. It took over an hour to get through to the other end and we were there for at least four hours.”
Ed phoned Ayman and said that they were back but that they had a problem so would like to meet him again later.
Ed and Ana left the garden, covering once again the entrance to the tunnels behind them.
They walked back to the hotel; sure enough it was only late morning.
They had black tea with milk and a late breakfast of corn flakes with milk, eggs and bread and sweet cakes and orange juice. They were both very hungry.
Ed took out some maps of the area and began scrutinising them.
“I can't work this out at all,” he said, “whichever way we went and wherever we came out on the hillside, we ought to have been able to see Luxor and the Temples and we should have found the road. And I don't know why there weren't any boats. There aren't any towns that size for miles”
He decided to walk the short distance from the hotel towards the river. Ana said that she wanted to take a rest so he went alone.
Ed saw everything was as as it should be. There was the river, the ferry and, on the East Bank, he could see the cruise boats and Luxor town along with its Temple and tall lush hotels. Plenty of people about too, as usual, carrying on their daily business, taxies and trucks, donkeys pulling carts.
Puzzled still, he went back to the hotel.
Ana said that Ayman had phoned her to say that Youssef would pick them up at six o'clock.
“I've been thinking about what that guy said. You know when he pointed and said Oo – are - set?
“Well there's nowhere here called that and I asked the manager at reception if he knew anyone called that or any place and he said no. But he said that centuries ago the old place was called Waset even before it was called Thebes.”
“I looked it up and he's right but that was four thousand years ago, in the time of Pharaohs Senusret the First and Amenemhat the Second.”
Ah, another Hat, I thought, maybe an ancestor. Remember dear reader, that I had also heard of a woman Pharaoh called Hatshepsut, who also had a temple built here.
Ana continued: “The books say they were Twelfth dynasty, after Mentuhotep the Second, Eleventh dynasty. They'd had a war with the North which lasted for about fifty years and then many of the Nomes were united. The town was called Waset. Waset was a Goddess.”
“Maybe what we saw was some sort of touristy replica or something, but it must be a huge site. We''ll ask Ayman about it this evening,” said Ed.
“Pretty weird. I'm going to ask Ayman if we can go back; we'll cross the river and find out what's going on,” said Ed.
