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Published in the April-June 2010 issue.
Nicola Corthay visits Luxor and finds plenty to enjoy – not just its famous ancient sights but its modern, bustling streets.
Luxor. It might be one of the most famous towns in Egypt but nobody really visits it. Tourists come to Luxor to see the marvellous tombs and mortuary temples of the pharaohs across the river on the west bank, and to cast an eye over the ancient capital of Thebes on the east bank. But of modern Luxor, a sprawling city of a nearly half a million people, they see very little. That’s a shame. Take a few hours to wander the new town and you’ll find the vibrancy, wit and wonder of modern Egypt – of a country as it is today rather than as it was 4,000 years ago.
The best place in all Luxor – far more entertaining and a whole lot cheaper than King Tut’s tomb – is the Corniche, the promenade along the east bank of the Nile. Here you can lean on the wall and gaze at grand cruise-boats with their tinted windows and open-air decks, whose bright white lines contrast with the rickety rowboats and feluccas that bob in their wake. Nearby, watch the old iron-hulled ferries that ply the waters, shuttling from one side of the Nile to the other: the embarkation point is always a swaying mass of shoe-shiners, wannabe guides, locals hauling chickens and sacks of rice, and independent travellers with hot faces.
Turn your eyes away from the Nile and there’s just as much activity. Along the road clop horse-drawn carriages while, in the trees overhead, sparrows set up an alarming chirping and flapping as if they’re extras in a Hitchcock movie. Little girls, their hair tied back with red ribbons, produce statuettes of pharaohs and cats from under their robes. You’ll also encounter touts from the alabaster workshops on the far bank, streetsmart hustlers in Reeboks, felucca owners frantic for business (“Happy hour now, sir! Special morning price!”) and old men in turbans on their constitutionals.
Unofficial guides haggle with penny-pinching backpackers or rip off rich tourists with breathtaking excess. But keep your good humour and join in the patter and you’ll find the locals amusing and witty and, beyond their need to earn a living, often friendly. You never know who you’ll fall into conversation with: a young girl with surprisingly good English, an elderly Nubian gentleman or a local English teacher.
Strung out along the Corniche are three main sights. The first you can hardly miss: Luxor Temple, whose columns are spotlit in golden hues to dazzling effect, providing a haunting atmosphere as you wander along the waterfront. A little farther down the Corniche, built into the Nile embankment itself, the Mummification Museum provides a fascinating account of the rituals, believes and process of mummification and includes the remains of birds, reptiles and 21st-dynasty Egyptian high priest, Maserharti. Farther on again, the Luxor Museum isn’t to be missed: it displays some truly marvellous statues, funerary objects and other artefacts from nearby tombs and temples.
From the ancient to the modern is only a few steps, here. Wander away from the Corniche and soon, you’ll encounter the real Egypt, of crumbling concrete and looped electric cables, where sweepers pass the dust in little swirls from one side of the pavement to the other.
Modern Luxor certainly isn’t beautiful but it’s lively and interesting, full of people in from the countryside and locals shopping for vegetables and electric lightbulbs. An old man in a turban who looks as if he’s just stepped out of a hieroglyphic reaches under his robe and pulls out a mobile phone. A gleaming BMW pushes past a dilapidated horse cart, and tour operators in tight suits sit over minute cups of coffee with dark-faced Nubians in flowing galabayas. In Luxor, you can see all the problems and potential of Egypt today, all its boundless energy and kaleidoscope of colour and noise. Half the country, it seems, is moving past your eyes in an endless flow of buses, cars, donkey carts, shoe-shine trolleys, mobile peanut stands and pedestrians.
Wander far enough north and eventually, you’ll come across one of the country’s great tourist drawcards: the Temple of Karnak, built on a vast scale and dotted with statues, immense columns, obelisks and temple altars. One writer compared it to an “archaeological department store containing something for everyone”. By its entrance, the large open square is home to a few dusty trees and exhausted dogs. Here tourist buses come and go, calash drivers snooze in their carriages, tourists gulp at water bottles and vendors keep up their eternal patter.
The constant bustle tames the imperial arrogance of Karnak and turns it into a glorious but almost inconsequential backdrop to daily life. It’s all too easy to think that nothing has happened in Egypt since the pharaohs knocked up these walls; the milling locals are always a refreshing reminder that civilisation here is far from archaeological.
And so back to the river, and back to the Corniche. At Luxor, the contrast between one side of the river and the other is startling, the water dividing ancient from modern. The west bank is imbued with a brooding calm, the desert sands punctuated with worn-down statues and silent gaping tombs, while here on the east bank, you’re still surrounded by the hubbub of modern Luxor. Stitching the two together is an endless parade of public ferries and rowboats and feluccas. Beneath your felucca, the water gurgles and overhead, the sail creaks: Luxor to perfection. •
Photography courtesy Egyptian Tourist Authority.
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