Exploring Egypt

Ancient Egypt. A place of wonder, splendor, untold wealth, art, knowledge, and greatness!
Would have loved to seen it in it's golden age. It is a FAR cry from that golden age now.
Modern Egypt. Dirty, gross, cheap, full of thieves and liars.
Very glad to leave it behind.
Both in Ancient and Modern times it's a place of great pagan-ness and idolatry. I found myself constantly praying for the souls of people we ran into and got to know. This was the hardest, most trying trip I've ever taken but it was so worth it and we had a blast really. Cory and Noel were in my group, we prayed every morning and night for our group and the other groups.

My favorite part of the trip was just sitting and reading the Word together. We read the Exodus account and about Joseph in Egypt at several different sites we went to. When we were hot and tired and feeling discouraged we read the Psalms together.
We didn’t eat hardly at all the whole time, but when I was tired and weak I didn't even care about food, I just wanted to read my Bible and pray for awhile. I looked forward to every night going back to our hotel to just read and spend time alone with the Lord after He had been working on my heart all day, giving me a love for Arab people we met, giving me a right perspective on life and priorities and helping me to just want to love and serve people, especially Noel and Cory who I was with.


ANYWAY.......what did we see? The Cairo Museum was amazing. SO many treasures! I had no idea they found that much stuff from Ancient Egypt. It was over whelming. I saw a copy of the Rosetta Stone, I saw the Merneptah Steele which has the first written record of the Israelites outside of the Bible. I saw all of King Tut's treasures including his coffin and the face mask you always see pictures of in history books. Being fascinated by Ancient Egypt as a kid it was always a dream of mine to see it for myself, I was very excited to say the least :) Yes I am a history nerd.

The Pyramids of Giza were my favorite sight in the Cairo area though....

Noel and I are standing in front of the "Bent Pyramid" It still has about half of the original outside limestone coating, most pyramids have none left at all after 5,000 years










 We got to climb down into the Red Pyramid. It was kinda creepy and smelled really bad but it was really cool to be inside a 5,000 year old tomb!








 Here we are on camel back, approaching the Pyramids in Giza. An absolutely astounding sight was waiting for us around the next sand dune...see the picture below.





Great Pyramid of Giza, built by Cheops. I can't even tell you how excited I was. I've studied Egyptian history a lot in school and loved studying their pyramids especially, and now I was standing right there in front of them! So cool. *side note: I had decided to NOT take my nice camera to Egypt for fear of it being stole or broken and while I'm still glad (i think) that i didn't take it, I wish my friend's camera had gotten some better/clearer shots. :(





This is our group in front of the Great Sphinx which you can barely see (with the Giza pyramids in background). The Sphinx is the bump to the right of my shoulder. Egyptian tour guides are not good photographers :) 


After seeing all this in Cairo and Giza we took a 12 hour train ride over night down to Luxor. Not the most pleasant experience by any means....but God provided one guy who was actually HONEST and he spoke English! He helped us know where to go once we got there, how much to pay for stuff, when to get off the train (no one on the train spoke English and no signs or anything were in English so we had no idea when our stop would come!) etc. I must say, if I EVER doubted the power of prayer before, that doubt has been totally removed. I prayed more constantly than I ever have before the whole time down there (I can't tell you how many times I thought I was going to die) and God answered each prayer, provided for each need even better than I was expecting. I was truly humbled and I will never doubt again. He is faithful He will provide, in small things and in the big things.




 Luxor was beautiful. Much less crowded than Cairo. It was so hot though. I got really sick (heat stroke) but Noel and Cory took good care of me and were very patient.

 









 

Here is the entrance into Karnack Temple in Luxor. It was built over time by different Pharaohs that would keep adding on to it. Only the royalty and the priests could enter!














Karnack was my favorite site in Luxor. It was so very well preserved. We had fun exploring all through it in various rooms and just staring at the giant pillars and obelisks. In a lot of the rooms you could still see original paint work from the time.

These Sphinx line the entrance into Karnack and they originally stretched all the way to the edge of the Nile River.

In Karnack we were sitting to rest in a door way to one of the sanctuary rooms. We were reading through Exodus. An Egyptian boy (about 20) was sitting near by listening. When we finished he came over and asked where we were from etc, he spoke English well. He told us he was studying to become a tour guide at the temple. Then he pointed to our Bible and asked what we were reading. We told him we were reading about the Israelites in Egypt and how Moses came before Pharaoh...etc. He was interested and asked if he could trying read a portion to practice reading English. We were thrilled! It was so awesome sitting there with him helping him when he stumbled over words, watching him read the Word of God. The chapter he read was Exodus chapter 7 or 9ish (forget exactly which) where God is telling Moses to go to Pharaoh and that God would prove to all of Egypt that HE IS LORD. How cool is that?! An Egyptian boy reading about how Yahweh proved Himself as God and powerful over all the Egyptian gods! It was very neat. When he finished he had more questions, we told him what we believe, what the Bible says and he told us about Islam and how he prays 5 times a day. When Cory asked if he ever missed a prayer he kinda was flustered....I hope our conversation made him think. I pray for him.



We were very very glad to leave. We experienced a small portion of the joy the Israelites must have felt when God delivered them out of Egypt.













Though we didn't cross it, we did drive along the coast of the beautiful Red Sea. Such a wonderful and welcoming sight to see! We were over joyed to be back home in our beloved Israel!