Introduction to Antiquities

One Week in Jordan

The Petra Kitchen

Voluntourism in Jordan

Islam, in a Nutshell

Introduction to the Antiquities of Egypt. 
  by Joyce Carta

Whatever we know today of the ancients we know from two kinds of physical evidence: the translations of the hieroglyphs and the excavations of the antiquities. These are prolific, showing incredible artistic mastery and amazing versatility that ranges from tiny, finely wrought gold ornaments to the most massive structures on the planet. And the story they tell gives us a tantalizing glimpse of how history's first and longest lasting major culture endured virtually unaltered through millennia.

Common knowledge links Egypt with mummies, the elaborate preparation for the afterlife and the cult of the dead. The more you learn of their civilization, however, the more you come to know that what the ancient Egyptians truly developed was a cult of life. In the antiquities that have survived we see expressed the common hope that life will be eternal.

Their belief in the eternal was, to the Egyptian mind, corroborated by the unchanging natural order of daily living: the sun always rose in the east and traveled daily across the sky, the stars and planets charted a predictable course through the heavens, the Nile annually rose and flooded the valley with life-giving fertile soil -- to the ancients the cycle of life to death to life was as natural as their world.These were the underpinnings of their religion, their art and their structured society. Every pharaoh became the incarnation of god on earth and his ritualistic role was to ensure that life's cycle continued uninterrupted. Whether represented in limestone, granite, faience, gold or papyrus, each ruler had depicted the culture's central birth and rebirth saga with, of course, himself playing the central role. The edifices and artifacts that exist today were built to carry those depictions into eternity. The pharaoh's likeness and the hieroglyph cartouche of his royal name soared heavenward on obelisks, adorned temples constructed for the gods' (and his own) glory, and finally were immortalized in the mortuary monuments where generations of priests would keep his earthly presence alive after his immortal rebirth in the afterlife.

As you visit the Giza pyramids and its guardian Sphinx; the Karnak and Luxor complex; the Valleys of the Kings, Queens and Nobles; Philae and Abu Simbel; and especially as you wonder at the incredible collection in Cairo's Egyptian Museum -- remember that these are monuments meant to last forever to celebrate the indestructibility of life.

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