Egypt 2010

Egypt was hot on the first day: 40 degrees. Later temperature dropped a lot, because there was also now and then a wind blowing. I think the monuments of ancient Egypt, pyramids, temples and tombs of kings were built to impress. And that was what it did to me, too. It started back in the 27th century before our era with Pharaoh Djoser. Something else came along: the pharaoh who put all this down had to be divine. I think it worked.

I've been inside the pyramids and in the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Luxurious life in 3* hotels and cruises on the Nile. Animal life and exotic vistas.

How are the reliefs in the tombs of the kings created?

First the sandstone is flattened.

Then comes a primer of sandstone and plaster.

Then comes the draftsman who sets the drawing in red.

Then someone digs out the red lines, creating relief.

Then someone paints the areas with pigment, egg white and water.

(Pictured: a portrait of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut.)

Fayum disappeared in Cairo!

In the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, from the entrance on the second floor, you can see straight ahead the room with Tutankhamun. To its right, one room back, are the Fayum portraits. After admiring the golden mask of the young pharaoh, I hurry to the Fayum. The hall is closed. It is being painted it says on a sign. You then feverishly start asking all the staff where the Fayum is gone. The cleaners nearby don't know or understand. If you move away from the hall a bit they resolutely point you in the direction you just came from. Says the ticket seller at the Royal Mummies to a guard: Is Fayum closed huh? Five mummies are in a cabinet next to the hall, three are in a display case, together five Fayum portraits. Two are a little worn out white, certainly from the natron, a soda compound used to cover the mummy for 70 days until the moisture was out. Natron is found here. The village of Wadi El Natrun is nearby.

You can see how ribbed the wax paint is on it.

I don't understand how this misery should happen to me, me who taught Fayum courses for seven years. Who entered the museum this afternoon expectantly.

I will have to make do with two books: Doxiadis' The mysterious Fayum Portraits and Coptic Icons Part II (small     

CAIRO

It's the third day with the group tour in Cairo and my own time begins. So far I have seen Egyptian antiquities at the Cairo Museum and the nearby pyramids of Giza. Just yesterday mosques. In the mosque there is no furniture. People sit on the carpet by themselves or in groups with their guide. I saw someone beating crosses in the direction of Mecca. I myself also got a kind of religious feeling about me. The fact that a strict religious Muslim woman was there as a guide also contributed. “It is the house of God” she kept repeating.

What is Coptic anyway? The Copts are the Egyptian branch of the ancient church, which with the fourth ecumenical council of Chalcedon (451) did not go along with the definition of the two natures of Christ: divine and human. The Copts teach only a divine nature, which is why they are called monophysites. The exit of the Copts must have been massive because the Patriarch of Alexandria seems to have kept very few sheep, especially after Nasser's expulsion of the Greek colony in the 1950s, and the Coptic Patriarch Shenuda III has 6.5 million. The 117th patriarch in the seat of Mark. Meanwhile, they are no longer reviled by the Orthodox and are called pre-Chalcedonian Orthodox in the Dutch Orthodox Yearbook.

The Hanging Church near Mar Girgis (Mary George) metro station in Old Cairo was built on an ancient pagan shrine as the second floor. The iconostasis is inlaid with ebony and ivory. There is a marble pulpit on 13 pillars, two of which are black, says a guide nearby, because of Thomas and Judas. A group sitting in a side aisle gets information from a tour guide. The Marian icon is estimated to be 12th century, while it looks more 16th century to me. The north side of the three-aisled church is being restored. Pillars are covered with plastic. From behind the iconostasis come icons that are being measured. I shift and stand up: an Ascension, a Baptism in the Jordan, a Hodigitria, 90 x 70 cm. I go to photograph the saint Mark.

Ever since the Coptic youth asked me to paint an icon with them, I have been diving more and more into the Coptic icon. In the Hanging Church you can see that it is a different style than Greek or Russian. Often it is naive, but therefore beautiful, sometimes. The book Coptic Icons does not stop at saying that Coptic icons are folk art. You may consider that the Copts did not experience the standardization of the dogma on the icon at the 7th Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 787. The icons they venerate as well as the Orthodox. A family in St. Barbara's church takes off their shoes in front of the icon at the entrance and sticks their fingers in the sand where the candles are planted and strikes a cross.

The Coptic Museum has some very nice ones with some questionable dating as far as I am concerned. Behind St. George's Greek Church is the Greek Orthodox cemetery with the Panagia church in the middle, dedicated to the Mother of God.

North of it is the immense Coptic city of the dead, the Fustat, very peaceful. In the cottages, relatives can be with their loved ones for a while longer. Sunlight shines mildly through a tree. A visitor's car makes a lane deceptively real. No sound besides distant traffic and a call to evening prayer from a mosque. Pure yellow sand is sprinkled in front of a grave, taken from a heap outside.