November 2003
"You went to Sohag?" all my Egyptian friends say incredulously. "What's there to see in Sohag?" I was excited about my first trip on the train. We left Cairo and headed towards Luxor at 7:30 am arriving in Sohag at 2:30 pm. I loved sitting and looking out the window. In first class they come around selling tea and sandwiches (even though Muslims are fasting during the day in Ramadan) and I could sit back and enjoy the landscape. The whole trip was along a canal of the Nile so I kept seeing groups of women in brightly dressed clothes with shiny metal pans which they used for the washing. I watched farmers in the fields with donkeys and periodically I would see sunflowers, birds of paradise or some other brightly colored flower peek out from the banks of the Nile. It was sunny (of course) and I wondered about everyone fasting and working hard in the fields. Later I was happy to hear that often people who do hard labor in the sun do not fast. Even the head Sheik at Al Azhar made a special statement this year reminding people who are sick or old or who are children that they shouldn't fast. I did notice that by 1:00 pm most of the women had disappeared from the river banks – probably they were inside cooking.
While I enjoyed the train ride, the real point of the trip was to visit the Red and White Monasteries. These are monasteries from the 5th century which at one time had 4,000 monks. Now there are only 12. In early times the covered roof of the White Monastery would have made it seem grand, like a Gothic cathedral in terms of its vastness. Now most of it is open air except for a small enclosed end. Both monasteries have interesting elements to them but it is the paintings in the Red Monastery that I found truly fascinating. I had never seen Christian paintings like these before. The lower panels which are the oldest were packed with color, using lots of decorative patterns which also played games with the architecture.
An Italian group of conservators (ones who had restored Assisi and also Nerfititi's tomb) were busy uncovering the real color removing the black grime that gave it a certain patina. While the vigor of the work still managed to communicate through the black, I was astonished at the brightness of color which showed up in the one area they had cleaned. It was almost circus like in its decoration and the message seemed to be one of happy jubilation. I was reminded of all the Egyptian painting in the tombs of Luxor just a few hours away and also of the 1st century sculptures of faces in the Coptic Museum of Cairo. The eyes in those faces seem to speak of an astonishment which disappears from the sculptured faces of later centuries. Both the early paintings and early sculptures conveyed an excitement and joy which I never have associated with religious Christian paintings. It also made me wonder about those painted statues in ancient Greece. Were they as colorful and playful as what I was looking at on the walls?
I still remember the interview I had years ago with a Dean from some college where I was interviewing for a teaching job. As he looked at my colorful installations he commented about the wonderful white sculptures of Greece. I remember he was
surprised when I corrected him and told him that in their time they were brightly painted. He may have learned something, but I didn't get the job. I still wonder about the knowledge that has been passed down in regards to Western civilization. I suspect that there was a lot more communication between Egypt and the rest of the Mediterranean than "Westerners" would like to admit. And that much of what we consider classical Greece has its roots in Egyptian Pharonic Art. It makes sense to me that these civilisations didn't happen in isolation.
The woman giving us the tour is a professor at Temple University and she has funding for the first part of her project from U.S. AID. But of course she has to get funding to finish the project and she is quite worried that in ten years time or so, these paintings could be lost if they are not preserved. It seems that they are the only ones left of their kind. At one point Egypt must have had lots of these monasteries. But of the few that remain none of them have paintings like the ones I just saw on the lower portion of the Red Monastery.
We spent most of our two days looking at various parts of the Monasteries. This was fortunate because in Sohag we couldn't go anywhere without ten soldiers following our group of 25. At the hotel we were not allowed to go out alone and six soldiers sat by the door to make sure that this didn't happen. On the bus ride to Luxor we saw a convoy of 60 buses and vans of tourists traveling together interspersed with police cars. In this part of the country they do not want tourists traveling on their own.
What amazed me, though, is that in the middle of a small town we stopped at near Sohag, there is an enormous Pharonic statue which has just been excavated. They now realize that the town is on top of an ancient temple. Another statue – one of Ramses lies in parts nearby. The rest of him seems to be under the local graveyard so it's not clear if the archeologists will be able to continue to dig. And a 20 minute ride away in the desert one finds big ruins of a temple with pieces of beautifully painted columns and friezes all lying out baking in the sun. In the midst of the temple are the remains of a later church, now also in ruins. We were only given half an hour to wander through this place so I only saw a fraction of it. But the carving of animals, plants, and people that covered every stone was captivating. It made me realize that while Luxor has the bulk of the Pharonic sites, still every little town seems to have its own remains and one wonders about what else still lies buried in the sands.
This was supposed to be a quick trip – leaving Friday morning and coming home Saturday night. But the flight from Luxor was delayed and instead of arriving home at midnight (which would have been bad enough) I didn't get home until 4 am! I shared a taxi back to Zamalek from the airport with the AUC Vice President of Planning and his wife. While he did have his private driver pick us up, I felt sorry for him when the driver asked what time he should be there in the morning and he said "8:15". I think the driver thought, "What's the point of even going to bed?"