Grand Circl Cruise Line


This information is copied from GCCL pamphlets.  Some of it is not clear, but this is the way it was i the pamphlets.


April 2, 2019

From GC Cruise Line: Aswan is part of what is called “Nubia”, which means land of gold. Aswan people prefer to be called “Nubians”. There are two main tribes in Aswan, who speak their own native language known as Nubian. It’s only spoken and Nubians speak it as fluently as Arabic. Nubians are proud of their identity,, and they feel it’s their nationality. The main means of transportation in Aswan is the traditional sailing boat named “Felucca”. It completely sails on the breeze.”


April 3, 2019

From GCCL: Lake Nassaris a vast reservoir in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. Before construction, Sudan was initially against the building of Lake Nassar because it would encroach on land in the north, where the Nubian people lived Some ultimately needed to be resettled. (About 50% according to Big Mo). The carvings of the Abo Simbel temples compound are meant to demonstrate the power and eternal supremacy of Egypt with respect to the tributary Nubia. The Coptic Script takes its name from the Egyptian Christians, the Copts. The word Copt was originally coming from the Greek word aiguptios meaning Egyptian. It was shortened to gumption, then transmitted into Arabic, as gopt and finally back into Egyptian as Copts. The Coptic script is consisting of 25 Greek Alphabets in addition to  seven letters taken from the Demotic Script and they represent sounds that don’t exist in a Greek alphabet so in total the standard Coptic script contains 32 letters. The Coptic Script replaced the Demotic from the 2nd century BC to the 10th century AD and apparently between 10th century and 14th centuries till Arabi became the dominant language in Egypt. Unlike the previous Egyptian scripts (Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic)the Coptic Script represents both consonants and vowels and helped linguistics in learning about the ancient Egyptian languages structure and pronunciation. Through studying the Coptic Script, Jean-François Champollion was able to decipher the Hieroglyphic writing in 1822. The Coptic is one of the two liturgical languages of the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Churches with Arabic. Early Coptic writing was from right to left but later standard Coptic was written from left to right. 


April 4, 2019

From GCCL: Kom Ombo temple is an unusual temple because it’s a double temple that belongs to Sobek (the cdrocodile god), and Horus (the falcon-headed god).  Each temple has its own entrance, hypostyle halls and two courts.  The temple is atypical because everything is perfectly symmetrical along the main axis.  The texts and reliefs in the temple referr to cultic liturgies which were similar to those from that time period.  The temple itself had a specific theology.  Egyptian Funny Facts: When you think of ancient Egypt, what are the first thngs that cone to your mind?  Is it the pyramids? Or perhaps the pharaohs? But ancient Egypt was much bigger than that! It was one of the longesst and most successful civilizations ever.  We have done some research on this subject to offer you some great ancient Egyptian facts and legends.  If you want to know more, you have to check out these myths and crazy myths about Ancient Egypt.  The Egyptian pessary is the earliest contraceptive device for women.  A concoction  made of crocodile dung.  Documents daded back to 1850 BC refer to this unusual method of contraception.  Crocodile feces are actually a little alkaline, similar to those of todays sperm, so it may have been considered successful.  Ancient Egyptians were allso able to coexist with genetic and medical disorders.  Stunting,  for example, was  common at the time.  However , people with stunting were highly respected.  Amenipuya, a Pharaoh of the 21st Dynasty, wrote that caring for the elderly, the sick and the disfigured was an ethical task.


April 5, 2019

From GCCL: Edfu temple is unique among all the ancient Egyptian temples, as it is intact and almost in its original form.  Most of the others are not in such a perfect condition.  The construction work of the temple began about 237 BC and it was finished durng the reign of Ptolemy IV in 57 BC.  The temple of Edfu was dedicated to the god Horus, the sactred hawk, usually represented by a hawk-headed man. Many of Egypts ancient kings including King Tutankhamun, Ramses II, and Queeen Hatshepsut, whose royal tombs lie on the other side of the Nile (west bank), participated in the construciton and development of the Luxor Temple.  The temple  of Luxor was built for the god Amon Ra, who celebrated his wedding to his wife--Mott—once a year.  The procession of the god travels from Karnack Temple by Nile to Luxor Temple.  The temple is built by Pharaonic Amenhotep III and Ramses II.  The temple entrance begins with the ramas built by Ramses II, he is seated.  The temple is preceded by two churches, one of which is still standing and the other is decorated in the Place of the Concorde in Paris.  Next to this edifice is the courtyard of Ramses II, which is enclosed on threee sides by two rows of columns in the form of its packed papyrus.  In the northeastern part there is now the Abu Al-Hajjaj Mosque.  The rest of the temple is built by Amenhotep the Third.  The 14-storey Hall of Columns begins with a column divided into two rows and then the large open courtyard surounded by three rows of columns.  Then we get to the lobby of the columns and have 32 columns—and move inside the temple to get to the room  of the Holy Boat was able  to Alexander the great to build a small cabin bearing his name inside the Amenhotep IIII.  Finally, we reach the Holy of Holies where the chamber of the stature of the Holy and four colunns.


April 6, 2019

From GCCL: Luxor in Ancient times was known as the City of the One Hundred Gates”.  Luxor was the capital of Egypt twice in the middle Kingdom, once in 2050 BC & again in the New Kingdom 1550 BC.  Luxor in the New Kindom had a population of one million Egyptians.  Some lived on the West bank & worked in the workers’ village to dig & decorate the Kings & Queens’s tombs.  Luxor has one third of the monuments in the world but yet Egyptologists still discover monuments & tombs in teh city today.  Lately a tomb of a jeweler & his wife were discovered on the West Bank.  They lived in Luxor 3500 years ago.  Their tomb was discovered intact with their mummies & their funeral objects.  The legend of Isis and the story of Anas el Wood: The story of Anas al-Wogood, which appeared in the tales of the Thousand and one Nights, is the most influenced by the legend of the love of Isis and Osiris, so that the common name of the Philae temple in the Arab ages became the palace of Anas.  The story tells Shahrazad about Shahriar’s who listens for 11 nights, starting from the 400th night and tells about the daughter of the minister “The  roses in th e sleeves”, which fell in love with one of the soldiers Anas.  but the mister discovers the matter and confronts his daughter, who insists on marrying her lover Anas.  The father sent his daughter in the company of her classmates as a prisoner on the island of Phila, which was surronded by crocodiles at the time, so that she could not see her lover. When Anas knew of the matter he rushed out looking for his beloved everywhere and addresses the monsters and the bird asking for its place.  The story says that the boy on his journey encountered many horrors and was able to honestly win him,  to find himself finally in front of the island where he was imprisoned.  And he was allowed to ride  his back to pass tho the temple to see his beloved prisonerr.  It happens that the miister came to see his daughter, and he saw with his eyes the monsters.  Blessed is the pure love between the two beloved ministers.  The connection between the legend of Isis and the story  of Anas is evident in the scenes engraved on Hadrians’s Gate, which depicts Osiris in the sun disk on the back of the alligator crossing into the other world. The crocodile was considered one of the sympols of evil, which Osiris, the god of good, presided over in a clear similarity to the story of Anas.  There is also the symolism of the story of Anas al-Wogood, which considered that the imprisonment of the daughter of the miister in Philae was a disgrace to noble passion.  With the bessing of the mister and his blessong of marriage, it is as if the story reprodces the legend in its eastern dress.  The temple represents the immotality of the relationship between Isis and her husband because, according to legend, Isis has established a cemetery for her husband on the island of Beja near Phila, and used to visit. The view that depicts Osiris on the back of the crocodile is believed to be part of the myth, symbolizing the transformation of the evil forces of the crocodile to save the body of Osiris from decomposition, after being cast into the Nile, a known double in Egyptian theology.  The evil gods sometimes play roles Good nature.


April 7, 2019

From GCCL:Quena is 39 miles north of Luxor and is responsible for 64% of the sugar production in Egypt.  Quena is one of the most important industrial cities in Egypt.  It has three sugar factories, one spinning & Weaving  factory & it has one of the biggest aluminum plants in the Middle East.  Quena has a famous mosque know by Sheikh El-Quenawi that has the mausoleum of the 12th Century religious leader Abdel-Rahim El-Quenawi, who found a Sufi order in the city.  Queen Nefertiti was one of the most mysterious women in Pharaonic Egypt.  She was a strong woman living in ancient Egypt.  Nefertiti ruled Egypt along with Pharaoh Akhenaten, her husband from 1353-1336 BC.   The modern state ruled Egypt with her husband Akhenaten and she and her husband called for the worship of the sun god Aton which caused the wrath of many temples of the gods Amon and Osiris, and was loved by its people.  Lately in Quena the temple Denderah is know as the temple of Goddess Hathor, goddess of love, beauty and motherhood among the ancient Egyptians.  It was once considered a holy city for Egyptians and is composed of several temples and religious buildings.  Although the temple was created in the era of the last Pharaohs of Egypt, (Nektnebu the second), it passed through many different historical periods including Roman.

`© FRANCES COLEMAN 2015