Created 10-Apr-12
A major project and a work in progress which will eventually cover all my visits to Egypt. By the end I will have sorted, labelled and scanned 1200 slides plus the digital files from 2010 and 2011. I hope to produce a sensible "Best Of" collection but that it likely to be some time away.
Like many others I have been fascinated by Egypt for a long time. The annual innundation of the Nile, due to rains over 2000 miles away in Ethiopia, carrying vast quantities of silt which acted as a natural fertiliser, flooded the plains of upper and lower Egypt, blessing the country with phenomenal wealth, enabling the creation and support of a class of artisans who produced some of the most exquisite works ever seen and a surplus of labour which could be directed to build monuments on a staggering scale. Much of their wealth was lavished on a religious system which reflected their experience that chaos was never far away, being especially dependent on the regularity of the annual inundation. I am convinced that ultimately it was embedded in animal fetishes. Resources devoted to it were on a scale comparable to mediaeval Christianity. In each case about 1/3rd of the country's wealth was tied up in some way with religious institutions.
Despite the lack of pack animals or lifting devices they created buildings which have survived 4500 years on a scale not emulated elsewhere for nearly 2000 years after classical Egypt was subsumed into the Roman Empire. Over 3000 years several waves oF invaders conquered Egypt, each being absorbed into the existing culture thereby resulting in a civilisation which was essentially unchanged over all that time.
And yet despite all their achievements, they never worked out where the innundation came from. They believed that the Nile flooded every year because of Isis's tears of sorrow for her dead husband, Osiris.
Try these two excellent web sites for a very readable introduction to Egyptian myth and legend:
http://www.egyptartsite.com/mytho.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/
Like many others I have been fascinated by Egypt for a long time. The annual innundation of the Nile, due to rains over 2000 miles away in Ethiopia, carrying vast quantities of silt which acted as a natural fertiliser, flooded the plains of upper and lower Egypt, blessing the country with phenomenal wealth, enabling the creation and support of a class of artisans who produced some of the most exquisite works ever seen and a surplus of labour which could be directed to build monuments on a staggering scale. Much of their wealth was lavished on a religious system which reflected their experience that chaos was never far away, being especially dependent on the regularity of the annual inundation. I am convinced that ultimately it was embedded in animal fetishes. Resources devoted to it were on a scale comparable to mediaeval Christianity. In each case about 1/3rd of the country's wealth was tied up in some way with religious institutions.
Despite the lack of pack animals or lifting devices they created buildings which have survived 4500 years on a scale not emulated elsewhere for nearly 2000 years after classical Egypt was subsumed into the Roman Empire. Over 3000 years several waves oF invaders conquered Egypt, each being absorbed into the existing culture thereby resulting in a civilisation which was essentially unchanged over all that time.
And yet despite all their achievements, they never worked out where the innundation came from. They believed that the Nile flooded every year because of Isis's tears of sorrow for her dead husband, Osiris.
Try these two excellent web sites for a very readable introduction to Egyptian myth and legend:
http://www.egyptartsite.com/mytho.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/
Egypt 1985
Galleries 1
Modified 26-Jul-12
40 photos
Egypt 1989
Galleries 4
Modified 22-Aug-12
0 photos
Egypt 1996
Modified 5-Aug-12
0 photos
Egypt 2010
Galleries 3
Modified 15-May-12
134 photos
Egypt 2011
Modified 6-May-12
0 photos
© Martin Gaffney Photography