Shunpiking Online Vo.4 No.2FROM ANCIENT TIMES, THE NILE SPEAKS VOLUMES By Dr. MOHAMED ELMASRY*

(The Nile, Somewhere South of Luxor) -- Shortly after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, Sir William Golding, best known for his gripping novel "Lord of the Flies," felt compelled to make a special dream come true. Like millions around the world, he'd read about this mighty river and the many stories it can tell.

In 1985 Golding published the modern classic "An Egyptian Journal" about his trip from Cairo southward on the Nile.

"For the last sixty years I must have read every popular book that anyone ever wrote about Egypt," he said. "In common with my generation I found a deep and so to say natural attachment to things not so much just Egyptian, as Ancient Egyptian."

"It would be going too far to say that I felt myself to be ancient Egyptian," he continues; "But I felt a connection, an unusual sympathy. It became, absurdly enough, a feeling of responsibility, as if I owed the country something [even] though I had never been there. There is even the possibility that this book is an unsuccessful attempt to pay that debt."

Golding fortunately had the resources to make a river trip from Cairo on his own terms and at his own pace; this was thanks to an advance from his publisher that allowed him to hire a private boat and crew to take him with his wife down the Nile.

Back in 1985 there were no commercial river cruises between Cairo and Luxor and there are none now, mainly because too few tourists will take an extra week to do it. Instead, they can travel on two shorter cruises -- one between Luxor and Aswan, and the other between Aswan and Abu Simbel, near Egypt's border with Sudan.

The Luxor-Aswan route is the most popular and is served by numerous cruise trips, taking a total of four nights. This stretch of the Nile flows by the greatest concentration of ancient monuments in the world.

Luxor - called Thebes in ancient times - was the former capital of Egypt. Here, from 2100 to 750 BC (more than 1300 years) the Nile was witness to a civilization like no others.

Egyptians of that glorious period could worship at two great temples, Luxor and Karnak. In their protective shadow they lived day-to-day lives as farmers, engineers, architects, artists, musicians, priests, scholars, laborers, teachers, and doctors, but most importantly as fathers and mothers. And a few became Kings, even Queens.

The temple of Karnak is not as famous as the Pyramids, but it should be. It stretches along more than three kilometers of Nile shoreline with a vast complex of buildings, sacred pools, and its unique sphinx- lined entrance.

On the West bank of the Nile the ancient Egyptians buried their dead. Here in Luxor you will see the Valley of the Kings whose most famous 20th- century "celebrity" is the tomb and mummy of the young King Tutankhamen.

But this is just one small part of a vast City of the Dead and one day is too short to see even a mere ten per cent of it.

Every tomb has its own special story, but none like that of Hatshepsut who was Queen and ruler of Egypt for 22 years. She could well have been the first public feminist in history, for she refused to be buried in the Valley of the Queens among the other wives of Kings, who were mere consorts, not rulers in their own right. It was as if she was saying, "I am a ruling Queen; I am as good, or better, than any King!" So she built for herself the most unique temple (later to become her tomb) in all of Egypt; it was anchored deeply into a mountainside, with a series of grand terraces and thousands of columns.

At Abu Simbel, you come face to face with one of the most moving and imposing sights of all; four 60-foot high figures of Ramses II overlooking the Nile. During the late 1960s it took UNESCO engineers four years to move the statues and the façade of their temple to higher ground. This monumental (literally!) effort successfully rescued an irreplaceable cultural treasure from rising Nile waters that followed the building of the Aswan High Dam.

The building of these four giant statues and temple of Ramses over the Nile at the most southern part of ancient Egypt marked the first time in history where a people's religion blended with their culture to deter foreign invaders. Ramses II wanted to send a firm message to potential intruders: "Invade at your own risk! Here you will find a people whose religion and culture are strong enough to resist your aggression."

Ramses II was only 30 years old when he ruled all of Egypt, and he did so for some 66 years; in fact, he flourished around 1550 BC, while the builders of the great Pyramids were a millennium or more earlier (circa 2575-2150). He was a national figure and statesman who married eight wives, the most famous being Queen Nefertari. And he constructed temples everywhere, so many that all of his monuments have yet to be discovered. I wonder what more the Nile may yet reveal about this amazing ruler?

(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. He can be reached at np@canadianislamiccongress.com)