Most of us were up very, very early this morning for hot-air balloon rides over the temples and tombs and fields on the west bank of the River Nile. Then, after breakfast back on our boat, the Blue Shadow, we headed off for a visit to the Valley of the Kings, where most of us visited the tombs of Ramses IV, Ramses IX, Merneptah, and, of course, Tutankhamen. We then dropped by the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, which... Read more
We landed this morning beside the Greco-Roman era double temple of Kom Ombo, which was dedicated to both Horus and the crocodile god Sobek, who appears (accurately identified as “the idolatrous god of Pharaoh, which is probably not the most obvious or immediately intuitive of identifications) as Figure 9 in Facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham. (For a very brief discussion of Sobek, see my 1994 Ensign article “News from Antiquity.”) In the afternoon, we landed at... Read more
We were up at 3 AM this morning for the 3.5 hour drive (each way) from Aswan to the remarkable temples of Ramses II and Nefertari at Abu Simbel. The landscape between Aswan and Abu Simbel is absolutely flat and barren, making the familiar drive through the Mojave Desert in California look like a tropical rainforest by comparison. Afterwards we stopped by the famous Aswan High Dam and its predecessor and visited the marvelous Temple of Isis at... Read more
No day that begins with a visit to the pyramid plateau just outside of Giza can’t be all bad. But it has been a long day, including a flight from Cairo south to Aswan, and we need to be up at 3 AM for a long drive to Abu Simbel and back. So I’ll delay reporting on the day’s festivities until at least tomorrow. But I’m going to share with you a few more passages, principally what might... Read more
My wife and I had a lot of fun this evening hosting a former student of mine and her husband for dinner at our hotel, outside on the shore of the River Nile. I maintain my policy of not revealing the identity of such folks, lest, simply because of their association with me, they become targets of my most obsessive critics. However, he is a newly retired professor of botany and evolutionary biology at a university in Texas... Read more
Our Interpreter Foundation tour of Türkiye ended yesterday, so we flew today from the great city of Istanbul to the massive city of Cairo. Most of our group headed home (or, anyway, somewhere else), but some have come with us to Egypt and others will join us here, for a non-Interpreter tour of the land of the Nile, either this evening or sometime tomorrow. It’s always good to be back in the city where my wife and I... Read more
Today, we left Bursa and drove to İznik, which may not sound familiar to many but which was an important city in early Christian history. İznik was known in ancient times as Nicaea – or, more accurately, as Νίκαια (Nikaia). It was the site of the First and Second Councils of Nicaea—respectively, the first and the last of the seven ecumenical councils of the Christian church—during the first of which the Nicene Creed originated. It was also the... Read more
First thing this morning, we visited the hilltop ruins of the ancient Greeek city of Assos ( Ἄσσος), which are located near today’s Behramkale or Behram on the Aegean coast in the province of Çanakkale. It is on the southern side of the Biga Peninsula, which isbetter known by its ancient name of “the Troad.” Specifically, Assos sits on the coast of the Adramyttian Gulf (in Turkish, the Edremit Körfezi) During the period of the town’s greatest flourishing, Hermias of Atarneus, a student... Read more
The church of Smyrna (Σμύρνη, Smýrnē, or Σμύρνα, Smýrna) was also one of the seven churches of Asia that are mentioned in the Revelation of John. (See Revelation 2.) Since around 1930 (in the wake of the founding of the Republic of Turkey), Smyrna has been known as Izmir. It’s where we spent last night. It is a port city that is located at a strategic point on the Aegean coast of Türkiye or Anatolia. Smyrna was situated at the mouth of a... Read more
Newly posted for your enjoyment on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Conference Talks: Cherubim and Seraphim: Iconography in the First Jerusalem Temple, presented by John Gee Our first stop this morning was at Colossae, which is, now, little more than a tumulus or a tell that awaits excavation. And this morning it was a muddy one. (See “John and Paul, but no George or Ringo.”) We next visited Alaşehir, the town known anciently (and, in... Read more
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