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Flow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025
  • KP Projects
  • KP Projects

Flow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025

From Cairo and Giza to Luxor, Karnak, and Abu Simbel, a dream journey into the land of pharaohs, pyramids, and temples, a sail up the Nile in the wake of Akhenaten, Ramesses II and Cleopatra. Read more
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  • Trip start
    October 26, 2025
    KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler
    If the beard is blunt cut, the figure is human. If it curls, it's a god or a mortal deified.
    As the dynasties rolled forward, pharaohs more and more came to be regarded as deities.Lifelike portrait of Khafre, Old Kingdom. Behind him is believed to be the world's oldest mosaic.Khafre, who commanded the second pyramid and the Sphinx, crowned by Horus for uniting the two EgyptsAstonishingly realistic statue of a 5th dynasty scribe, papyrus unfurled in his lap.Hatshepsut was perhaps the greatest of all the pharaohs. Male rulers who followed tried to erase herAnkhenaten, the monotheistic prophet and heretic pharaoh. Yes, he was likely gender fluid.Amenhotep, son of Hapu, architect, scribe, and healer was one of only 2 commoners deified post death

    They Might Have Been Giants

    October 27, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☀️ 84 °F

    Egypt is struggling. But the history of Misr, as is its true name. has always pendulumed between pharaonic triumphs and devastation by invaders, and its record as the world’s oldest civilization is so long that the current reign of demagogue Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
    will one day be only a timeline pimple, a rounding error of rule. The Egyptians we met spoke of being in an upturn longed for after the cataclysm of the “Arab Spring” ( “a double lie: it wasn’t a spring and we are NOT “Arabs”). There is an enormous engineering project in the offing worthy of the greatest dynasties that will route the Nile to green the desert, and a world class museum for their colossal cultural legacy which we were lucky enough to visit on our last day.    Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler
    In Egypt cats are revered. Dogs not so much, and they all look alike.

    Heaven above the Squalor

    October 27, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☀️ 93 °F

    The legendary Khan el-Khalili souk, dating from 13th century CE, is mostly about vibes rather than value, since goods of quality are almost entirely absent. Instead it’s a kind of passegiatura of kitsch, thronged with Cairenes out seeing what other Cairenes are doing. There’s a kind of phantasmagoria in the eyeball-choking displays of Stuff, and glimpses of beauty surprise you with delight no one would haggle over.Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler

    “Man fears Time; Time fears the Pyramids

    October 31, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☀️ 82 °F

    You are not prepared for them. The countless photos, film backdrops, simulacrums from Las Vegas to Memphis (Tennessee) you have seen, their commercialized appearances in video games and cartoons and kitschy souvenir stands where they are miniaturized into paperweights - none of this has dimmed their power. They are enduring and dauntingly Real - in fact they may define what is Real, which definition anything else is struggling to reach. You could spend an hour, you could spend a year in their presence, but you can never understand them or will ever forget them. You have seen the Pyramids, and that is enough.Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler

    Lighter Than a Feather

    October 31, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☀️ 91 °F

    According to the Book of the Dead, to enjoy a happy afterlife, one’s heart when weighed in the scales of the last judgement must be lighter than a feather, Ours felt that weightless as we aeronauted above the tombs of the greats on the Nile’s West Bank and watched the solar disc so revered by the Egyptian devout rise. An experience not to be forgotten.Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler
    Carter watercolor.

    “Your Eyes Beholding Happiness”

    November 1, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☀️ 91 °F

    When I was 12 or so, my parents gave me TUTANKHAMEN by Desroches-Noblecourt, the iconic text about the pharaoh and his tomb and its discoverer Howard Carter. I resolved to become an archeologist, and this resolution lasted at least, ohh, a year. We were surprised to learn once we arrived in Egypt that we would be visiting not just Tut’s tomb, but Carter’s house! All the awe and mystery that I felt as a pre-teen came flooding back. Twenty years before he became the most celebrated archeologist in history, Carter was unemployed and barely making ends meet by selling water colors. His gravestone has an epithet found on a cup in the tomb: “May your spirit live, may you spend millions of years, you who live in Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, your eyes beholding happiness.”Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler
    The ram-headed sphinx, symbol of Rameses II
    His beloved Nefertari sheltered by RamessesThe vestigial color gives a hint of how vivid the hypostyle hall was.Ramesses carved his cartouches too deep to be erased.The matching obelisk stands in the Place de la Concorde, ParisFour baboons adoring the sun of RamessesNefertari urging her husband on to battle.

    They Would Be Gods

    November 2, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☁️ 88 °F

    The pharaohs of the Old Kingdom created colossal wonders that reference and revere nothing but their own uniqueness. But by the New Kingdom, as they sought not just obedience but worship, Egypt’s rulers allied themselves with and heavily funded various cult centers, especially the one in the city the Greeks named Thebes. The twinned temples of Karnak and Luxor were lavishly expanded, by Amenhotep III, Ramesses II, and others. The main beneficiary of this largess was the resident priesthood of Amen Ra, which became a power center rivaling the monarchy. When Amenhotep’s son Akhenaten had a religious revelation, closed the cult centers, built a new holy city, and preached a monotheistic gospel of love and forgiveness, he of course brought on his own destruction. His son, Tutankhamen, went back to paying off the priests, and his father’s legacy, even his inclusion in the roster of rulers, was mostly erased.Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler
    Birds-eye view of Ramesses' Temple of Ra-Horakhty, god of the horizon.Nefertari's Temple of Hathor, goddess of the feminine.Only thing better than one Ramesses is four.Children between his legs, Nefertari beside them.NefertariOn Oct. 22 and Feb. 22, the rising sun lights up all the figures but Ptah, god of darkness.Patty vibing with Hathor in Nefertari's temple.Full-length portrait of an exquisite queen.Isis may be anointing me...?

    Look on My Works Ye Mighty and Despair

    November 3, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☀️ 93 °F

    For the site of his grandest temple, prodigious builder Ramesses II chose not Thebes, not Memphis, but a bend in the Nile at the southernmost point of the empire where his colossi, at that time right on the water’s edge, would remind traders and potential invaders, particularly the Nubians, to not mess with Misr. Abu Simbel is a wonder twice over: the original
    carved from a single gargantuan block of sandstone, and the relocated de-and-reconstruction in the 1960’s that rescued it from the rising waters of Lake Nasser. It is quintessential pharaonic chest-pounding, yes, but it is also a monumental expression of deep love from a husband to his wife. The second-longest ruling Egyptian had fifty-odd wives, but he dedicated a temple to only one: Nefertari “for whose sake the very sun does shine,” who never saw it and died the year following the dedication. That sun reaches into the innermost sanctuary twice yearly, illuminating three figures, but not Ptah, the god of darkness. On the facade of Nefertari’s temple, she and Ramesses seem to step out of solid rock into sunlit eternity.    Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler

    People of Color

    November 4, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ 🌙 90 °F

    The Nubians’ roots in southern Egypt only reach back to 8000 BCE, compared to Egyptians’ 35,000 years, but over the millennia they have variously been vassals, mercenaries, trading partners, military rivals, allies, and for 100 years or so, rulers. “Great Queen Tiye”, the legendary wife of Amenhotep III, was not the only Nubian to marry with the pharaohs. In the 1960’s the inundating waters of the Aswan High Dam displaced 100,000 of them from their ancestral homeland, now at the bottom of Lake Nasser. But the Egyptian government recognized the need to make reparations, and now any Nubian can claim a plot and homestead on Elephantine Island. Their lively, even whacky design sense combines intense color with geometric whimsy that buoys the spirit.Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler
    Ramesses II, of course.
    The original maquette for the cap of the Great Pyramid.Chariots that were in pieces and stacked in the tomb, now assembled.The Tutankhamen funerary mask (taken through the mob)Alabaster boat with ibex heads and widow queen Mutnedjmet.Alabaster lion avatar of the pharaoh.Strappings for the mummy: the crook and the flail.Sacred cow.The Tutankhamen inner coffin.The symbols of the two Egypts: the cobra and the vulture.The outer Tutankhamen coffinEven the afterlife has gaming.Solar boats for boarding to the afterlife.One of the two figures guarding the tomb entrance.Goddess Neith protecting Tut's stomach in the canopic shrine.Hathor undefaced.Akhenaten, "heretic pharaoh" and the world's first monotheist prophet.

    Edifice Rex

    November 6, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☀️ 82 °F

    The Grand Egyptian Museum, which we visited opening week, is Egypt’s biggest project since the Aswan Dam, and, between avid tourists and proud citizens, already has Louvre-level crowds. Our guide Yasser was agog: “Never in my life have I seen so many of my countrymen in one place at one time.” We were all a little overwhelmed and buffeted, but the GEM is not overblown. Its enormous triangular windows frame views of the Pyramids and its signage proclaims “The History of the Future.” With Tutankhamen’s golden radiance now a treasured memory
    artifact, we wished Misr and its people peace, joy, and farewell.    Read more

  • KP ProjectsFlow Like the Nile: Egypt 2025Traveler
    Sunrise, aloft in a balloon, Luxor
    Mohammed Ali mosque, the CitadelKing Farouk donated this pulpit.The Step Pyramid of Imhotep, SaqqaraDancers, bas-reliefCrocodile eating hippo or vice versaRascals-in-armsThe Colossi of MemnonTorso of Sekhmet at EsnaOur stateroom on the Happy ShipWell-protected tote bags in NubiaThe dancing-and-singing felafel makerThanks to our new friend Andrea for this photo.

    The Sun Rises, the Sun Sets

    November 7, 2025 in Egypt ⋅ ☀️ 82 °F

    Artifacts from a final excavation. Our thanks to Yasser, Nabil, and the crew of the MS Antares, and the many new friends we found aboard: Andrea and John, Rosemary and Chris, Dorraine and Rich, Renee and Terry, Leslie and Don, fellow adventurers and now warm memories from “The Happy Ship”Read more

    Trip end
    November 7, 2025
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