Iris Love's NILE DIARY

The two-week cruise on the Nile hosted by Ann Getty, the new owner of Grove Press, and financier Alecko Papamarkou was the most talked-about sociocultural schlepp of the year. Archaeologist IRIS LOVE brought back her slides of monuments, top people, and topography

Egyptian officials dubbed us "The Papamarkou Group," but some of us called ourselves "Ann's Clan," or sometimes "The Ship of Fools." From the moment our feet touched the sacred soil of Egypt at Cairo on January 31 until we were delivered back there two weeks later, we were the guests of the beguiling Ann Getty and the generous Alexander (Alecko) Papamarkou. She is the San Francisco-New York hostess and wife to Gordon Getty. He is the New York financial wizard and friend to many. They had handpicked us for a trip to Egypt—up, down, and around the Nile—that has already entered into social history, however minor.

The New York-San Francisco axis, as well as what's left of the International Set, has for the months since our return been speculating and gossiping and trying to figure out the eclectic guest list—who was who and why were they invited? (Or why not?) Some tormented souls, green with envy, search for hidden meanings in the journey. Yet there are none. I'm certain of this, for I was there, and like Herodotus, the father of history, "I speak as an eyewitness... "

I thought of Herodotus as I floated past the same scenes and meditated on many of the same mysteries that had intrigued him 2,500 years before. Herodotus first visited Egypt in the mid-fifth century B.C. Monuments have crumbled, Libyan sand has covered and uncovered the Sphinx, the Nile has been diverted in places. Grave robbers, foreign governments, modem engineers, and idiots who scratch their graffiti on works of art have done their worst. But Egypt and the Nile, the magic ancient world of the great hieratic-religiousmystery civilization, remain essentially unchanged.

Remembering Herodotus, I recalled that he always traveled alone—a desperate state. I, on the other hand, was traveling with some eighty-three people, many of them the creme de la creme of their various worlds. The guests had flocked to Cairo from thirteen different countries. The majority were Americans, followed by the Greeks and the English in almost equal numbers. There were two American-educated lassies now lost to Albion's charms—the witty Marcelle to Lord Quinton, and Susan Crosland, a writer for the London Sunday Times and widow of the former foreign minister Anthony Crosland. (Both ladies are now more British than Boadicea.) We had two real sheikhs and their wives. Prince Alexander Romanoff held the torch for preBolshevik Russia, and H.R.H. King Simeon II of Bulgaria was aboard with his Spanish wife, Margarita. Simeon is rare among the few remaining kings without thrones, for he actually reigned over Bulgaria as a youth, until right after World War II (1943-46). There was token representation from France in the persons of the industrialist Baron Emest-Antoine Seilliere and Marc Bohan, artistic director of Christian Dior, who traveled with his daughter, Marie-Anne. (Their cabins were opposite mine at rowing level. In our tiny rooms we were able to closely examine the flotsam and jetsam on the surface of the Nile, and sometimes curious Egyptian faces peered in the windows while we were at ablutions.)

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LOWER EGYPT

DAY 1 CAIRO

DAY 2 EGYPTIAN MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES

THE PYRAMIDS'fiT'TDTHE GREAT SPHINX

DAY 3 MONASTERY OF ST CATHERINE

DAY 4 SAQQARA, MEMPHIS, THE PYRAMIDS

DAY 5 ABU SIMBEL ASWAN

HERE WE FLY SOUTH TO ABU SIMBEL AND THEN ASWAN, WHERE WE BOARD THE NILE PRESIDENT AND HEAD NORTH.

DAY 6 KOM OMBO. EDFU

DAY 7 EDFU, ESNA, LUXOR

DAY 8 LUXOR, KARNAK

UPPER EGYPT

DAY 9 LUXOR, DENDERA

DAY 10 DENDERA. ABYDOS

DAY 11 LUXOR

DAY 12 LUXOR, CAIRO

DAY 14 ALEXANDRIA

DAY 13 CAIRO

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In spite of the grand titles, as well as the many Republicans aboard (the Reagan friends Betsy Bloomingdale, Norman and Erlenne Sprague, and Jerry Zipkin), we were really quite a democratic group. No one felt spoiled, for instance, by the tiny cabins and unusual bathrooms. Our boat was not a royal barge but the Nile President, comfortable but not overly luxurious. As I sat on the toilet to take a shower, I was struck by the similarity between the Nile Prexy's accommodations and those I remembered from my life during the twelve years I spent on archaeological excavations in Turkey. (The Turks pile plumbing facilities in one spot. Did they steal this "convenience" from the Egyptians, or was it vice versa?)

But back to the beginning. We arrived in Cairo in staggered lots from around the globe to find the Getty-Papamarkou operation in full swing. V.I.P. treatment, baggage extricated, permits and papers quickly dispatched. The first of several formal dinners to kick off the trip was being laid on that night by New York's Miki Sarofim, whose family owns land at AlMinya, the site of Tell el Amama, the great palace and temple of Akhenaton. It was Miki's grandfather who amassed the superb collection that is now the Coptic Museum of Cairo.

The next morning we were up at seven to visit the Cairo Museum. I struggled out under four cameras, lenses, film, flashlight, small dust mop, and binoculars. (The C.M.—much improved these days—is still not known for its light, cleanliness, or lucidity of arrangement.) The gallant Basil Zoullas helped share my burdens. (He was just one of a contingent of shipping names, including Maria Goulandris, her sister, Katie Zoullas, and Lynn and Leonard Goulandris. Other prominent Greeks included Lisa Papamarkou, Dimitri Mavromatis, and Alex and Eleni Athanassiades.) Once there, I discovered that the museum allowed no photos. However, the flashlight, dust mop, and binoculars came in handy.

Some of us had been invited to lunch with the consort of the late King Farouk, Egypt's last monarch. Queen Farida, back home after a long exile on the French Riviera, has become a painter, and she is charming. It was a day for queens. That night, at a gala in Cairo's best restaurant, Chateau de Versailles, I was seated across from Queen Margarita of Bulgaria.

Alecko and Ann now had a treat for us. We were to rise at four A.M. to fly across the desert to the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai, which boasts one of the greatest collections of icons and manuscripts in Christendom. It was built on the spot where God spoke to Moses through the burning bush and from which Moses went up to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. The first traveler ever to leave an account of St. Catherine's was the Dominican friar Felix Fabri, in the Middle Ages. He wrote: "The journey across the Sinai.. .was full of terror and wonder. It took 26 days, which only the strongest and fittest could hope to survive." Our trip, from hotel to monastery, took three hours by bus and plane, but the rest of the description remains apt. For one thing, it was absolutely freezing, zero degrees.

The Greek Orthodox archbishop offered us date wine and chocolates for sustenance, seating us for a long wait (as we heard the history of the place) according to his religious whim—King Simeon of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on his right, Prince Alexander Romanoff of the Russian Orthodox Church on his left, and the rest as he perceived us to be—Roman Catholic, Protestant, Muhammadan, and Jew. He kept an eye on me, being a bit flabbergasted that an American woman spoke Greek. (Or maybe he'd heard I worshiped all the pagan gods, which I do.) We sipped, waited, and shrugged our blankets about us. The unheated monastery sits in a frigid hollow between two sand-blasted, desolate mountains. Finally I asked, "Please, may we see the bush that burned but was not consumed?" The archbishop explained that the famous bush was "absolutely unique; there is no other like it in all the world!" Later, at the site of the bush, which resembles a thorn tree, Betsy Bloomingdale was heard to murmur, "That's strange—I have one just like this in my garden in California."

We returned to Cairo's warmth to take in a few tombs at Saqqara and to see the colossus of Ramses II at Memphis ("Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Shelley wrote of this Ozymandias). We hoped to step up and down the famous Step Pyramid, but were not allowed to. And at the Pyramid of Mycerinus at Giza, we did not so much "see it" as wait on it, en masse, to be photographed by Norman Parkinson. We stared at the Sphinx and the pyramids, trying to sort out, in the bright sunlight, the magic way we had seen them the night before in the spectacle of Son et Lumiere. It was not Egypt in depth, but it was still Egypt eternal. We were enthralled with the country and with one another. Eveiy now and then a light would dawn—So-and-so was in the group! Evangeline Bruce, for instance, the great Washington hostess-philanthropist.

That night, a true superstar arrived—Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, fresh from her farewell to the president and the United Nations and her "Good-bye to all that" appearance on ABC's Nightline. The next morning we flew to Abu Simbel. In the Temple of Ramses II, Alecko introduced the two of us in our academic modes: "Professor Kirkpatrick, meet Professor Love." Abu Simbel was the perfect setting for the ambassador. Known today to the world as the place resurrected and saved by UNESCO from the waters of the Aswan Dam, it is a monument to peace and world unity. On one wall is represented the famous Battle of Kadesh, wherein the Egyptians fought the Hittites in 1286 B.C. According to Egyptian records, Ramses won an immediate victory. According to the Hittites, they were victorious. It hardly matters, in that Ramses concluded a treaty bringing peace to Egypt for over half a century, cementing it by marrying the daughter of the Hittite king Hattusilis. Mrs. Kirkpatrick was delighted by this history.

We flew on to Aswan, where we were to board the boat. Most of my companions were eager to see the dam, but I took off alone to the reconstructed temples of Isis and Hathor at Philae. (Isis and Hathor are the syncretized Egyptian equivalents of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, whose most famous temple and sanctuary I discovered at Cnidus, in Turkey.)

We sailed that afternoon to Kom Ombo, where there is a double temple sacred to the sun-god, Homs (Haroeris), and to the crocodile god, Sobek. This was the site in myth where RaHorus, aided by Homs the Elder, fought against the god of evil and darkness, Seth, for the supremacy of Egypt. Who could resist a temple full of mummified crocodiles? Not this archaeologist. Mrs. Kirkpatrick couldn't get over the fact that the Egyptians mummified not only themselves, their food, their cats, but also stacks of crocodiles.

Kom Ombo, Edfu, and Esna: a triad of well-preserved Ptolemaic temples. Then to Luxor—Homer's "100-Gated Thebes." Here is the largest concentration of ancient temples and monuments in the world. And across the Nile, in the famous Valleys of the Kings and of the Queens, the largest group of royal and noble burial places known to man. Our collective "eye" was becoming refined from, all this exposure to grandeur, so it was a bit of a shock at Luxor to anchor next to an artifact of the twentieth century—the Alexander. This vessel will soon be seen by TV viewers in episodes of The Love Boat. We told Alecko it had been named for his birthday, which we celebrated that night on board our own ship in a frenzy of native dressing and popping corks. (That evening, Sheikh Tarik Alireza and his beautiful wife, Reema, outshone us all, and the sheikha put the finishing tinkle of the cymbal on the party with her belly dance.)

We continued northward downriver—in Egypt one goes north toward the Mediterranean. We saw the Temple of Seti I, sacred to Osiris, at Abydos. From there, south to one of the best-preserved of Ptolemaic temples, Hathor's at Dendera, and back to Luxor, where we found hairdressers, telephones, and the International Herald Tribune. Then we were flown to Cairo, for farewell festivities and the usual tender partings. As Cleopatra said via Shakespeare, "Now no more the juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip"—at least for a while.