Egypt - Main Page: My World Tour - 2 year, 20 country trip around the world for Bruce Jones and Julia Miller

My World Tour - Egypt, Main Page
November 25 - December 10, 2001 Day 103 - 118
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Cairo	Luxor	Aswan	* Abu Simbel	Felucca Ride Down the Nile	Dahab

* Note, this has a long download time for the cool layout.

Modern Egypt: Where mud brick villages stand beside pharaonic ruins surrounded by towering steel, stone and glass buildings – is at the cultural crossroads of east and west, ancient and modern. While TV antennae decorate rooftops everywhere, from the crowded apartments blocks of Cairo to the mud-brick homes of farming villages and goatskin tents of the Bedouins, the farmers throughout the Nile’s fertile valley still tend their fields with the archaic tools of their ancestors.

The history of Egypt is inextricably linked to the Nile. Ever since the earliest known communities settled its valley, the river has inspired and controlled the religious, economic, social and political life of Egyptians. 50 centuries of History!

The native people of Egypt are in 3 categories:

Berbers – They have settled the western desert (same people as the natives in Morocco). Although many speak Arabic, they have preserved their own language. (Julia purchased Berber carpets in the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco).

Bedouins – There are 500,000 Bedouins in Egypt who are nomadic. They mainly live in the desert area of Sinai. They are and Arab race.

Nubians – Tall with darker skin than the average Egyptian, the Nubians are the bridge between Egypt and Africa. They originate from Nubia, the region between Aswan in the south of Egypt and Khartoum in Sudan.

Religion – 90% of the population are Muslims, most of the rest are Coptic Christians.

Before the arrival of Islam, Christianity was the predominant religion in Egypt. St. Mark, companion of the apostles Paul and Peter, began preaching Christianity here in 35 AD. Coptics believe that Christ is totally absorbed by his divinity and it is blasphemous to consider him human, contrary to the western church.