Tourist Tales

Tourists can be very entertaining. Of the Edfu team, I’m probably one of the more tolerant team members of them- I enjoy talking to them about my work if they ask. But sometimes, tourists just do crazy things in Egypt, things you think people would never, ever do.

For instance, last Thursday, I was the only team member up in the silo area- everyone else with me was either a local Edfu worker or one of our specialists from Luxor. Ahmed, who works with me, speaks a little English, but other than him everyone spoke only Arabic. I was working in my area, and suddenly Ahmed stands up and starts yelling “Not permitted!” I turned around to see a guy wearing a red scarf on his head, standing IN one of the silos. I started yelling at him to leave, but he just kept standing there. I quickly walked over to him, waving my arms, pointing, and saying “No! You have to go down!” He didn’t seem to understand, so I asked if he was Italian, and he said he was Spanish. He kept telling me “I don’t understand” in Spanish. Generally waving of arms and “No” is usually universal, at least I thought. Nadine came over to see what I was doing, and he handed her a camera and tried to put his arm around me! Finally our head workman came over and got the guy to leave. The guy was really confused about how to get down from the tell, which had us all wondering exactly how he got up in the first place. I’ll never understand why people want to climb up on the tell- it looks dangerous, with falling mudbrick walls and steep slopes.

We had another interesting tourist experience at breakfast today. First off, we saw a guy climbing up on the far side of the tell just as we sat down. Greg, always happy to go yell at someone, ran off to get the guy off the tell. Apparently, he told Greg that there wasn’t a sign, so he should be able to walk up there. Then, while Greg was on his way back, he saw a woman climbing up on top of a Horus (the falcon god) statue like a horse for a picture. I’ll never understand what about Egypt makes people think that they can do things like that. Would you do that to a statue in Greece? France? Just because it’s not roped off doesn’t mean you can ride it like a pony. There seems to be this attitude with some tourists that just because they are on vacation, they can do whatever they want, be that dress inappropriately for a Muslim country, or climb all over archaeological material.

That said, the majority of tourists are perfectly well behaved. I guess there are a few bad apples in every bunch.