500 Miles up the Nile, Tues., May 11, 7 pm

500 Miles up the Nile: A journey inside modern ancient Egypt.

Tuesday, May 11, at 7 pm.

Join Stephen Phillips, Ph.D., from the Penn Museum, and learn about visiting Egypt.

Dr. Steve will take us to the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, and the open-air museum located in ancient Egypt’s northern capital, Memphis.

Register for the Zoom link.

Free and Open to all thanks to the generous sponsorship of Friends of Huntingdon Valley Library.

On January 25, 2011 a series of huge public protests began in downtown Cairo’s historic Tahrir Square. In less than a week, the protests spread to cities throughout Egypt, growing quickly into an impromptu popular revolution that resulted in the resignation of Egypt’s autocratic president, Hosni Mubarak, on February 11.

Only five weeks later, on March 24, Dr. Steve left Philadelphia for Egypt as the professional guide for a group of intrepid travelers, including a family with two middle school aged children. This presentation takes the audience along with us on our extraordinary 14-day journey through post-revolution Egypt, from Old Cairo southward (up the Nile) to the Aswan Dam.

We visit the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, and the open-air museum at ancient Egypt’s northern capital, Memphis. We also visit Old Cairo, dating back to medieval times, where we go inside than 1,000 year-old St. Virgin Mary Church, Ben Ezra Synagogue, and Ibn Talun Mosque; as well as the stunning Citadel with its famed alabaster mosque. Then we head to Luxor, where we set sail on a virtual Nile River cruise.

Our group was among the very first tourists to return to Egypt following the revolution – this presentation emphasizes cultural diversity, how ancient and modern Egypt co-exist side by side, and, it reveals that not everything we see on TV, or read in print, reflects the reality of a distant, and very ancient land.