Exodus

Back from Egypt, adopted land of my forefathers, and a very interesting place, too. What I didn't know was that so little of the land is cultivated - not much more than in biblical times, with the desert taking up the vast proportion on both sides of the Nile. The narrow cultivated strips support all manner of fruit and vegetables, and everywhere there are these lovely wading birds called egrets.

The ship was wonderful, food fantastic, but the sight-seeing was intensive, and undertaken in the morning because of the heat.

Another thing I learned on the trip was to love Nasser. Apparently, our and France's dislike of him was founded solely on the fact that he wanted to do what was best for Egypt, not for himself, and his nationalisation of the Suez Canal was only done when he was unable to extract UN funding for the High Dam. The revenue he received from the tariffs from the Canal he used for the dam, which has freed Egypt from its dependency on the annual inundation of the Nile. He was the first Egyptian-born leader since the Pharoahs, so it's not surprising that the people loved him. He also brought in free education to a high standard.

Enough waffle. It was interesting, finally, to have confirmed that there was no slavery in Egypt. I had sort of known about this before. The people helped with building work for the Pharoahs after the harvest, but they were well treated and well-paid. The Hebrews were fed up because they had previously been exempted from this work, but their complaints brought great hardship on them at the hands of a (probably) foreign Pharoah, who knew nothing about their history.