I have been fascinated by Egyptian art & history ever since I was a little boy. One of my favorite childhood books was Tutankhamun: Life and Death of a Pharoah, by Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, published in 1963; I still have my dad's well-worn copy. In fourth grade, my best friend Michael Turpin and I gave ourselves Pharaonic nicknames and we filled our notebooks with dynastic lists. I had dreams about visiting the Pyramids.

In 1982, I finally had a chance to realize those dreams. Inbetween the two phases of working on the camel anatomy atlas, I spent two weeks backpacking my way around the Sinai peninsula (with a trip to the Santa Katerina monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai) before travelling on to Cairo, Giza, and Luxor. I spent most of the time with Erich and Franciska, a Swiss-German couple I met on the bus to Mt. Sinai. While having dinner at a restaurant in Santa Katerina, the three of us shared a table with members of a soccer team from Port Said; my role was to translate Erich & Franciska's German-accented English and the soccer team's Arabic-accented English into flat-accent American English so that everyone could understand each other. They were great travel companions; one of my favorite memories is sitting in a streetside Cairo cafe sipping strong black coffee and smoking narghilas with them while the traffic swirled around us. I wonder if they are still together?...

Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip (all Kodachromes):

(sorry... photos to come!)

(e-mail me if you are pissed off about the fact that I don't have the photos up yet... your message might be just the thing I need to get my butt into gear!...)

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