There have been multiple announcements over two years about how religious pilgrimage tourism will kick off. It was raised with the real Pope when he was in Egypt and no one thought it was going anywhere.
They have now arrived – three Italian men in navy suits and its big, big news in al Ahram. One appears to be elderly and fat but all have highly polished black shoes. Pathetic. There are almost as many photographers in the room as fake pilgrims.
Its not going anywhere and the Coptic Church is on the nose in the west – and for good reason.
His Supreme Excellency Holiness should stop fabricating. He said: ‘Egypt were blessed by the journey of the holy family”. I know facts, truth and evidence count for nothing in Egypt but someone needs to tell this old man that not a scholar in the world, outside unhinged Egypt, believes this garbage. He says that there is ‘the tree of the Virgin Mary in Cairo's Matariya suburb,” for pilgrims – crazy man – how could a tree last 2,000 years.
The Supreme Touristico in charge of all this is no less sane and, as always in Egypt, sticks to the money making PR but gives no historical details. According to him the holy Family spent 198 days in Assiut. How could anyone know that. Has Egypt given up entirely on facts and the truth?
Its all rot. The Holy Family never came to Egypt and any Christian with a brain knows it’s a lie – put forward by fools who want to make money/gain status. Sad.
The Supreme Turisticos have spent money, mainly on themselves, and have built 12-14 of these horrors in the middle of asphalt/sand/bulldozed nothingness to stimulate the religiosity of Christians who will never come and propogate lies that the Holy Family stopped there. My guess is that if the Virgin Mary saw these fools she would either walk off or toss some animal waste at them on the basis that they think a Disneyland style expensive tour will make them better people - it won't.
Another 'achievement' at the Egyptian taxpayers expense. http://en.wataninet.com/features/touris ... ion/22929/
Egypt is not and will never be a pilgrimage location for western non-Coptic Christians – St Catherines is historically irrelevant although if the Copts can publish a single book, not ‘written’ by Hawass, on the origins of monasticism and the related role of the Red Sea monasteries it might change. Those monks on the coast might also need to be muzzled and take a wash if tourist monastery visits are proposed.
Israel might be dangerous but its not chaotic. The food is much better and no problems getting a drink. The religious Icons are skilled and tasteful – unlike Egypt. There are hundreds more religious sites to see.
A good first step for the Copts would be to let some educated and trained people into the country to catalogue, preserve and copy (the Egyptians will hate that) all the manuscripts that have been tossed into the Coptic sky all over Egypt. St Catherine’s is a secretive mess and the two on the coast largely unknown. What’s in Cairo is anyone’s guess. I imagine a lot has also been stolen as well as destroyed.When in the past western universities have done preservation/copying work in this area its all blown up either because of government or church obsession about owning all images of documents - my god imagine if da Vinci tried that on with the Mona Lisa.
Like Egyptians generally the only things preserved and discovered, or museums built, will be with oceans of western money and skills.
A tip to all visiting pilgrims with a conscience. There is a very large Coptic Monastery religious site in Upper Egypt. Part of the money that built this was based on something Copts did a lot of – slavery. In particular there was big money on ‘fixing’ 8-10 year old slave boys from Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda and Chad for auction sale in Cairo. A lot died because the priests/monks doing the ‘surgery’ were callous, dirty and stupid – still not unprecedented – and western estimates were 50-90% death rates. Therefore there are a lot of kids bodies, thousands at least, buried close by the religious site together with their removed organs.
Maybe the Coptic Christians that flock here with their barrows of money should be told this. Maybe 10 year old boys should be kept away.
The Monastery probably reveres the religious leaders who presided over this and its possible the Coptic Pope knew – he might even have taken a share. Many civilians in the Upper Egypt region would have financially benefited from slavery generally but maybe not from this wasteful specialty.
It was booming in the 1820’s, according to a western eye witness, may have been going for more than a hundred years before and there is some guesswork that it continued to the 1870’s and 80’s and possibly later on a small and hidden scale. It was prohibited for a Muslim to do this to boys.
UPDATE. More heroic announcements about religious people visiting Egypt to follow the trail of the Holy Family which every educated Christian – but not Copts – knows is rot.
The Beatic Pope 3/4 Ministers has celebrated something – its far from clear what which might reflect the muddled thinking of the Coptic Church. One thing was clear – no women there, except for the Minister and a possible second female Minister on the far right - no nuns – a bit off given they were commemorating the Holy Family but, maybe, in Egypt men are fertile.
The Pope gave a deranged speech about the precise movements in Egypt of the Holy Family 2,000 years ago including a visit to Upper Egypt. Given development at the time and transport problems not to mention their poverty, why did they take a 1,000 mile journey to see what? In addition, other than the Bible, there is no evidence of Herod’s persecution which allegedly led to their flight into Egypt. If Herod was killing children (he wasn't) and if they escaped Judea to avoid this (they didn't) then a short trip (much shorter than going into Roman Egypt) into a different province/kingdom would have saved him rather than a massive trip that even Roman Administrators would have undertaken rarely if at all.
There is reference again to the endorsement by the real Pope of this tourist rot. This is a lie. The official Papal website does not even include the claimed meeting with the Tourism Minister that kicked this off. What head of state, let alone a Pope, wastes time meeting a Tourist Walla least of all about a tourist promotion junket. It never happened and the further evidence for this is that no Catholic or Protestant religious figure attended this fiasco the other day including the Catholic Patriarch and the Nuncio. As always Egypt is a closed and non co-operative place and people treat it with derision and contempt. The Copts leaders are not popular in broader Christianity.
The absurd article from the idiots at Egypt Today says the Holy Family came to Egypt from Palestine. They are mad. Palestine did not exist at that stage. At the time of Christ it was part of the Kingdom of Judea – which was a Jewish kingdom, and Nazareth where they lived is now in the State of Israel which is a better location for it rather than in a violent, corrupt and chaotic Muslim state that has some very nasty elements in it that likes killing Christians.
The report also says this:
“Earlier in June, Minister of Culture Inas Abdel Dayem inaugurated the permanent Egyptian exhibition in the Pope’s palace in Viterbo, the first residence for the Catholic Church’s popes 200 years before being moved to the Vatican headquarter. This exhibition was set to include ancient Egyptian and Coptic artifacts.”
I think they got it wrong – as they invariably do. The Papal Palace has no temporary exhibitions of any description and only offers 45 minute conducted tours. Their website makes no mention of anything Egyptian which might reflect the Pope’s well known aversion to current arrangements in Cairo and fractured dealings with irascible Copts. http://www.archeoares.it/en/papal-palace/
I can find no Italian record or media report of this. The statement about the palace is factually incorrect but I guess Egyptian Ministers are used to falsity. The only record of this exhibition is in Egyptian newspapers where Hawass gave some unhinged and boot licking speech – as he always has. Viterbo is a nowhere with its only claim to tourism being a 2nd rate Etruscan collection. Few tourists go there which might be a good thing if the Supreme Antiques planned and delivered this exhibition. In a country with cities with first rate museums Viterbo might be 30-40th.
The al Ahram report has no Italian officials, Ministers, people from museums (Turin has the second finest Egyptology collection in the world), no academics, no famous archaeologists and, very interestingly, no one from the Catholic Church. There are Egyptian Ministers and officials but no one from Italy. Seems someone was trying to make a point.
Thinking of the future and trying to be positive the droves of ministers and bureaucrats at the function looked, mainly, on life support. The future can only be better. Its not a bad thing that many are obese and the risk of septicemia for the female Ministers must be high given they all seem already to have had a number of botched facelifts.
Meanwhile the world moves on and Egypt slips from obscurity to nothingness.
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/9/53 ... irgin-Mary
The Hawass stuff – someone should arrest him. http://www.egyptindependent.com/hawass- ... sit-egypt/
A story about a recent pilgrim tour – but no photograph nor names of the participants – possibly because they don’t exist. https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/9/52 ... y-in-Egypt
There is a travelling King Tut exhibition at the moment shown at the California Science Center whose biggest exhibit is a Space Shuttle. Its in an out of the way location not easy for tourists to get to and with violent crime well above the bad LA average. The promoters/organizers specialize in tat including circuses - wonder who chose them. How did they do it? Hawass is doing a lot of media promotion for this – lets hope he runs up against some journalists with teeth.
"live long & prosper"
