As you will know Egypt led the way in the so-called Arab Spring and whilst they value democracy the current Government is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and is slowly unravelling the achievements of the deposed President Mubarak who had done much to improve woman’s rights and education, particularly with regard to the Islamic tradition of allowing men to take up to four wives providing they treat each wife equally. The economy is in decline and we witnessed long queues for diesel despite the fact that Egypt has oil. The reason is that the current President has avowed to support the Gaza Strip against Israel and without reference to the elected Parliament or electorate has decided to share all Egypt’s resources with Gaza. Its seems that the current Government is very twitchy about Israel as we were to see when we passed through the Suez Canal in a few days time.
Resources have been withdrawn from almost every aspect of the economy including reducing the funding to excavate other tombs in the Valley of the Kings and to paying the dwindling number of guards at the tombs who resorted to every wheeze possible to extract tips in an aggressive way from tourists e.g. a piece of cardboard for a fan in the tombs for $1 or deliberately walking into a photo and demanding $5. It made the whole atmosphere tense and to be frank I was jolly pleased when we finished with Egypt in five days time to get way from such trickery and filth especially in Cairo and Alexandria.
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