EL GOUNA

Today’s El Gouna is home to 17 spectacular hotels built along 10 kilometers of beachfront and spreads across islands interlinked by lagoons. Neighborhoods of attractive villas and apartments bustle with the activity of entrepreneurs, artists, environmentalists, sports enthusiasts and other individuals and families from all over the world who have made El Gouna their permanent or vacation home. The town is easily accessed from Europe via the nearby Hurghada International Airport and boasts a superb infrastructure and excellent services as well as natural beaches and year-round sunshine.

El Gouna is immaculately maintained and has a wide variety of activities and entertainment options, world-class cuisine and an exciting nightlife. It is also the perfect jumping-off point to experience the many historical, archeological and cultural treasures of Egypt. These aspects, as well as the stunning natural and architectural beauty of the resort, combine to make El Gouna the Red Sea’s premier leisure destination.

Location

Located 25 kilometers north of the Hurghada International Airport, El Gouna is only a 4-hour flight from Europe’s major capitals. Several major airline carriers operate weekly flights to Hurghada and El Gouna receives over 100,000 visitors a year from Germany, Belgium, the UK, France, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Poland. 

Excursions

The town’s location offers good access to Egypt’s many natural wonders, historical sites, and archeological treasures. The ancient temples of Luxor and Aswan and the pyramids of Cairo are only a bus or plane trip away, and Bedouin guides are always available for tours through the rugged Eastern Desert region. Day and overnight trips to Luxor, Aswan, Cairo, and Sinai are easily arranged from El Gouna. For a sample of trips on offer, see our excursions page or contact your preferred tour operator. 

Environment

El Gouna has been officially recognized as Egypt's most environmentally-friendly holiday destination, and El Gouna management has worked hard in cooperation with local hotels, businesses, residents and visitors to maintain, protect, and preserve its unique environment. The town’s environmental programs and grassroots environmental organization paved the way for several awards, including the Green Globe and Travelife, and led to El Gouna’s selection as the pilot location for the Green Star Hotel Initiative.

Community

El Gouna’s uniqueness as a destination lies in the fact that the town serves both as a vacation resort and as a well-established community, fully-equipped to meet the needs of its members. The town is home to a creative and diverse community of entrepreneurs, artists, environmentalists, sports enthusiasts, and families. In total, the town’s population includes over 20,000 permanent residents from all over the world.
El Gouna has two hubs of activity. The first is its downtown (Kafr El Gouna) and (Tamr Henna). Down town is an area styled after a small Upper Egyptian village and home to shops, cafes, free open air Cinema, bars, restaurants and an aquarium. Tamr Henna is considered the town’s center, it has El Gouna’s information center, the post office, super markets, barber shops & hair dressers, 3 banks, 2 ATM machines, two photography shops & a pharmacy, shops, restaurants & the café’s and the center point for transportation means with the Bus station, the limousine office & the Tok Tok parking area just 20 meters from the piazza. The second is its bustling marina town (Abu Tig Marina), home to a variety of hotels as well as El Gouna’s most exclusive restaurants, cafes, bars, shops and duty free shop.

 

Aesthetic Unity In Architecture

Great lengths have been taken to ensure that the town and its buildings conform to the highest architectural standards. Talented architects give El Gouna’s landscape its delicacy and character while ensuring that the entire town has a visual unity in which each neighborhood and hotel contributes its own unique flavor without detracting from the artistic whole of the resort.
The town’s perfect blend of traditional and modern elements and are the result of the dedication and work of an impressive list of prestigious architects. American Michael Graves, who has been the recipient of many of the architectural world’s highest awards, is responsible for designing several of El Gouna’s hotels as well as its Golf Club and Golf Villas, and the earth tones and sea-color splashes that characterize these projects help to set the tone of the resort.
Italian architect Alfredo Freda designed El Gouna’s attractive Marina town, the first of its kind on the Red Sea, as well as the popular and exclusive Tuscany-style Hill Villas. Shahab Mazhar, a prominent Egyptian architect, was inspired by Mediterranean influences in his creation of the beachfront White Villas, and the beautiful Nubian Villas are the work of the award-winning architects Ramy El-Dahan and Ahmad Hamdy, who also hail from Egypt.

The Great Temple of Abu Simbel

 

In 1257 BCE, Pharaoh Ramses II (1279-13 BCE) had two temples carved out of solid rock at a site on the west bank of the Nile south of Aswan in the land of Nubia and known today as Abu Simbel. Long before Ramses II, the site had been sacred to Hathor of Absek. The temple built by Ramses, however, was dedicated to the sun gods Amon-Re and Re-Horakhte. Because of their remote location near the Sudanese border in sourthern Egypt, the temples were unknown until their rediscovery in 1813. The Egyptologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni first explored them in 1817.

The sacred area, marked out as a forecourt and bounded on the north and south sides by brick walls, occupied a place between the sandstone cliffs and the river. Ramses' temple was cut into the face of the cliff, before which is a rock-cut terrace. The temple is approached across this terrace up a flight of steps with an inclined plane in the middle, and enclosed on either side by a balustrade behind which stood a row of hawks and statues of Ramses in various forms.The rock-cut fa açade of Ramses' temple represents the front of a pylon in front of which are four colossal seated figures of Ramses. This facade is one 119 feet wide and 100 feet high, while the colossal statues are 67 feet in height. At the top of the pylon, above the cornice, is a row of baboons, who, as Watchers of the Dawn, are shown with their hands raised in adoration of the (rising) sun. The Egyptians believed baboons played a role in helping the sun god Ra defeat the darkness of night and so were believed sacred to the worship of the rising sun.

The actual interior of the temple is inside the cliff in the form of a man-made cave cut out of the living rock (cf. The Sacred Cave). It consists of a series of halls and rooms extending back a total of 185 feet from the entrance. The long first hall is 54 feet wide and 58 feet deep and has two rows of Osirid statues of Ramses each 30 feet high. Those on the north side are shown wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt, while those on the south wear wearing the Double Crown of Lower Egypt. At the west end of the main hall are three doors, the side ones leading into lateral chambers, and the central one opening into a room with four square pillars. From this room a doorway leads to the vestibule, and beyond that is located the innermost shrine with seated statues of the gods Ptah, Amun-Ra, the deified Ramses II, and Re-Horakhte.

The most remarkable feature of the site is that the temple is precisely oriented so that twice every year, on 22 February and 22 October, the first rays of the morning sun shine down the entire length of the temple-cave to illuminate the back wall of the innermost shrine and the statues of the four gods seated there. Precisely this same effect was apparently also fundamental to the design of the artificial cave of Newgrangein Ireland.

With the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, the temples were threatened with submersion under the rising waters of the reservoir (Lake Nassar). Between 1964 and 1966, a project sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Egyptian government disassembled both temples and reconstructed them on top of the cliff 200 feet above the original site.

St.Katherine's Monastery

The town of St. Katherine is in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt at an elevation of about 1600 meters from sea level, at the foot of the Sinai High Mountains. Up to a thousand visitors come to visit St. Katherine's Monastery, the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the World St Catherine's monastery was built by order of the Emperor Justinian I, who reigned from 527 to 565, built on the site where Moses (Prophet Musa) talked to God in the miracle of the Burning Bush, and to climb Mt. Sinai (the Biblical Mt. Horeb, known locally as Jebel Musa) where Moses has received the Ten Commandments. Most visitors arrive on organized coach tours from the Red Sea resorts of Sharm el Sheikh, Taba and Dahab in the evening, have dinner and maybe a couple of hours sleep in a hotel, climb the mountain at dawn, visit the Monastery in the morning and return to the resort. St. Catherine and Mt. Sinai can be visited independently as well, avoiding the busy times on the mountain and discovering the rest of what this unique region offers.

St. Katherine (St. Catherine's City), the Center of the Sinai High Mountain Region

The region is a UNESCO World Heritage Area for its natural and cultural importance, and in fact, you could spend weeks to explore it. There are over 200 religious places and other important monasteries and churches, ruins of Byzantine monastic settlements, the highest mountains in Egypt with spectacular views, amazing rock formations and landscape. It is a unique high-altitude desert eco-system with many endemic and rare species, there is a whole range of medicinal plants used by locals for centuries which are not found elsewhere, there are water-pools, springs, creeks, narrow canyons and wide valleys. In the valleys of the high mountains, called wadis, everywhere you go there are beautiful Bedouin gardens unique to this area only. Its original inhabitants, the kind and friendly Jebeliya (Gebeliya) Bedouin are expert gardeners and camel herders, and if you take your time you might have a glimpse into their closed, traditional, albeit slowly changing way of life and culture that has been around for more than 1400 years. For visitors, this site contains practical and background information about the city, the region and its people. For local businesses, projects and the community in general, it provides a web-presence: all listings are free, but entries must be related to the area or its people.

 

The only surviving Ancient Wonder

The pyramids of Giza are the only surviving Ancient Wonder of the World and one of the most famous tourist attractions in the modern world. They are some of the oldest sacred sites in our index and certainly among of the most impressive. (The Great Sphinx of Giza has a separate article.)
Although it is clear the pyramids were used for the burial of pharaohs, the construction, date, and possible symbolism of the Giza pyramids are still not entirely understood.
This mystery only adds to the attractiveness of these ancient wonders and many modern people still regard Giza as a spiritual place. A number of fascinating theories have been offered to explain the "mystery of the pyramids," one of which is summarized below.
Giza is the most important site on earth for many New Age followers, who are drawn by the pyramids' mysteries and ancient origins. Since 1990, private groups have been allowed into the Great Pyramid, and the majority of these have been seekers of the mystical aspects of the site. But even the most skeptical visitor cannot help but be awed by the great age, grand scale and harmonic mathematics of the pyramids of Giza.

History

The Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza is the largest single building ever constructed. Originally 479 ft (146 m) in height, it still stands at an awe-inspiring 449 ft (137 m). Most of its height loss is due to the stripping of its original smooth limestone casing.
When the Greek historian Herodotus visited Giza in about 450 BC, he was told by Egyptian priests that the Great Pyramid had been built for the pharaoh Khufu (Cheops to the Greeks), who was the second king of the Fourth Dynasty (c.2575–c. 2465 BC).
The priests told Herodotus that the Great Pyramid had taken 400,000 men 20 years to build, working in three-month shifts of 100,000 men at a time. This is not implausible, but archaeologists now tend to believe a more limited workforce may have occupied the site without the need for shifts. Perhaps as few as 20,000 workers, with an accompanying support staff (bakers, physicians, priests, etc.), would have been adequate to the task.

The Great Pyramid was made of 2.3 million stone blocks, weighing from 2 to 15 tons each. When completed, the Great Pyramid of Khufu weighed 6 million tons, the weight of all Europe's cathedrals put together! The pyramid was also the tallest structure in the world for thousands of years, until it was surpassed by the spires of England's Lincoln Cathedral around 1300 AD.

The second-largest pyramid of Giza was built for Khufu's son Khafre (Chephren), who became the fourth king of the Fourth Dynasty after the death of his short-lived elder brother and died c.2532 BC. Although many of his relatives were hastily buried in cheap tombs, the Pyramid of Khafre is almost as vast as the Great Pyramid of his father.
Khafre's pyramid actually looks taller than the Great Pyramid of Khufu because it stands on a slightly higher part of the plateau, it has a steeper angle, and it is the only one with a smooth limestone cap. Khafre's pyramid measures 707 ft (216 m) on each side and was originally 471 ft (143 m) high; its limestone and granite blocks weigh about 2.5 tons each.
Like the Great Pyramid, Khafre's Pyramid included five boat pits (with no boats), together with mortuary and valley temples and a connecting causeway some 430 yards long carved out of the living rock. The burial chamber, which is underground, contains a red granite sarcophagus with its lid. Next to this is a square cavity that presumably once held the chest containing the pharaoh's insides. The Great Sphinx, near Khafre's pyramid, is believed to be a royal portrait of Khafre.
The southernmost and last of the pyramids to be built was the Pyramid of Menkaure (Mycerinus), son of Khafre and the fifth king of the Fourth Dynasty. Each side measures 356 ft (109 m), and the structure's completed height was 218 ft (66 m).
In addition to these three monuments, small pyramids were built for three of Khufu's wives and a series of flat-topped pyramids for the remains of his favorite children. At the end of a long causeway lined with minor tombs of court officials, a mortuary temple was built just to mummify the pharoah's body.
Like all pharonic tombs, the burial chambers of the pyramids were packed with all the necessities for the next life: furniture, statues of servants (to be enlivened by an incantation when needed), and boats.
The question of how the pyramids were built has not yet found a definitive answer. Herodotus reported that the base was laid, then the great blocks (each weighing about seven tons) were levered into place, a step at a time up all 203 steps. But this cannot be done, as demonstrated by a Japanese attempt at a duplicate in the 1980. The most plausible explanation is that the Egyptians employed a sloping and encircling embankment of brick, earth, and sand, which was increased in height and in length as the pyramid rose; stone blocks were hauled up the ramp by means of sledges, rollers, and levers.
The pyramids have impressively withstood the ravages of time, but not of grave robbers. They emptied the pyramids of their valuables in ancient times. In 1818 an Italian entered the burial chamber of Khafre with a hydraulic ram, but the gold and other treasures were long gone.

A Gateway to the Stars?

The positioning of the three pyramids of Giza is a bit surprising. They are not quite in a straight line, clustered around the largest one, or grouped in any kind of expected symmetrical way. The proposed explanation of most Egyptologists is that this had something to do with the terrain at Giza or it was simply the way the construction worked out.
In the early 1990s, Belgian engineer Robert Bauval noticed that the odd arrangement of the Giza pyramids is remarkably similar to that of the three stars of Orion's belt in the well-known constellation. This seemed to Bauval to be more than a coincidence, in light of the fact that the constellation Orion was sacred to the Egyptians. They believed it to be the home of the god Osiris and thought the shape of the constellation resembled him.
Among the many fascinating features of the Giza pyramids are the four airshaftsin the north and south faces of the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, and the two in the Queen's Chamber beneath it. Bauval calculated that in 2500 BC, the southern vent would have pointed directly at Orion and the southern airshaft in the Queen's Chamber would have pointed at the star Sirius, which was sacred to Osiris' consort Isis.
Bauval theorized that the vent was intended to be a channel to direct the pharaoh's soul to Orion, where he would become a god. Many scientists have dismissed Bauval's ideas, yet they certainly remain intriguing and continue to generate a great deal of discusssion. You can read more about it in the links listed at the end of this article.
Another interesting observation is that the Great Pyramid is perfectly aligned totrue north, south, east and west. This has led to speculation about an astrological meaning to its position. A number of theories have been advanced concerning occult meanings, secret codes or prophecies derived from the pyramid's dimensions.

Sharm EL-Shikh (The City of Peace)

Sharm el-shikh is a city situated on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, in South Sinai Governorate, Egypt, on the coastal strip between the Red Sea and Mount Sinai with a population of approximately 35,000 (2008).

Sharm el-Sheikh is the administrative hub of Egypt's South Sinai Governorate which includes the smaller coastal towns of Dahab and Nuweiba as well as the mountainous interior, Saint Catherine's Monastery and Mount Sinai. Sharm el-Sheikh is known as The City of Peace referring to the large number of international peace conferences that have been held there. It was known Sharm-üş Şeyh as (Sharm ush-Sheikh, "Beard of Sheikh" in Arabic) during Ottoman rule and was known as Ofira during Israeli occupation between 1967-1982.