Amazon.com
In the Valley of the Kings, enormous pyramids serve as the tombs of single pharaohs, while to the north, Cairo struggles to accommodate a million more residents a year. Such are the contrasts dealt with in the third and final leg of the video series
The Giant Nile, as the river winds through Egypt toward its Mediterranean destiny. The gorgeously painted and remarkably preserved walls of the pyramids depict scenes not a far cry from some of the current ones, where men still plow Nile-irrigated fields with a yoke of cattle and school children are the primary harvesters. People bathe alongside water buffalo and 20-member families cram into three-room clay homes. Narrator Alan Hill explains the political and religious animosities between the Coptic Christians and Muslim majority, but notes that both religions prohibit birth control. Viewers attend religious feast days for both religions: first at the temple of Luxor, where villagers piled into pickup trucks crowd into town for carnival rides and group worship, and then at Assiut, where the descendants of the first Christians celebrate the feast of the Virgin Mary. The ancient and the current vie for attention in this hour-long video, in which King Tut's jewel-encrusted coffin must share time with Cairo's thriving film industry.
--Kimberly Heinrichs
